Everything about William Tecumseh Sherman totally explained
William Tecumseh Sherman (
February 8 1820 –
February 14 1891) was an
American soldier,
businessman,
educator, and
author. He served as a
general in the
Union Army during the
American Civil War (1861–65), for which he received recognition for his outstanding command of
military strategy and criticism for the harshness of the "
scorched earth" policies that he implemented in conducting
total war against the
Confederate States.
Military historian Basil Liddell Hart famously declared that Sherman was "the first modern general".
Sherman served under General
Ulysses S. Grant in 1862 and 1863 during the campaigns that led to the fall of the Confederate stronghold of
Vicksburg on the
Mississippi River and culminated with the routing of the Confederate armies in the state of
Tennessee. In 1864, Sherman succeeded Grant as the
Union commander in the
western theater of the war. He proceeded to lead his troops to the capture of the city of
Atlanta, a military success that contributed decisively to the
re-election of
President Abraham Lincoln. Sherman's subsequent
march through Georgia and the
Carolinas further undermined the Confederacy's ability to continue fighting. He accepted the surrender of all the Confederate armies in the Carolinas, Georgia, and
Florida in April 1865.
After the Civil War, Sherman became
Commanding General of the Army (1869–83). As such, he was responsible for the conduct of the
Indian Wars in the
western United States. He steadfastly refused to be drawn into politics and in 1875 published his
Memoirs, one of the best-known firsthand accounts of the Civil War.
Early life
Sherman was born in 1820 in
Lancaster,
Ohio, near the shores of the
Hocking River. His father
Charles Robert Sherman, a successful lawyer who sat on the
Ohio Supreme Court,named him after the famous
Shawnee leader
Tecumseh. Judge Sherman died unexpectedly in 1829. He left his widow, Mary Hoyt Sherman, with eleven children and no inheritance. Following this tragedy, the nine-year-old Sherman was raised by a Lancaster neighbor and family friend, attorney
Thomas Ewing, a prominent member of the
Whig Party who served as
senator from Ohio and as the first
Secretary of the Interior. Sherman was distantly related to the politically influential
Baldwin, Hoar & Sherman family and grew to admire American founding father
Roger Sherman.
Sherman's unusual name is often a subject of comment by biographers and others. Since 1932, it has often been reported that, as an infant, Sherman was named simply Tecumseh. According to such accounts, Sherman acquired the name "William" only at age nine or ten, after being taken into the Ewing household. His foster mother, Maria Ewing, who was of
Irish ancestry, was a devout
Catholic. In the Ewing home, Sherman was given a Catholic baptism by a
Dominican priest who supposedly used the name William because the event took place on a Saint William's Day, possibly June 25, the feast day of Saint
William of Montevergine. However, this colorful account of Sherman's name should be considered dubious. Sherman himself states in his memoirs that it was his father who gave him the name William Tecumseh, and there's corroborating evidence that Sherman was baptized by a
Presbyterian minister as an infant and given the name William at that time. In any event, Sherman himself was never a churchgoer and he never used the name William in private life; his friends and family always called him "Cump."
Sherman's older brother
Charles Taylor Sherman became a federal judge. One of his younger brothers,
John Sherman, served as a U.S. senator and
Cabinet secretary. Another younger brother,
Hoyt Sherman, was a successful
banker. Two of his foster brothers served as
major generals in the
Union Army during the Civil War:
Hugh Boyle Ewing, later an ambassador and author, and
Thomas Ewing, Jr., who would serve as
defense attorney in the military trials against the
Lincoln conspirators.
Military training and service
Senator Ewing secured an appointment for the 16 year old Sherman as a
cadet in the
United States Military Academy at
West Point, where he roomed and became good friends with another important future Civil War General,
George H. Thomas. There Sherman excelled academically, but treated the demerit system with indifference. Fellow cadet
William Rosecrans would later remember Sherman at West Point as "one of the brightest and most popular fellows," and "a bright-eyed, red-headed fellow, who was always prepared for a lark of any kind." About his time at West Point, Sherman says only the following in his
Memoirs:
second lieutenant in the 3rd U.S. Artillery and saw action in
Florida in the
Second Seminole War against the
Seminole tribe. He was later stationed in
Georgia and
South Carolina. As the foster son of a prominent Whig politician, in
Charleston, the popular Lt. Sherman moved within the upper circles of
Old South society.
While many of his colleagues saw action in the
Mexican-American War, Sherman performed administrative duties in the captured territory of
California. He and fellow officer Lieutenant
Edward Ord reached the town of Yerba Buena two days before its name was changed to
San Francisco. In 1848, Sherman accompanied the military governor of California, Col.
Richard Barnes Mason, in the inspection that officially confirmed the claim that
gold had been discovered in the region, thus inaugurating the
California Gold Rush. Sherman earned a
brevet promotion to
captain for his "meritorious service", but his lack of a combat assignment discouraged him and may have contributed to his decision to resign his commission. Sherman would become one of the relatively few high-ranking officers in the Civil War who hadn't fought in Mexico.
Marriage and business career
In 1850, Sherman was promoted to the substantive rank of Captain and married Thomas Ewing's daughter, Eleanor Boyle ("Ellen") Ewing, in a Washington ceremony attended by President
Zachary Taylor and other political luminaries. (Thomas Ewing was serving as the first Secretary of the Interior at the time.) Like her mother,
Ellen Ewing Sherman was a devout Roman Catholic, and the Sherman's eight children were reared in that faith. In 1874, with Sherman having become world famous, their eldest child, Marie Ewing ("Minnie") Sherman, also had a politically prominent wedding, attended by President Ulysses S. Grant and commemorated by a generous gift from the
Khedive of Egypt. Another of the Sherman daughters,
Eleanor was married to
Alexander Montgomery Thackara at General Sherman’s home in
Washington D. C. on
May 5 1880. To Sherman's great displeasure and sorrow, one of his sons,
Thomas Ewing Sherman, was ordained a
Jesuit priest in 1879.
In 1853, Sherman resigned his Captaincy and became president of a bank in San Francisco. He returned to San Francisco at a time of great turmoil in the West. He survived two shipwrecks and floated through the
Golden Gate on the overturned hull of a foundering lumber schooner. Sherman eventually suffered from stress-related
asthma because of the city's brutal financial climate. Late in life, regarding his time in real-estate-speculation-mad San Francisco, Sherman recalled: "I can handle a hundred thousand men in battle, and take the City of the Sun, but am afraid to manage a lot in the swamp of San Francisco." In 1856, he served as a
major general of the California
militia.
Sherman's bank failed during the financial
Panic of 1857 and he turned to the practice of law in
Leavenworth,
Kansas, at which he was also unsuccessful.
University superintendent
In 1859, Sherman accepted a job as the first superintendent of the
Louisiana State Seminary of Learning & Military Academy in
Pineville, Louisiana, a position offered to him by Major
D. C. Buell and General G. Mason Graham. He proved an effective and popular leader of that institution, which would later become
Louisiana State University (LSU).
Colonel Joseph P. Taylor, the brother of the late President
Zachary Taylor, declared that "if you'd hunted the whole army, from one end of it to the other, you couldn't have found a man in it more admirably suited for the position in every respect than Sherman."
On hearing of
South Carolina's
secession from the United States, Sherman observed to a close friend, Professor
David F. Boyd of
Virginia, an enthusiastic secessionist, almost perfectly describing the four years of war to come:
Baton Rouge, Louisiana. Instead of complying, he resigned his position as superintendent and returned to the North, declaring to the governor of Louisiana, "On no earthly account will I do any act or think any thought hostile ... to the ... United States." He promptly traveled to Washington, D.C., possibly in the hope of securing a position in the army, and met with Abraham Lincoln in the White House during inauguration week. Sherman expressed concern about the North's poor state of preparedness but found Lincoln unresponsive. Thereafter, Sherman became president of the St. Louis Railroad, a
streetcar company, a position he held for only a few months before being called to
Washington, D.C.
Civil War service
Army commission
Sherman accepted a commission as a
colonel in the
13th U.S. Infantry regiment, effective
May 14 1861. He was one of the few Union officers to distinguish himself at the
First Battle of Bull Run on
July 21 1861, where he was grazed by bullets in the knee and shoulder. The disastrous Union defeat led Sherman to question his own judgment as an officer and the capacities of his volunteer troops. President Lincoln, however, promoted him to
brigadier general of volunteers (effective
May 17 1861, which made him senior in rank to
Ulysses S. Grant, his future commander). He was assigned to serve under Robert Anderson in the Department of the Cumberland in
Louisville,
Kentucky, and succeeded Anderson in command of the department in the fall.
Breakdown and Shiloh
During his time in Louisville, Sherman became increasingly pessimistic about the outlook of the war. His frequent complaints to Washington, D.C. about shortages and his exaggerated estimates of the strength of the rebel forces caused the local press to describe him as "crazy". He was replaced in his command by
Don Carlos Buell and transferred to
St. Louis,
Missouri, where in the fall of 1861 he experienced what would probably be described today as a
nervous breakdown. He was put on leave and returned to Ohio to recuperate. While he was at home, his wife, Ellen, wrote to his brother Senator John Sherman seeking advice and complaining of "that melancholy insanity to which your family is subject". However, Sherman quickly recovered and returned to service under Maj. Gen.
Henry W. Halleck, commander of the Department of the Missouri. Halleck's department had just won a major victory at
Fort Henry, but he harbored doubts about the commander in the field, Brig. Gen. Ulysses S. Grant, and his plans to capture
Fort Donelson. Unbeknownst to Grant, Halleck offered several officers, including Sherman, command of Grant's army. Sherman refused, saying he preferred serving
under Grant, even though he outranked him. Sherman wrote to Grant from
Paducah, Kentucky, "Command me in any way. I feel anxious about you as I know the great facilities [theConfederates] have of concentration by means of the river and railroad, but [I] have faith in you."
After Grant was promoted to major general in command of the District of West Tennessee, Sherman served briefly as his replacement in command of the District of Cairo. He got his wish of serving under Grant when he was assigned on
March 1 1862, to the
Army of West Tennessee as commander of the 5th
Division. His first major test under Grant was at the
Battle of Shiloh. The massive Confederate attack on the morning of
April 6 1862, took most of the senior Union commanders by surprise. Sherman in particular had dismissed the intelligence reports that he'd received from militia officers, refusing to believe that Confederate General
Albert Sidney Johnston would leave his base at
Corinth. He took no precautions beyond strengthening his picket lines, refusing to entrench, build
abatis, or push out reconnaissance patrols. At Shiloh, he may have wished to avoid appearing overly alarmed in order to escape the kind of criticism he'd received in Kentucky. He had written to his wife that, if he took more precautions, "they'd call me crazy again".
Despite being caught unprepared by the attack, Sherman rallied his division and conducted an orderly, fighting retreat that helped avert a disastrous Union rout. Finding Grant at the end of the day sitting under an oak tree in the darkness smoking a cigar, he experienced, in his own words "some wise and sudden instinct not to mention retreat". Instead, in what would become one of the most famous conversations of the war, Sherman said simply: "Well, Grant, we've had the devil's own day, haven't we?" After a puff of his cigar, Grant replied calmly: "Yes. Lick 'em tomorrow, though." Sherman would prove instrumental to the successful Union counterattack of
April 7 1862. Sherman was wounded twice—in the hand and shoulder—and had three horses shot out from under him. His performance was praised by Grant and Halleck and after the battle, he was promoted to
major general of volunteers, effective
May 1 1862. Beginning in late April, a Union force of 100,000 moved slowly against
Corinth, under Halleck's command with Grant relegated to a hollow role as second-in-command to Halleck; Sherman commanded the division on the extreme right of the Union's right wing (under George H. Thomas).
Vicksburg and Chattanooga
Sherman developed close personal ties to Grant during the two years they served together. Shortly after the Union forces occupied Corinth on May 30, Sherman persuaded Grant not to resign from the Army, despite the serious difficulties he was having with his commander, General Halleck. Sherman offered Grant an example from his own life, "Before the battle of Shiloh, I was cast down by a mere newspaper assertion of 'crazy', but that single battle gave me new life, and I'm now in high feather." He told Grant that, if he remained in the army, "some happy accident might restore you to favor and your true place." The careers of both officers ascended considerably after that time. Sherman later famously declared that "Grant stood by me when I was crazy and I stood by him when he was drunk and now we stand by each other always."
Sherman's military record in 1862–63 was mixed. In December 1862, forces under his command suffered a severe repulse at the
Battle of Chickasaw Bayou, just north of
Vicksburg,
Mississippi. Soon after, his
XV Corps was ordered to join Maj. Gen.
John A. McClernand in his successful assault on
Arkansas Post, generally regarded as a politically motivated distraction from the effort to capture Vicksburg. Before the
Vicksburg Campaign in the spring of 1863, Sherman expressed serious reservations about the wisdom of Grant's unorthodox strategy, but he went on to perform well in that campaign under Grant's supervision. After the surrender of Vicksburg to the Union forces under General Grant on
July 4 1863, Sherman was given the rank of brigadier general in the
regular army in addition to his rank as a major general of volunteers. Sherman's family came from Ohio to visit his camp near Vicksburg; their visit resulted in the death of his nine-year-old son, Willie, the Little Sergeant, from typhoid fever.
During the
Battle of Chattanooga in November, Sherman, now in command of the
Army of the Tennessee, quickly took his assigned target of Billy Goat Hill at the north end of Missionary Ridge, only to discover that it wasn't part of the ridge at all, but rather a detached spur separated from the main spine by a rock-strewn ravine. When he attempted to attack the main spine at Tunnel Hill, his troops were repeatedly repulsed by
Patrick Cleburne's heavy division, the best unit in Braxton Bragg's army. Sherman's effort was overshadowed by
George Henry Thomas's army's successful assault on the center of the Confederate line, a movement originally intended as a diversion. Subsequently, Sherman led a column to relieve Union forces under
Ambrose Burnside thought to be in peril at
Knoxville and, in February 1864, led an expedition to
Meridian, Mississippi, to disrupt Confederate infrastructure.
Georgia
Despite this mixed record, Sherman enjoyed Grant's confidence and friendship. When Lincoln called Grant east in the spring of 1864 to take command of all the Union armies, Grant appointed Sherman (by then known to his soldiers as "Uncle Billy") to succeed him as head of the
Military Division of the Mississippi, which entailed command of Union troops in the
Western Theater of the war. As Grant took command of the
Army of the Potomac, Sherman wrote to him outlining his strategy to bring the war to an end concluding that "if you can whip
Lee and I can march to the Atlantic I think ol'
Uncle Abe will give us twenty days leave to see the young folks".
Sherman proceeded to invade the state of
Georgia with three armies: the 60,000-strong
Army of the Cumberland under
George Henry 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 fought a lengthy campaign of
maneuver through mountainous terrain against Confederate General
Joseph E. Johnston's
Army of Tennessee, attempting a direct assault only at the disastrous
Battle of Kennesaw Mountain. In July, the cautious Johnston was replaced by the more aggressive
John Bell Hood, who played to Sherman's strength by challenging him to direct battles on open ground. Meanwhile, in August, Sherman "learned that I'd been commissioned a major-general in the regular army, which was unexpected, and not desired until successful in the capture of Atlanta."
Sherman's
Atlanta Campaign concluded successfully on
September 2 1864 with the capture of the city. After ordering all civilians to leave the city, he ordered that all military and government buildings be burned. This was to set a precedent for future behavior by his armies. Capturing Atlanta was an accomplishment that made Sherman a household name in the North and helped ensure Lincoln's
presidential re-election in November. Lincoln's electoral defeat by
Democratic Party candidate
George B. McClellan, the former Union army commander, had appeared likely in the summer of that year. Such an outcome would probably have meant the victory of the Confederacy, as the Democratic Party platform called for peace negotiations based on the acknowledgment of the Confederacy's independence. Thus the capture of Atlanta, coming when it did, may have been Sherman's greatest contribution to the Union cause.
After Atlanta, Sherman began his march south, declaring that he could "make Georgia howl". Initially disregarding Hood's army moving into Tennessee, he boasted that if Hood moved north he (Sherman) would "give him rations" as "my business is down south." He quickly, however, had to send an army back to deal with Hood. Sherman marched with 62,000 men to the port of
Savannah,
Georgia, living off the land and causing, by his own estimate, more than $100 million in property damage. Sherman called this harsh tactic of material war "hard war", which is now, in modern times, known as
total war. At the end of this campaign, known as
Sherman's March to the Sea, his troops captured Savannah on
December 22 1864. Sherman then telegraphed Lincoln, offering him the city as a
Christmas present.
Sherman's success in Georgia received ample coverage in the Northern press at a time when Grant seemed to be making little progress in his fight against Confederate General
Robert E. Lee's
Army of Northern Virginia. A bill was introduced in Congress to promote Sherman to Grant's rank of
lieutenant general, probably with a view towards having him replace Grant as commander of the Union Army. Sherman wrote both to his brother, Senator John Sherman, and to General Grant vehemently repudiating any such promotion. According to a war-time account, it was around this time that Sherman made his memorable declaration of loyalty to Grant:
It is related that a distinguished civilian, who visited him at Savannah, desirous of ascertainng his real opinion of General Grant, began to speak of him in terms of depreciation. "It won't do; it won't do, Mr.
," said Sherman, in his quick, nervous way; "General Grant is a great general. I know him well. He stood by me when I was crazy, and I stood by him when he was drunk; and now, sir, we stand by each other always."
While in Savannah, Sherman also suffered the blow of learning from a newspaper that his infant son Charles Celestine had died during Sherman's march to the sea; the general had never even seen the child.
The Carolinas
In the spring of 1865, Grant ordered Sherman to embark his army on steamers to join him against Lee in Virginia. Instead, Sherman persuaded Grant to allow him to march north through
the Carolinas, destroying everything of military value along the way, as he'd done in Georgia. He was particularly interested in targeting
South Carolina, the first state to
secede from the Union, for the effect it would have on Southern morale. His army proceeded north through South Carolina against light resistance from the troops of Confederate General
Joseph E. Johnston. Upon hearing that Sherman's men were advancing on
corduroy roads through the
Salkehatchie swamps at a rate of a dozen miles per day, Johnston declared that "there had been no such army in existence since the days of
Julius Caesar."
Sherman captured the state capital of
Columbia, South Carolina on
February 17 1865. Fires began that night and by next morning, most of the central city was destroyed. The burning of Columbia has engendered controversy ever since, with some claiming the fires were accidental, others a deliberate act of vengeance, and still others that the retreating Confederates burned bales of cotton on their way out of town. Local Native American
Lumbee guides helped Sherman's army cross the
Lumber River through torrential rains and into North Carolina. According to Sherman, the trek across the Lumber River, and through the swamps,
pocosins, and creeks of
Robeson County "was the damnedest marching I ever saw". Thereafter, his troops did little damage to the civilian infrastructure, as North Carolina, unlike its southern neighbor, which was seen as a hotbed of secession, was regarded by his men to be only a reluctant Confederate state, due to its position as the last to join the Confederacy. In late March, Sherman briefly left his forces and traveled to City Point, Virginia, to consult with Grant. Lincoln happened to be at City Point at the same time, allowing the only three-way meeting of Lincoln, Grant, and Sherman during the war.
Following Sherman's victory over Johnston's troops at the
Battle of Bentonville, Lee's surrender to Grant at Appomattox, and Lincoln's assassination, Sherman met with Johnston at
Bennett Place in
Durham,
North Carolina to negotiate a Confederate surrender. At the insistence of Johnston and Confederate President
Jefferson Davis, Sherman offered generous terms that dealt with both political and military issues. Sherman thought his terms were consistent with the views Lincoln had expressed at City Point, but the general had no authority to offer such terms from General Grant, newly installed President
Andrew Johnson, or the
Cabinet. The government in
Washington, D.C. refused to honor the terms, precipitating a long-lasting feud between Sherman and the
Secretary of War,
Edwin M. Stanton. Confusion over this issue lasted until
April 26 1865, when Johnston, ignoring instructions from President Davis, agreed to purely military terms and formally surrendered his army and all the Confederate forces in the Carolinas, Georgia, and Florida.
Slavery and emancipation
Though he came to disapprove of
slavery, Sherman wasn't an
abolitionist before the war, and like many of his time and background, he didn't believe in "Negro equality". His military campaigns of 1864 and 1865 freed many slaves, who greeted him "as a second
Moses or
Aaron" and joined his marches through Georgia and the Carolinas by the tens of thousands, performing invaluable service as foragers and
pioneers. Impressed with their industry and loyalty, Sherman quickly became concerned with the future of the freed slaves and the improvement of their precarious living conditions.
On
January 12 1865, Sherman met in Savannah with Secretary of War Stanton and with twenty local black leaders. After Sherman's departure, Garrison Frazier, a
Baptist minister, declared in response to an inquiry about the feelings of the black community that
Four days later, Sherman issued his
Special Field Orders, No. 15. The orders provided for the settlement of 40,000 freed slaves and black refugees on land expropriated from white landowners in South Carolina, Georgia, and Florida. Sherman appointed Brig. Gen.
Rufus Saxton, an abolitionist from
Massachusetts who had previously directed the recruitment of black soldiers, to implement that plan. Those orders, which became the basis of the claim that the Union government had promised freed slaves "
40 acres and a mule", were revoked later that year by President
Andrew Johnson.
Although the context is often overlooked, and the quotation usually chopped off, one of Sherman's most famous statements about his hard-war views arose in part from the racial attitudes summarized above. In his
Memoirs, Sherman noted political pressures in 1864-1865 to encourage the escape of slaves, in part to avoid the possibility that "'able-bodied slaves will be called into the military service of the rebels.'" Sherman thought concentration on such policies would have delayed the "successful end" of the war and the "liberat[ionof]
all slaves." He went on to summarize vividly his hard-war philosopy and to add, in effect, that he really didn't want the help of liberated slaves in subduing the South:
Strategies
General Sherman's record as a
tactician was mixed, and his military legacy rests primarily on his command of
logistics and on his brilliance as a
strategist. The influential 20th century British military historian and theorist
Basil Liddell Hart ranked Sherman as one of the most important strategists in the annals of war, along with
Scipio Africanus,
Belisarius,
Napoleon Bonaparte,
T. E. Lawrence, and
Erwin Rommel. Liddell Hart credited Sherman with mastery of
maneuver warfare (also known as the "indirect approach"), as demonstrated by his series of turning movements against Johnston during the Atlanta Campaign. Liddell Hart also stated that study of Sherman's campaigns had contributed significantly to his own "theory of strategy and tactics in
mechanized warfare", which had in turn influenced
Heinz Guderian's doctrine of
Blitzkrieg and Rommel's use of
tanks during the
Second World War. Another WWII-era student of Liddell Hart's writings about Sherman was
George S. Patton, who "'spent a long vacation studying Sherman's campaigns on the ground in Georgia and the Carolinas, with the aid of [LH's] book,'" and later "'carried out his [bold] plans, in super-Sherman style.'"
Sherman's greatest contribution to the war, the strategy of
total warfare—endorsed by General Grant and President Lincoln—has been the subject of much controversy. Sherman himself downplayed his role in conducting total war, often saying that he was simply carrying out orders as best he could in order to fulfill his part of Grant's master plan for ending the war.
Total warfare
Like Grant, Sherman was convinced that the
Confederacy's strategic, economic, and psychological ability to wage further war needed to be definitively crushed if the fighting were to end. Therefore, he believed that the North had to conduct its campaign as a war of conquest and employ
scorched earth tactics to break the backbone of the rebellion, which he called "hard war".
Sherman's advance through Georgia and South Carolina was characterized by widespread destruction of civilian supplies and infrastructure. Although
looting was officially forbidden, historians disagree on how well this regulation was enforced. The speed and efficiency of the destruction by Sherman's army was remarkable. The practice of bending rails around trees, leaving behind what came to be known as
Sherman's neckties, made repairs difficult. Accusations that civilians were targeted and
war crimes were committed on the march have made Sherman a controversial figure to this day, particularly in the
South.
The damage done by Sherman was almost entirely limited to the destruction of much
property. Though exact figures are not available, the loss of civilian life appears to have been very small. Consuming supplies, wrecking infrastructure, and undermining morale were Sherman's stated goals, and several of his Southern contemporaries noted this and commented on it. For instance,
Alabama-born Major Henry Hitchcock, who served in Sherman's staff, declared that "it is a terrible thing to consume and destroy the sustenance of thousands of people", but if the scorched earth strategy served "to paralyze their husbands and fathers who are fighting ... it's mercy in the end."
The severity of the destructive acts by Union troops was significantly greater in South Carolina than in Georgia or North Carolina. This appears to have been a consequence of the animosity among both Union soldiers and officers to the state that they regarded as the "cockpit of secession". One of the most serious accusations against Sherman was that he allowed his troops to burn the city of Columbia. Historian
James M. McPherson, however, claims that:
Modern assessment
After the fall of Atlanta in 1864, Sherman ordered the city's evacuation. When the city council appealed to him to rescind that order, on the grounds that it would cause great hardship to women, children, the elderly, and others who bore no responsibility for the conduct of the war, Sherman sent a response in which he sought to articulate his conviction that a lasting peace would be possible only if the Union were restored, and that he was therefore prepared to do all he could do to quash the rebellion:
Edmund Wilson found in Sherman's
Memoirs a fascinating and disturbing account of an "appetite for warfare" that "grows as it feeds on the South". Former
U.S. Defense Secretary Robert McNamara refers equivocally to the statement that "war is cruelty and you can't refine it" in both the book
Wilson's Ghost and in his interview for the film
The Fog of War. Some modern critics have denounced Sherman's attitude as proto-
totalitarian and as a harbinger of the inhumanity of the large-scale wars of the 20th century.
On the other hand, when comparing Sherman's scorched earth campaigns to the actions of the
British Army during the
Second Boer War (1899–1902)—another war in which civilians were targeted because of their central role in sustaining an armed resistance—
South African historian Hermann Giliomee declares that it "looks as if Sherman struck a better balance than the British commanders between severity and restraint in taking actions proportional to legitimate needs". The admiration of scholars such as
Victor Davis Hanson,
Basil Liddell Hart, Lloyd Lewis, and
John F. Marszalek for General Sherman owes much to what they see as an approach to the exigencies of modern armed conflict that was both effective and principled.
Postbellum service
In May 1865, after the major Confederate armies had surrendered, Sherman wrote in a personal letter:
railroads from attack by hostile Indians. In his campaigns against the Indian tribes, Sherman repeated his Civil War strategy by seeking not only to defeat the enemy's soldiers, but also to destroy the resources that allowed the enemy to sustain its warfare. The policies he implemented included the decimation of the
buffalo, which were the primary source of food for the
Plains Indians.
The attitude of the American government against the native Americans is all in Sherman’s own words, as reported by the
Independent Institute
:
In an 1867 letter to Grant, Sherman referred to his policy against the native Americans as “
the final solution to the Indian problem”. But later on, despite his harsh treatment of the warring tribes, Sherman spoke out against the unfair way speculators and government agents treated the natives within the
reservations.
On
July 25 1866, Congress created the rank of
General of the Army for Grant and then promoted Sherman to
lieutenant general. When Grant became
president in 1869, Sherman was appointed
Commanding General of the United States Army. After the death of
John A. Rawlins, Sherman also served for one month as interim
Secretary of War. His tenure as commanding general was marred by political difficulties, and from 1874 to 1876, he moved his headquarters to
St. Louis, Missouri in an attempt to escape from them. One of his significant contributions as head of the Army was the establishment of the Command School (now the
Command and General Staff College) at
Fort Leavenworth.
In 1875 Sherman published his memoirs in two volumes. According to critic
Edmund Wilson, Sherman
On
June 19 1879, Sherman delivered his famous "War Is Hell" speech to the graduating class of the
Michigan Military Academy and to the gathered crowd of more than 10,000: "There is many a boy here today who looks on war as all glory, but, boys, it's all hell."
Sherman stepped down as commanding general on
November 1 1883, and retired from the army on
February 8 1884. He lived most of the rest of his life in
New York City. He was devoted to the theater and to amateur painting and was much in demand as a colorful speaker at dinners and banquets, in which he indulged a fondness for quoting
Shakespeare. Sherman was proposed as a
Republican candidate for the
presidential election of 1884, but declined as emphatically as possible, saying, "If drafted, I won't run; if nominated, I won't accept; if elected, I won't serve." Such a categorical rejection of a candidacy is now referred to as a "
Shermanesque statement".
Autobiography and Memoirs
Around 1868, Sherman wrote (or at least began) a “private” recollection for his children about his life before the Civil War — identified now as his unpublished “Autobiography, 1828-1861.” This manuscript is held by the
Ohio Historical Society. Much of the material in it would eventually be incorporated in revised form in his memoirs.
In 1875, ten years after the end of the Civil War, Sherman became one of the first Civil War generals to publish a memoir. His
Memoirs of General William T. Sherman. By Himself, published by
D. Appleton & Company, took the form of two volumes, beginning in 1846 (when the Mexican War began) and ending with a chapter about the “military lessons of the [civil] war” (1875 edition:
Volume I;
Volume II ).
The memoirs were controversial, and sparked complaints from many quarters. Grant (serving as President when Sherman’s memoirs first appeared) later remarked that others had told him that Sherman treated Grant unfairly but “when I finished the book, I found I approved every word; that . . . it was a true book, an honorable book, creditable to Sherman, just to his companions — to myself particularly so — just such a book as I expected Sherman would write.”
In 1886, after the appearance of Grant’s own memoirs, Sherman brought out a “second edition, revised and corrected” of his memoirs with Appleton. The new edition added a second preface, a chapter about his life up to 1846, a chapter concerning the post-war period (ending with his 1884 retirement from the army), several appendices, portraits, improved maps, and an index (1886 edition:
Volume I,
Volume II). For the most part, Sherman refused to revise his original text on the ground that “I disclaim the character of historian, but assume to be a witness on the stand before the great tribunal of history” and “any witness who may disagree with me should publish his own version of [the] facts in the truthful narration of which he's interested." However, Sherman did add the appendices, in which he published the views of some others.
Subsequently, Sherman shifted to the publishing house of Charles L. Webster & Co., the publisher of Grant’s memoirs. The new publishing house brought out a “third edition, revised and corrected” in 1890. This difficult-to-find edition was substantively identical to the second (except for the probable omission of Sherman's short 1875 and 1886 prefaces).
Upon Sherman’s death in 1891, there were dueling new editions of his memoirs. His original publisher, Appleton, reissued the original (1875) edition of the memoirs with two new chapters about Sherman’s later years added by the journalist W. Fletcher Johnson (1891 Johnson edition:
Volume I,
Volume II). Meanwhile, Charles L. Webster & Co. issued a “fourth edition, revised, corrected, and complete” with the text of Sherman’s second edition, a new chapter prepared under the auspices of the Sherman family bringing the general’s life from his retirement to his death and funeral, and an appreciation by politician
James G. Blaine (a distant Sherman relative). Unfortunately, this edition omits Sherman’s prefaces to the 1875 and 1886 editions (1891 Blaine edition:
Volume I,
Volume II).
In 1904 and 1913, Sherman’s youngest son (Philemon Tecumseh Sherman) republished the memoirs, ironically with Appleton (not Charles L. Webster & Co.). This was designated as a “second edition, revised and corrected.” This edition contains Sherman’s two prefaces, his 1886 text, and the materials added in the 1891 Blaine edition. Thus, this virtually invisible edition of Sherman's memoirs is actually the most comprehensive version.
There are many modern editions of Sherman’s memoirs. The edition most useful for research purposes is the 1990 Library of America version, edited by Charles Royster. It contains the entire text of Sherman’s 1886 edition, together with annotations, a note on the text, and a detailed chronology of Sherman’s life. Missing from this edition, however, is the useful biographical material contained in the 1891 Johnson and Blaine editions.
Death and posterity
Sherman died in New York City. On
February 19 1891, there was a funeral service held at his home there, followed by a military procession. Sherman's body was then transported to St. Louis, where another service was conducted on
February 21 1891 at a local Catholic church. His son,
Thomas Ewing Sherman, a Jesuit priest, presided over his father's funeral mass. General
Joseph E. Johnston, the Confederate officer who had commanded the resistance to Sherman's troops in Georgia and the Carolinas, served as a
pallbearer in New York City. It was a bitterly cold day and a friend of Johnston, fearing that the general might become ill, asked him to put on his hat. Johnston famously replied: "If I were in [Sherman's] place, and he were standing in mine, he wouldn't put on his hat." Johnston did catch a serious cold and died one month later of pneumonia.
Sherman is buried in
Calvary Cemetery in St. Louis. Major memorials to Sherman include the gilded bronze equestrian statue by
Augustus Saint-Gaudens at the main entrance to
Central Park in New York City and
the major monument by Carl Rohl-Smith near
President's Park in
Washington, D.C. Other posthumous tributes include the naming of the
World War II M4 Sherman tank and the
"General Sherman" Giant Sequoia tree, the most massive documented single-trunk tree in the world.
Some of the artistic treatments of Sherman's march are the Civil War era song "
Marching Through Georgia" by
Henry Clay Work, the poem
"The March to the Sea" by
Herman Melville, the film
Sherman's March by
Ross McElwee, and
E. L. Doctorow's novel
The March. At the beginning of
Margaret Mitchell's novel
Gone with the Wind, first published in 1936, the fictional character
Rhett Butler warns a group of upper-class secessionists of the folly of war with the North in terms very reminiscent of those Sherman directed to David F. Boyd before leaving Louisiana. Sherman's invasion of Georgia later plays a central role in the plot of the novel.
Further Information
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