William Tecumseh Sherman
William Tecumseh Sherman (February 8, 1820 – February 14, 1891) was an American soldier, businessman, and author. He served as a general in the United States Army during the American Civil War (1861–1865), achieving both recognition for his outstanding command of military strategy, and criticism for the harshness of the "scorched earth" policies he implemented in conducting total war against the enemy. Military historian Liddell Hart famously declared that Sherman was "the first modern general."
Early life
Sherman was born in Lancaster, Ohio, near the shores of the Hockhocking River (now the Hocking). He was named Tecumseh after the famous chief of the Shawnee tribe against whom Sherman's grandfather had fought while serving under General (and later President) William Henry Harrison at the Battle of Tippecanoe. His younger brother John Sherman would later become a U.S. Senator and the sponsor of the Sherman Antitrust Act. His father, Judge Charles R. Sherman, died when Tecumseh was nine years old. Following this tragedy, Tecumseh Sherman was taken in and raised by a Lancaster neighbor and family friend, attorney Thomas Ewing, a prominent member of the Whig Party who served as a Senator from Ohio and as U.S. Secretary of the Interior. The name of William was bestowed upon him at this time when Ewing's wife, Maria, insisted Sherman be baptized Roman Catholic. Sherman never truly accepted "William", however, and friends and family always called him "Cump".
Ewing secured the appointment of the 16 year old Sherman as a cadet in the United States Military Academy at West Point, from which he graduated sixth in his class of 1840. He entered the Army as a second lieutenant in the 3rd U.S. Artillery and saw action in Florida in the fight against the Seminole tribe. During the Mexican War, Sherman performed administrative duties while stationed in California and received a brevet promotion to captain for his "meritorious service."
In 1850 Sherman married Thomas Ewing's daughter, Eleanor Boyle Ewing. Three years later he resigned his military commission and became president of a bank in San Francisco. Sherman's arrival in San Francisco was indicative of the turmoil of his time in the West: he survived not one but two shipwrecks and floated through the Golden Gate on the scraps of a foundering lumber schooner.[1] Sherman eventually found himself suffering from stress-related asthma thanks to the city's brutal financial climate.[2] 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."[3] 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. In 1859 he accepted a job as the superintendent of the Louisiana State Seminary of Learning and Military Academy, a position offered to him by two of his Army friends from the South: P.G.T. Beauregard and Braxton Bragg. Ironically, that institution later became Louisiana State University. Thus, the first president of what is now one of the most prestigious Southern universities was a Yankee general who would later be considered one of the most hated men in the South.
In January of 1861, just before the outbreak of the American Civil War, Sherman was required to accept receipt of arms surrendered by the U.S. Arsenal at Baton Rouge. He resigned his position 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 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.
Reaction to secession
On hearing of South Carolina's secession, Sherman presciently observed to a Southern friend before going north to serve in the Union Army:
- You people of the South don't know what you are doing. This country will be drenched in blood, and God only knows how it will end. It is all folly, madness, a crime against civilization! You people speak so lightly of war; you don't know what you're talking about. War is a terrible thing!
- You mistake, too, the people of the North. They are a peaceable people but an earnest people, and they will fight, too. They are not going to let this country be destroyed without a mighty effort to save it ...
- Besides, where are your men and appliances of war to contend against them? The North can make a steam engine, locomotive, or railway car; hardly a yard of cloth or pair of shoes can you make. You are rushing into war with one of the most powerful, ingeniously mechanical, and determined people on Earth -- right at your doors.
- You are bound to fail. Only in your spirit and determination are you prepared for war. In all else you are totally unprepared, with a bad cause to start with. At first you will make headway, but as your limited resources begin to fail, shut out from the markets of Europe as you will be, your cause will begin to wane. If your people will but stop and think, they must see in the end that you will surely fail.
Civil War
Beauregard and Bragg both became Confederate generals. Sherman accepted a commission as a colonel in the 13th U.S. Infantry regiment on May 14, 1861. He was one of the few Union officers to distinguish themselves at the First Battle of Bull Run on July 21, 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 to request that President Abraham Lincoln relieve him of independent command, which Lincoln refused to do, promoting him instead to brigadier general (effective May 17, which gave him more senior rank than that of Ulysses S. Grant, his future commander). He was assigned to command the Department of the Cumberland in Louisville, Kentucky.
Breakdown and Shiloh
During his time in Louisville, Sherman went through a personal crisis that would today be described as a "nervous breakdown". At a time when Sherman was probably working too hard, as well as drinking and smoking too much, he suffered from a personal collapse that made it necessary for him to go home to Ohio to recuperate, being replaced in his command by Don Carlos Buell. He quickly returned to service under Henry W. Halleck and just six months later fought as a division commander under Grant at the Battle of Shiloh on April 6–7, 1862. Despite bearing the brunt of the initial surprise Confederate attack, he rallied his division and prevented a disastrous defeat. He was wounded in the hand during the battle and had four horses shot from under him. He was promoted to major general of volunteers, effective May 1.
Vicksburg and Chattanooga
Sherman developed close personal ties to Grant during the two years they served together. At one point, not long after Shiloh, Sherman persuaded Grant not to resign from the army, despite the serious difficulties he was having with his commander, General Halleck. The careers of both officers ascended considerably after that time.
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 Bluffs, just north of Vicksburg. During the Vicksburg Campaign in the spring of 1863, Sherman performed well under Grant's supervision. During the Battle of Chattanooga in November, Sherman's troops took Billy Goat Hill but failed to take Tunnel Hill on the Confederate right flank on Missionary Ridge.
Despite this mixed record, Sherman enjoyed Grant's confidence and friendship. In later years Sherman said simply, "Grant stood by me when I was crazy, and I stood by him when he was drunk. Now we stand by each other always."
Total warfare
When Lincoln called Grant east in the spring of 1864 to take command of all Union armies, Grant appointed Sherman his successor as commander of the Western Theater of the war. Sherman's siege and capture of Atlanta, Georgia (see Atlanta Campaign) and the subsequent March to the Sea from Atlanta to Savannah in the autumn of 1864 made a great contribution to Abraham Lincoln's re-election as president and the successful conclusion of the war. Upon Sherman's departure Lincoln said, "I know what hole he went in but I don't know which one he will come out." He captured Savannah on December 21, telegraphing to Lincoln that he was presenting it to him as a Christmas present. In the spring of 1865 his army proceeded north through South Carolina, burning the state capital of Columbia, and he accepted the surrender of Confederate General Joseph E. Johnston's army at Bennett Place in Durham, North Carolina in April.
Sherman's military legacy is based on his masterful strategies rather than his tactical prowess. (His tactical record was mixed at best. He was critically surprised at Shiloh, suffered defeat at Chickasaw Bluffs in the Vicksburg campaign, assaulted unsuccessfully at Missionary Ridge, and suffered terrible casualties in his futile frontal assault at Kennesaw Mountain.) One aspect of his strategic success was his employment of maneuver warfare, such as his series of turning movements against Joseph E. Johnston in the Atlanta campaign. However, his strategy of total warfare (endorsed by Grant and Lincoln) has been controversial.
Sherman was convinced that the Confederacy's ability to wage further war had to be definitively crushed if the fighting was to end. Therefore, he believed that the North had to employ scorched earth tactics to destroy the economic and military backbone of the enemy. Sherman's advance through Georgia and the Carolinas was characterized by widespread destruction of civilian supplies and infrastructure, and sometimes accompanied by looting; although officially forbidden, historians disagree as to how well enforced this position was. This was, indeed, the point—to destroy the will and ability of the South to make war. The speed and efficiency of the destruction by Sherman's army was incredible, especially that of the railroads, where a tactic for bending rails around trees, 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. Many Southerners reviled him for ransacking their homes and economy, while slaves called him a liberator for freeing them. Neither of these claims tell the whole truth. The damage done by Sherman was almost entirely limited to property destruction—particularly property that could aid the Confederate war effort. Sherman claimed he and his men had, in Georgia alone, caused $100,000,000 in damages. The loss of life (especially civilian life) was remarkably minimal, especially when considering the size of his two-pronged army advance through the area (60,000 plus troops, in an advance that was 60 miles wide and 300 miles long). His army suffered approximately 100 dead and 700 wounded. This was always Sherman's goal and several of his Southern contemporaries noted this fact and commented on it. The slave issue was also not clear cut. He disapproved of chattel slavery and his actions did free many slaves from bondage, but he, like many of his time, was not a believer in "Negro equality".
Postbellum service
In 1866, Sherman was promoted to Grant's rank of lieutenant general and when Grant became president in 1869, Sherman was promoted to full general and served as commander-in-chief of the U.S. Army until his retirement in 1884. For one month in 1869 he served as the interim Secretary of War, following the death of John A. Rawlins. His tenure as the commanding general was marred by political difficulties and from 1874 to 1876 he moved his headquarters to St. Louis to 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 his various Army 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. Despite his harsh treatment of the warring Indian tribes, Sherman spoke out against government agents who treated the natives unfairly within the reservations.
In 1875 Sherman published his two-volume memoirs, a minor classic, marked by a forceful, lucid style, and the strong opinions for which Sherman has become famous. This was only one work in his prolific writing career, which include:
- General Sherman's Official Account of His Great March to Georgia and the Carolinas, from His Departure from Chattanooga to the Surrender of General Joseph E. Johnston and Confederate Forces under His Command (1865)
- Memoirs of General William T. Sherman, Written by Himself (1875)
- Home Letters of General Sherman (posthumous, 1909)
- General W. T. Sherman as College President: A Collection of Letters, Documents, and Other Material, Chiefly from Private Sources, Relating to the Life and Activities of General William Tecumseh Sherman, to the Early Years of Louisiana State University, and the Stirring Conditions Existing in the South on the Eve of the Civil War (posthumous, 1912)
- Sherman at War (posthumous, 1992)
- Sherman's Civil War: Selected Correspondence of William T. Sherman, 1860 – 1865 (posthumous, 1999)
- Reports of Inspection Made in the Summer of 1877 by Generals P. H. Sheridan and W. T. Sherman of Country North of the Union Pacific Railroad (co-author, 1878)
- The Sherman Letters: Correspondence between General and Senator Sherman from 1837 to 1891 (posthumous, 1894)
- The William Tecumseh Sherman Family Letters (posthumous, 1967)
After retiring from the army in 1884, Sherman lived most of the rest of his life in New York City. He was devoted to the theater and was much in demand as a colorful speaker at dinners and banquets. He was proposed by some Democrats as a possible presidential candidate for the election of 1884, but declined as emphatically as possible, saying, "If nominated I will not run; if elected I will not serve." Such a categorical rejection of a candidacy is now referred to as a "Sherman Statement."
Death
Sherman died in New York City, where he is memorialized by an equestrian statue created by Augustus Saint-Gaudens and located the southeast entrance to Central Park. He is buried in Calvary Cemetery in St. Louis, Missouri.
General Joseph E. Johnston, the Confederate officer who had commanded the resistance to Sherman's troops as they marched through Georgia and South Carolina, served as a pallbearer at Sherman's funeral. It was a bitterly cold day in February, 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 would not put on his hat." Johnston did catch a serious cold, and died soon afterwards.
Posterity
The World War II M4 Sherman tank was named in his honor.
Notes
- ^ Sherman, William Tecumseh, Memoirs of General William T. Sherman 2nd ed. (New York: D. Appleton and Company, 1913 (1875), Vol. 1, pp. 125-129.
- ^ Ibid., pp. 131-134, 166.
- ^ Quoted in Royster, Charles, The Destructive War: William Tecumseh Sherman, Stonewall Jackson, and the Americans Alfred A. Knopf, 1991, pp. 133-134.
References
- Eicher, John H., & Eicher, David J., Civil War High Commands, Stanford University Press, 2001, ISBN 0-8047-3641-3.
- Warner, Ezra J., Generals in Blue: Lives of the Union Commanders, Louisiana State University Press, 1964, ISBN 0-8071-0882-7.
- Hanson, Victor D., The Soul of Battle, Anchor Books, 1999, ISBN 0-385-72059-9.
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