William Tecumseh Sherman

William Tecumseh Sherman ( tih-KUM-sə; February 8, 1820 – February 14, 1891) was an American businessman, author, and United States Army general in the Union army during the American Civil War (1861–1865). As a general he earned recognition for his command of military strategy but criticism for the harshness of his scorched-earth policies, which he implemented in his military campaign against the Confederate States.

Born in Lancaster, Ohio, into a politically prominent family, Sherman graduated in 1840 from the United States Military Academy in West Point. In 1853, he interrupted his military career to pursue private business ventures, without much success. In 1859, he became superintendent of the Louisiana State Seminary of Learning & Military Academy, now Louisiana State University, but resigned when Louisiana seceded from the Union. Sherman commanded a brigade of volunteers at the First Battle of Bull Run in 1861, and then was transferred to the western theater. He was stationed in Kentucky, where his pessimism about the outlook of the war led to a breakdown that required him to be briefly put on leave. He recovered and forged a close partnership with General Ulysses S. Grant. Sherman served under Grant in 1862 and 1863 in the Battle of Fort Henry and the Battle of Fort Donelson, the Battle of Shiloh, the campaigns that led to the fall of the Confederate stronghold of Vicksburg on the Mississippi River, and the Chattanooga campaign, which culminated with the routing of the Confederate armies in the state of Tennessee.

In 1864, when Grant went east to serve as the General-in-Chief of the Union Armies, Sherman succeeded him as the commander in the western theater. He led the capture of the strategic city of Atlanta, a military success that contributed to the re-election of President Abraham Lincoln. Sherman's subsequent famous "March to the Sea" through Georgia and the Carolinas involved little fighting but large-scale destruction of military and civilian infrastructure, a systematic policy intended to undermine the ability and willingness of the Confederacy to continue fighting. Sherman accepted the surrender of all the Confederate armies in the Carolinas, Georgia, and Florida in April 1865, but the terms that he negotiated were considered too generous by U.S. Secretary of War Edwin Stanton, who ordered General Grant to modify them.

When Grant became President of the United States in March 1869, Sherman succeeded him as Commanding General of the Army. Sherman served in that capacity from 1869 until 1883 and was responsible for the U.S. Army's engagement in the Indian Wars, in which he used "hard-war" tactics similar to those he had employed in the Civil War. He steadfastly refused to be drawn into party politics. In 1875, he published his memoirs, which became one of the best-known first-hand accounts of the Civil War.

Sherman was born in 1820 in Lancaster, Ohio, near the banks of the Hocking River. His father, Charles Robert Sherman, a lawyer who was a justice on the Ohio Supreme Court, died unexpectedly of typhoid fever in 1829. His widow, Mary Hoyt Sherman, remained with eleven children and no inheritance. Nine-year-old Sherman was raised by a Lancaster neighbor and family friend, attorney Thomas Ewing. Ewing was a prominent member of the Whig Party who became U.S. senator for Ohio and the first Secretary of the Interior. Sherman was a fifth cousin three times removed of US founding father Roger Sherman.

Sherman's older brother Charles Taylor Sherman became a federal judge. One of his younger brothers, John Sherman, was one of the founders of the Republican Party and served as a U.S. representative, 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 was a defense attorney in the military trials of the Lincoln conspirators. Sherman's niece, Euthanasia Sherman Meade, was a pioneering woman physician in California.

Sherman's unusual given name has always attracted attention. One 19th-century source, for example, states that "General Sherman, we believe, is the only eminent American named from an Indian chief". According to Sherman's Memoirs, he was named William Tecumseh because his father had "caught a fancy for the great chief of the Shawnees, 'Tecumseh'". However, Lloyd Lewis's 1932 biography claimed that Sherman was originally named only Tecumseh and that he acquired the name William at the age of nine or ten, when he was baptized as a Catholic at the behest of his foster family. According to Lewis's account, which was repeated by later authors, Sherman was baptized in the Ewing home by a Dominican priest who found the pagan name Tecumseh unsuitable and instead named the child William after the saint on whose feast day the baptism took place. Sherman had already been baptized as an infant by a Presbyterian minister and recent biographers believe, contrary to Lewis's claims, that he was probably given the first name William at that time. As an adult, Sherman signed all his correspondence, including to his wife, "W. T. Sherman". His friends and family called him Cump.

Senator Ewing secured an appointment for the 16-year-old Sherman as a cadet in the United States Military Academy at West Point. Sherman roomed with and befriended another important future Civil War general for the Union, George Henry Thomas. Sherman excelled academically at West Point, but he treated the demerit system with indifference. 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". About his time at West Point, Sherman says only the following in his Memoirs:

At the Academy I was not considered a good soldier, for at no time was I selected for any office, but remained a private throughout the whole four years. Then, as now, neatness in dress and form, with a strict conformity to the rules, were the qualifications required for office, and I suppose I was found not to excel in any of these. In studies I always held a respectable reputation with the professors, and generally ranked among the best, especially in drawing, chemistry, mathematics, and natural philosophy. My average demerits, per annum, were about one hundred and fifty, which reduced my final class standing from number four to six.

Sherman was first commissioned as colonel of the 13th U.S. Infantry Regiment, effective May 14, 1861. This was a new regiment yet to be raised. In fact, Sherman's first command was a brigade of three-month volunteers who fought in the First Battle of Bull Run on July 21, 1861. It was one of the four brigades in the division commanded by General Daniel Tyler, which was in turn one of the five divisions in the Army of Northeastern Virginia under General Irvin McDowell.

The engagement at Bull Run was a disastrous defeat for the Union, dashing hopes for a rapid resolution of the conflict. Sherman was one of the few Union officers to distinguish himself in the field and historian Donald L. Miller has characterized Sherman's performance at Bull Run as "exemplary". During the fighting, Sherman was grazed by bullets in the knee and shoulder. According to British military historian Brian Holden-Reid, "if Sherman had committed tactical errors during the attack, he more than compensated for these during the subsequent retreat". Holden-Reid also concluded that Sherman "might have been as unseasoned as the men he commanded, but he had not fallen prey to the naïve illusions nursed by so many on the field of First Bull Run."

The outcome at Bull Run caused Sherman to question his own judgment as an officer and the capabilities of his volunteer troops. However, Sherman impressed Lincoln during the President's visit to the troops on July 23, and Lincoln promoted Sherman to brigadier general of volunteers effective May 17, 1861. This made Sherman senior in rank to Ulysses S. Grant, his future commander. Sherman was then assigned to serve under Robert Anderson in the Department of the Cumberland, in Louisville, Kentucky. In October, Sherman succeeded Anderson in command of that department. In his memoirs, Sherman would later write that he saw that new assignment as breaking a promise by President Lincoln that he would not be given such a prominent leadership position.

Having succeeded Anderson at Louisville, Sherman now had principal military responsibility for Kentucky, a border state in which the Confederates held Columbus and Bowling Green, and were also present near the Cumberland Gap. He became exceedingly pessimistic about the outlook for his command and he complained frequently to Washington about shortages, while providing exaggerated estimates of the strength of the rebel forces and requesting inordinate numbers of reinforcements. Critical press reports about Sherman began to appear after the U.S. Secretary of War, Simon Cameron, visited Louisville in October 1861. In early November, Sherman asked to be relieved of his command. He was promptly replaced by Don Carlos Buell and transferred to St. Louis. In December, he was put on leave by Henry W. Halleck, commander of the Department of the Missouri, who found him unfit for duty and sent him to Lancaster, 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". In his private correspondence, Sherman later wrote that the concerns of command "broke me down" and admitted to having contemplated suicide. His problems were compounded when the Cincinnati Commercial described him as "insane".

By mid-December 1861 Sherman had recovered sufficiently to return to service under Halleck in the Department of the Missouri. In March, Halleck's command was redesignated the Department of the Mississippi and enlarged to unify command in the West. Sherman's initial assignments were rear-echelon commands, first of an instructional barracks near St. Louis and then in command of the District of Cairo. Operating from Paducah, Kentucky, he provided logistical support for the operations of Grant to capture Fort Donelson in February 1862. Grant, the previous commander of the District of Cairo, had just won a major victory at Fort Henry and been given command of the ill-defined District of West Tennessee. Although Sherman was technically the senior officer, he wrote to Grant, "I feel anxious about you as I know the great facilities [the Confederates] have of concentration by means of the River and R[ail] Road, but [I] have faith in you—Command me in any way."

Sherman was not an abolitionist before the war and, like others of his time and background, he did not believe in "Negro equality". Before the war, Sherman expressed some sympathy with the view of Southern whites that the black race was benefiting from slavery, although he opposed breaking up slave families and advocated that laws forbidding the education of slaves be repealed. Throughout the Civil War, Sherman declined to employ black troops in his armies.

In his Memoirs, Sherman commented on the political pressures of 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 rejected this, arguing that it would have delayed the "successful end" of the war and the "[liberation of] all slaves". According to Sherman:

My aim then was to whip the rebels, to humble their pride, to follow them to their inmost recesses, and make them fear and dread us. "Fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom." I did not want them to cast in our teeth what General Hood had once done at Atlanta, that we had to call on their slaves to help us to subdue them.

Tens of thousands of escaped slaves nonetheless joined Sherman's marches through Georgia and the Carolinas as refugees. Their fate soon became a pressing military and political issue. Some abolitionists accused Sherman of doing too little to alleviate the precarious living conditions of these refugees, motivating Secretary of War Stanton to travel to Georgia in January 1865 to investigate the situation. On January 12, Sherman and Stanton met in Savannah with twenty local black leaders, most of them Baptist or Methodist ministers, invited by Sherman. According to historian Eric Foner, "the 'Colloquy' between Sherman, Stanton, and the black leaders offered a rare lens through which the experience of slavery and the aspirations that would help to shape Reconstruction came into sharp focus."

After Sherman's departure the spokesman for the black leaders, Baptist minister Garrison Frazier, declared in response to Stanton's inquiry about the feelings of the black community:

Sherman's 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 B. H. Liddell Hart ranked Sherman as "the first modern general" and 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's views on the historical significance of Sherman have since been discussed and, to varying extents, defended by subsequent military scholars such as Jay Luvaas, Victor Davis Hanson, and Brian Holden-Reid.

Liddell Hart credited Sherman with mastery of maneuver warfare, also known as the "indirect approach". In maneuver warfare, a commander seeks to defeat the enemy on the battleground through shock, disruption, and surprise, while minimizing frontal attacks on well-defended positions. According to Liddell Hart, this strategy was most clearly illustrated by Sherman's series of turning movements against Johnston during the Atlanta campaign. Liddell Hart also declared that the study of Sherman's campaigns had contributed significantly to his own "theory of strategy and tactics in mechanized warfare", and claimed that this had in turn influenced Heinz Guderian's doctrine of Blitzkrieg and Rommel's use of tanks during the Second World War. Another World War II-era student of Liddell Hart's writings on Sherman was General George S. Patton, who "spent a long vacation studying Sherman's campaigns on the ground in Georgia and the Carolinas, with the aid of [Liddell Hart's] book" and later "carried out his [bold] plans, in super-Sherman style".

Like Grant and Lincoln, Sherman was convinced that the Confederacy's strategic, economic, and psychological ability to wage further war needed to be crushed if the fighting were to end. Therefore, he believed that the North had to conduct its campaign as a war of conquest, employing scorched earth tactics to break the backbone of the rebellion. Historian Mark Grimsley promoted the use of the term "hard war" to refer to this strategy in the context of the American Civil War. Sherman's advance through Georgia and the Carolinas was characterized by widespread destruction of civilian supplies and infrastructure. This strategy has been characterized by some military historians as an early form of total war, although the appropriateness of that term has been questioned by many scholars. Holden-Reid, for instance, argued that "the concept of 'total war' is deeply flawed, an imprecise label that at best describes the two world wars but is of dubious relevance to the U.S. Civil War."

After the fall of Atlanta in 1864, Sherman ordered the city's immediate 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 written 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 end the rebellion:

You cannot qualify war in harsher terms than I will. War is cruelty, and you cannot refine it; and those who brought war into our country deserve all the curses and maledictions a people can pour out. I know I had no hand in making this war, and I know I will make more sacrifices to-day than any of you to secure peace. But you cannot have peace and a division of our country. If the United States submits to a division now, it will not stop, but will go on until we reap the fate of Mexico, which is eternal war ... I want peace, and believe it can only be reached through union and war, and I will ever conduct war with a view to perfect and early success.

In May 1865, after the major Confederate armies had surrendered, Sherman wrote in a personal letter:

I confess, without shame, I am sick and tired of fighting—its glory is all moonshine; even success the most brilliant is over dead and mangled bodies, with the anguish and lamentations of distant families, appealing to me for sons, husbands and fathers ... tis only those who have never heard a shot, never heard the shriek and groans of the wounded and lacerated ... that cry aloud for more blood, more vengeance, more desolation.

In June 1865, two months after Lee's surrender at Appomattox, Sherman received his first postwar command, originally called the Military Division of the Mississippi, later the Military Division of the Missouri, which came to comprise the territory between the Mississippi River and the Rocky Mountains. Sherman's efforts in that position were focused on protecting the main wagon roads, such as the Oregon, Bozeman, and Santa Fe Trails. Tasked with guarding a vast territory with limited forces, Sherman grew weary of the multitude of requests for military protection addressed to him. On July 25, 1866, the U.S. Congress created the new rank of General of the Army for Grant, while also promoting Sherman to Grant's previous rank of lieutenant general.

There was little large-scale military action against the Indians during the first three years of Sherman's tenure as divisional commander, as Sherman allowed negotiations between the U.S. government and Indian leaders to proceed, while he built up his troops and awaited completion of the Union Pacific and Kansas Pacific Railroads. During this time, he was a member of the Indian Peace Commission. Though the commission was responsible for the negotiation of the Medicine Lodge Treaty and the Treaty of Fort Laramie, Sherman did not have a significant role in drafting those treaties because in both cases he was called away to Washington during the negotiations. In one instance, he was summoned to testify as a witness in the impeachment of Andrew Johnson. He testified in the trial on April 11 and 13, 1868. He successfully negotiated other treaties, such as the removal of Navajos from the Bosque Redondo to traditional lands in Western New Mexico.

When the Medicine Lodge Treaty failed in 1868, Sherman authorized his subordinate in Missouri, Major General Philip Sheridan, to lead the winter campaign of 1868–1869, which included the Battle of Washita River. Sheridan used hard-war tactics similar to those he and Sherman had employed in the Civil War. In 1871, Sherman ordered that the leaders of the Warren Wagon Train raid, an attack by a Kiowa and Comanche war party from which Sherman himself had narrowly escaped, be tried for murder in Jacksboro, Texas. The resulting trial of Satanta and Big Tree marked the first occasion in which Native American chiefs were tried by a civilian court in the United States.

Sherman lived most of the rest of his life in New York City. He was devoted to the theater and to amateur painting and was in demand as a colorful speaker at dinners and banquets, in which he indulged a fondness for quoting Shakespeare. During this period, he remained in contact with war veterans, and he was an active member of various social and charitable organizations.

Proposed as a Republican candidate for the presidential election of 1884, Sherman declined as emphatically as possible, saying, "I will not accept if nominated and will not serve if elected." Such a categorical rejection of a candidacy is now referred to as a "Shermanesque statement".

In 1886, after the publication of Grant's memoirs, Sherman produced a "second edition, revised and corrected" of his own memoirs. This new edition, published by Appleton, 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. 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 is interested". However, Sherman did include the views of some others in the appendices to the new edition.

Sherman died of pneumonia in New York City at 1:50 PM on February 14, 1891, six days after his 71st birthday. President Benjamin Harrison, who served under Sherman, sent a telegram to Sherman's family and ordered all national flags to be flown at half staff. Harrison, in a message to the Senate and the House of Representatives, wrote that:

He was an ideal soldier, and shared to the fullest the esprit de corps of the army, but he cherished the civil institutions organized under the Constitution, and was only a soldier that these might be perpetuated in undiminished usefulness and honor.

Sherman's birth family was Presbyterian and he was originally baptized as such. His foster mother, Maria Ewing, was devoutly Catholic and raised her own children in that faith. Sherman was re-baptized as a Catholic, but Maria's husband, Senator Thomas Ewing, insisted that the young Sherman not be compelled to practice Catholicism. Sherman observed but did not join in the religious ceremonies of the Ewing household. He later married his foster sister Ellen, who was also a devout Catholic. In 1864, she took up temporary residence in South Bend, Indiana, in order to have her young family educated at the University of Notre Dame and St. Mary's College, both Catholic institutions.

Sherman wrote to his wife in 1842: "I believe in good works rather than faith." In letters written in 1865 to Thomas, his eldest surviving son, General Sherman said "I don't want you to be a soldier or a priest, but a good useful man", and complained that Thomas's mother Ellen "thinks religion is so important that everything else must give way to it". Thomas's decision to abandon his career as a lawyer in 1878 to join the Jesuits and prepare for the Catholic priesthood caused Sherman profound distress, and he referred to it as a "great calamity". Father and son, however, were reconciled when Thomas returned to the United States in August 1880, after having travelled to England for his religious instruction.

Some modern historians have characterized Sherman as a deist in the manner of Thomas Jefferson, while others identify him as an agnostic who accepted many Christian values but lacked faith. Except during the personal crisis triggered by his son Thomas's decision to become a priest, Sherman's personal attitude toward the Catholic Church was tolerant and even friendly at a time when anti-Catholic prejudice was common in the United States. In 1888, Sherman wrote publicly that "my immediate family are strongly Catholic. I am not and cannot be." Upon Sherman's death, his son Thomas publicly declared: "My father was baptized in the Catholic Church, married in the Catholic Church, and attended the Catholic Church until the outbreak of the civil war. Since that time he has not been a communicant of any church."