William Tecumseh Sherman

• 1. Introduction

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  William Tecumseh Sherman was born on the 8th of February, 1820, in Lancaster, Ohio, and by the time he died seventy-one years later, he had helped reshape the way wars are fought and won. His name conjures a single image for most Americans: the scorched-earth march through Georgia. But that campaign was the product of a life full of bankruptcy, breakdown, and unlikely recovery. How does a man dismissed as "insane" by the press become the general who forces the largest single surrender of the war? And what did Sherman himself believe he was doing when he ordered the burning of crops and the twisting of railroad iron across the Confederate South? The answers lie in a career that began at West Point, detoured through California gold mines and Kansas law offices, and arrived at the Civil War only after Sherman had already failed at almost everything else.

• 2. An Unusual Name

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  Tecumseh, the name Sherman carried from childhood, was drawn from the great chief of the Shawnees. Sherman's own memoirs say his father "caught a fancy" for the chief and named the boy accordingly. But Lloyd Lewis's 1932 biography offered a different version: that the child was originally named only Tecumseh, and acquired William at the age of nine or ten when he was baptized as a Catholic at his foster family's behest. According to that account, a Dominican priest found the pagan name unsuitable and gave the boy the name William after the saint on whose feast day the baptism occurred. Recent biographers believe instead that William was already his first name from infancy, given at an earlier Presbyterian baptism. Whatever the sequence, Sherman signed every piece of correspondence in his adult life, including letters to his wife, as "W. T. Sherman". Friends and family called him simply Cump.

  The family that raised him after his father died of typhoid fever in 1829 was anything but ordinary. Thomas Ewing, the Lancaster neighbor who took in nine-year-old Sherman, went on to become a U.S. senator for Ohio and the first Secretary of the Interior. Sherman's own younger brother John was one of the founders of the Republican Party and served at various times as a U.S. representative, senator, and cabinet secretary. Another brother, Charles Taylor Sherman, became a federal judge. Two foster brothers served as major generals in the Union Army during the Civil War. Sherman was also a fifth cousin three times removed of Roger Sherman, who signed the Declaration of Independence. Into this web of political connection the boy with the Shawnee name would eventually write his own chapter.

• 3. West Point and Early Wandering

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  Senator Ewing secured the sixteen-year-old Sherman a cadet appointment at West Point, where he roomed with George Henry Thomas, who would later command one of the three armies Sherman led into Georgia. Fellow cadet William Rosecrans remembered Sherman as "one of the brightest and most popular fellows" at the academy and as "a bright-eyed, red-headed fellow, who was always prepared for a lark of any kind". Sherman accumulated roughly 150 demerits per year on average, a figure he acknowledged in his memoirs. Those demerits dropped his final class standing from fourth to sixth. He graduated in 1840 and entered the army as a second lieutenant in the 3rd U.S. Artillery.

  Service in the Second Seminole War in Florida was followed by postings to Georgia and South Carolina. During the Mexican-American War, Sherman drew an administrative assignment in California, arriving after most of the fighting was over but before the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo in February 1848. He had sailed from New York City on the 198-day voyage around Cape Horn aboard the converted sloop USS Lexington, growing particularly close to fellow lieutenant Henry Halleck along the way. Sherman and Edward Ord disembarked at Monterey, California, on the 28th of January 1847, two days before Yerba Buena took the name San Francisco.

  In June 1848, Sherman accompanied Colonel Richard Barnes Mason to inspect the gold mines at Sutter's Fort. He drafted the official documents in which Mason confirmed that gold had been found in the region, and in doing so helped trigger the California Gold Rush almost by accident. He also assisted in surveying the new city of Sacramento, laying its street grid in 1848. A general store he opened in Coloma earned him $1,500 in 1849 while his army salary was only $70 a month. A brevet promotion to captain in 1848 recognized his meritorious service, but the lack of combat experience weighed on him, and in 1853 he resigned his commission to try civilian banking.

• 4. Failure Before the War

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  On the 1st of May, 1850, Sherman married his foster sister Ellen Boyle Ewing in Washington, D.C. Father James A. Ryder, president of Georgetown College, officiated. President Zachary Taylor and Vice President Millard Fillmore were among those present. The couple would eventually have eight children, though two died young.

  Sherman's civilian career in banking proved difficult. He managed the San Francisco branch of the Bank of Lucas, Turner and Co., survived two shipwrecks, and at one point floated through the Golden Gate on the overturned hull of a foundering lumber schooner. He suffered from asthma attacks he attributed to the city's intense business culture. When the failure of Page, Bacon and Co. triggered the panic around the "Black Friday" of the 23rd of February 1855, Sherman managed to keep his own bank solvent even as several principal San Francisco banks collapsed. But the San Francisco branch closed in May 1857. He then relocated to New York City on behalf of the same bank, only to close that branch when the Panic of 1857 struck. He returned to California to settle the bank's remaining accounts and then moved to Leavenworth, Kansas, where he worked as an office manager for the law firm of his brothers-in-law. He obtained a law license without having studied for the bar, but found little success there either.

  In 1859, Major Don Carlos Buell suggested Sherman for the post of first superintendent of the Louisiana State Seminary of Learning and Military Academy in Pineville, Louisiana. Colonel Joseph P. Taylor, brother of the late President Zachary Taylor, said that if anyone had "hunted the whole Army, from one end of it to the other", they could not have found a man more suited to the position. Sherman was effective and popular there. But when Louisiana seceded, he resigned rather than take receipt of arms surrendered to the state militia, declaring to the governor that "on no earthly account will I do any act or think any thought hostile to or in defiance of the old Government of the United States." He had already, in front of his colleague David French Boyd, paced the floor weeping after news of South Carolina's secession, warning that the Confederacy was "rushing into war with one of the most powerful, ingeniously mechanical, and determined people on Earth." The institution he left behind eventually became Louisiana State University.

• 5. Breakdown and Recovery

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  Sherman arrived in Washington after leaving Louisiana and met Abraham Lincoln at the White House just days after the inauguration. He warned Lincoln about the North's poor state of readiness, but found him unresponsive. Sherman then moved to St. Louis to become president of the Fifth Street Railroad streetcar company. When Fort Sumter fell in April 1865 after the bombardment of April 12-13, he hesitated before offering himself for military service, privately mocking Lincoln's call for 75,000 three-month volunteers as equivalent to trying "to put out the flames of a burning house with a squirt-gun." He was commissioned as colonel of the 13th U.S. Infantry on the 14th of May 1861.

  At the First Battle of Bull Run on the 21st of July 1861, Sherman commanded a brigade in the disastrous Union defeat. He was grazed by bullets in the knee and shoulder but distinguished himself in the retreat. Two days later, Lincoln's visit to the troops led to Sherman's promotion to brigadier general of volunteers. This technically made Sherman senior in rank to Ulysses S. Grant at that moment.

  Assigned to Kentucky under Robert Anderson, Sherman soon took over command of the department. He became consumed by what he described as his command "breaking me down", sending exaggerated estimates of Confederate strength and requesting reinforcements he believed were desperately needed. After the Secretary of War Simon Cameron visited Louisville in October 1861 and critical press reports appeared, Sherman asked to be relieved. The Cincinnati Commercial called him "insane". He was put on leave by Henry Halleck in December and sent home to Lancaster, Ohio. His wife Ellen wrote to brother John Sherman about "that melancholy insanity to which your family is subject". In private correspondence, Sherman later admitted to having contemplated suicide.

  By mid-December 1861 he had recovered enough to return to service under Halleck. His first assignments were logistical and instructional, but they put him in position to support Grant's capture of Fort Donelson in February 1862. He wrote to Grant as the campaign was beginning: "I feel anxious about you... but have faith in you. Command me in any way." At the Battle of Shiloh in April 1862, Sherman was caught unprepared by the massive Confederate assault on the morning of April 6, having dismissed intelligence reports about Confederate General Albert Sidney Johnston's movements. He rallied his division nonetheless, conducting an orderly retreat. On the rainy evening after the first day of fighting, he found Grant standing under an oak tree with a glowing cigar. Deciding, as he later said, to heed "some wise and sudden instinct not to mention retreat," Sherman told him: "Well, Grant, we've had the devil's own day, haven't we?" Grant replied: "Yes. Lick 'em tomorrow, though." Sherman was wounded twice at Shiloh, in the hand and shoulder, and had three horses shot from under him. After the battle he was promoted to major general of volunteers. According to his biographer Robert O'Connell, "Shiloh marked the turning point of his life."

• 6. March to the Sea

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  When Grant went east in the spring of 1864 to command all Union armies, Sherman took over the Western Theater with roughly 100,000 men organized into three forces: the 60,000-strong Army of the Cumberland under Thomas, the 25,000-strong Army of the Tennessee under James B. McPherson, and the 13,000-strong Army of the Ohio under John M. Schofield. He wrote to Grant with characteristic informality, saying that if Grant could whip Lee and he could march to the Atlantic, "I think ol' Uncle Abe will give us twenty days leave to see the young folks."

  Sherman's Atlanta campaign succeeded on the 2nd of September 1864, when John Bell Hood abandoned the city. Sherman ordered nearly all civilians to leave, then directed that military and government buildings be burned, though many private structures burned as well. The fall of Atlanta contributed decisively to Lincoln's re-election in November, and it destroyed the credibility of the Copperhead peace faction within the Democratic Party. Sherman later began marching on November 15 with 62,000 men toward Savannah, Georgia, cutting loose from supply lines and living off the land. By his own estimate the march caused more than $100 million in property damage. His troops reached Savannah and took it on December 21, and Sherman dispatched a message to Lincoln offering the city as a Christmas present.

  The follow-on march north through the Carolinas was in some respects harder. Sherman was particularly interested in targeting South Carolina because of the effect it would have on Southern morale, since it was the first state to secede. His army advanced through the Salkehatchie swamps on corduroy roads at roughly a dozen miles per day, a pace that prompted Confederate general Joseph Johnston to remark that "there had been no such army in existence since the days of Julius Caesar". Sherman captured Columbia, the South Carolina state capital, on the 17th of February 1865. Fires that night destroyed most of the central city, and the question of who bore responsibility has remained contested ever since. Sherman's own account placed blame on Confederate Lieutenant General Wade Hampton, who Sherman said had ordered cotton burned in the streets. Historian James McPherson has concluded that blame falls on multiple parties, including Confederate authorities who left burning cotton bales and large quantities of liquor when they evacuated.

  One of the distinctive marks his army left behind on the Southern landscape was what became known as "Sherman's neckties": rails heated over bonfires and twisted so that they could not be relaid. At the time, the Confederacy lacked both the iron and the heavy machinery needed to replace them. The destruction in Georgia and North Carolina was considerably less severe than in South Carolina. North Carolina, which had been the second-to-last state to secede, ahead only of Tennessee, was regarded by Union troops as a reluctant Confederate participant.

• 7. Terms Too Generous

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  Following Lee's surrender and Lincoln's assassination on the 14th of April 1865, Sherman met Confederate general Johnston on April 17 at Bennett Place in Durham, North Carolina. At Johnston's insistence, and with Confederate President Jefferson Davis and Secretary of War John C. Breckinridge present on the Confederate side, Sherman agreed to terms that addressed both military and political matters. Sherman believed these were consistent with views Lincoln had expressed at City Point, Virginia, at their last meeting in late March, a three-way conference with Grant memorialized in G. P. A. Healy's painting The Peacemakers.

  On April 20, Sherman dispatched the terms to Washington. The Johnson administration rejected them. Secretary of War Edwin Stanton leaked Sherman's memorandum to The New York Times, implying that Sherman might have been bribed to allow Davis to escape. Sherman considered this a profound betrayal and it generated an enmity between Sherman and Stanton that lasted the rest of their lives. Grant then offered Johnston purely military terms comparable to those at Appomattox, and Johnston accepted them on the 26th of April 1865, surrendering all Confederate forces in the Carolinas, Georgia, and Florida. It was the largest single capitulation of the war.

  Sherman proceeded with part of his forces to Washington for the Grand Review of the Armies on May 24. But when Stanton extended his hand on the reviewing stand, Sherman refused to shake it, a public snub observed by tens of thousands of spectators.

• 8. After the War

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  When Grant became president in March 1869, Sherman was appointed Commanding General of the Army and promoted to full general. He served in that role from 1869 until the 1st of November 1883. Much of his tenure involved the Indian Wars, including the Modoc War, the Great Sioux War of 1876, and the Nez Perce War. His views on Native Americans were often harshly stated; after the 1866 Fetterman Massacre in which 81 soldiers were killed, he telegraphed Grant that "we must act with vindictive earnestness against the Sioux, even to their extermination, men, women and children". He also encouraged bison hunting by private citizens as a means of weakening Indian resistance, and helped convince Grant to use a pocket veto in 1874 to block a congressional bill that would have protected the bison from over-hunting. He did, however, speak out against government agents and speculators who abused Native Americans living within reservations, and he successfully negotiated the removal of Navajos from the Bosque Redondo to traditional lands in Western New Mexico.

  In 1875, Sherman published his memoirs, one of the first Civil War generals to do so. Grant later said that when he finished reading the book, he found he "approved every word" and called it "a true book, an honorable book". Literary critic Edmund Wilson wrote that Sherman "had a trained gift of self-expression" and that the memoirs allowed readers to live through the campaigns "in the company of Sherman himself".

  Sherman retired from the army on the 8th of February, 1884, at the then-mandatory retirement age of 64. He spent the remaining years of his life in New York City, devoted to the theater, to amateur painting, and to speaking at dinners where he was known for quoting Shakespeare. On the 12th of August 1880, he had addressed more than 10,000 people in Columbus, Ohio, with the words: "There is many a boy here today who looks on war as all glory, but, boys, it is all hell." One month later a reporter simplified those words to "Gen. Sherman said war was hell", and by June 1881 that condensed version had entered common usage. Near the end of his life, in 1888, he published an essay in the North American Review defending the full civil rights of Black citizens in the former Confederacy, calling on the South to "let the negro vote, and count his vote honestly" and warning that failure to do so would bring "another war, more cruel than the last". One of his final public institutional legacies was the establishment of the Command School at Fort Leavenworth in 1881, the institution now known as the Command and General Staff College.