IT'S NOT TERROR WHEN WE DO IT:

My great-grandfather John Langhans enlisted in September 1864, joined the 154th New York Volunteer Infantry in Atlanta, and made the subsequent marches through Georgia and the Carolinas under Maj. Gen. William T. Sherman. He went on to live another 60 years, but when he died, the headline of his obituary identified marching with Sherman as the central event of his life.

My father and aunt imbibed their grandfather's war stories during his waning years. Decades later they passed the tales on to me, piquing my interest in the Civil War. In our family legend, Sherman's march was a sort of rowdy picnic, in which Union soldiers feasted on pigs and chickens taken from protesting farm and plantation owners along their path. Sherman's army, like Napoleon's, marched on its stomach.

Another aspect of our family legend described a great freedom crusade, with the army mobbed by joyous, newly freed African-Americans. Here was our ancestor as liberator, obviously on the right side of history. But his abolitionism went only so far. According to our legend, a former slave attached himself to John, intending to accompany him all the way to a job on the family farm in Cattaraugus County, N.Y., but John left the fellow behind on the journey north.

Our family legend also whitewashed history. Not a word was said about the extensive destruction of Sherman's marches, or the suffering of the beleaguered Southerners, white and black (excepting John's forlorn companion).

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