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William Tecumseh Sherman General Sherman redirects here. For information on the tree named after this person, see General Sherman tree. (February 8, 1820 – February 14, 1891) was an American soldier, businessman, educator, and author. He served as a general in the United States Army during the American Civil War (1861–65), receiving 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 Basil Liddell Hart famously declared that Sherman was "the first modern general."span

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

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. His father, Charles Robert Sherman, was a successful lawyer who sat on the Ohio Supreme Court. Judge Sherman died unexpectedly in 1829, leaving his widow, Mary Hoyt Sherman, with eleven children and no inheritance. Following this tragedy, the nine-year old Tecumseh 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 Senator for Ohio and as the first Secretary of the Interior.

Ewing's wife, Maria, insisted that Sherman be baptized Roman Catholic. On that occasion a Dominican priest bestowed upon him the name of William (chosen because the baptism occurred on June 25, the feast day of Saint William of Vercelli). Sherman's own family was Episcopalian and he never became a fully practicing Catholic. He also never completely accepted the name William and friends and family always called him "Cump".span His younger brother, John Sherman, would become a U.S. Senator and the sponsor of the Sherman Antitrust Act.

Senator 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 in 1840, sixth in his class. He entered the Army as a second lieutenant in the 3rd U.S. Artillery and saw action in Florida in the Second Seminole War against the Seminole tribe. While many of his colleagues participated in the Mexican War, Sherman performed administrative duties while stationed in California. He earned a brevet promotion to captain for his "meritorious service", but his lack a combat assignment discouraged him and may have contributed to his decision to resign his commission. Sherman would later become one of the relatively few high-ranking officers in the Civil War who had not fought in Mexico.

In 1850 Sherman married Thomas Ewing's daughter, Eleanor Boyle ("Ellen") Ewing. Ellen was a devout Catholic and the Shermans' eight children were raised in that faith. To Sherman's great displeasure, one of his sons, Thomas Ewing Sherman, was ordained as a Jesuit priest in 1879. Thomas would preside over his father's funeral mass in 1891.

In 1853, Sherman resigned his military commission and became president of a bank in San Francisco. He reached San Francisco at a time of great turmoil in the West (see California Gold Rush). He survived two shipwrecks and floated through the Golden Gate on the scraps of a foundering lumber schooner.span Sherman eventually found himself suffering from stress-related asthma due to the city's brutal financial climate.span 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."span 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 Sherman accepted a job as the first 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. That institution later became Louisiana State University.

In January 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."span 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.

On hearing of South Carolina's secession, Sherman presciently observed to a Southern friend:

dlYou 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.

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 himself 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.

During his time in Louisville, in the fall of 1861, Sherman went through a personal crisis that would probably be described today either as a nervous breakdown or a bout of clinical depression. At a time when he was probably overworked and despondent about the outlook of the war, he suffered a personal collapse that made it necessary for him to return to Ohio to recuperate, being replaced in his command by Don Carlos Buell. 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."span However, Sherman quickly recovered and 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.

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. 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. During the Battle of Chattanooga in November, Sherman, now in command of the Army of the Tennessee, took Billy Goat Hill, but failed to take Tunnel Hill on the Confederate right flank on Missionary Ridge. This failure, which Grant and Sherman blamed on incorrect maps, 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.

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."span

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. 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 against Johnston only at the disastrous Battle of Kennesaw Mountain. 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.

Sherman's Atlanta Campaign concluded successfully on September 1, 1864, with the capture of the city of Atlanta, an accomplishment that made Sherman a household name in the North and contributed decisively to Abraham Lincoln's presidential re-election in November. Sherman cooly dismissed the impact of Gen. Hood's attacks against his supply lines after Atlanta and sent George Thomas to defeat him in the Franklin-Nashville Campaign. Meanwhile, declaring that he could "make Georgia howl"span , Sherman marched with 62,000 men to the port of Savannah, living off the land and causing, by his own estimate, more than $100 million in property damage.span At the end of this campaign, known as Sherman's March to the Sea, his troops captured Savannah on December 22. 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.span

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 had 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."span

Sherman captured the state capital of Columbia 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. Sherman proceeded to march through North Carolina, where his troops did little damage to the civilian infrastructure.

Shortly after his victory over Johnston's troops at the Battle of Bentonville, 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 terms that dealt with both political and military issues, despite having no authorization to do so from General Grant or the United States government. The government in Washington D.C. refused to honor the terms agreed to by Sherman and Johnston, a circumstance that precipitated a long-lasting feud between Sherman and Secretary of War Edwin M. Stanton. Confusion over this issue lasted until April 26, 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.span

Sherman disapproved of chattel slavery, but he was not an abolitionist before the war and, like many of his time and background, he did not believe in "Negro equality."span His military campaigns of 1864 and 1865 freed many slaves, who greeted him "as a second Moses or Aaron"span and joined his marches through Georgia and the Carolinas in great numbers. On January 16, 1865, Sherman issued his Special Field Orders, No. 15, which provided for the settlement of 40,000 freed slaves and black refugees on land expropriated from white landowners in South Carolina, Georgia, and Florida. These orders, which became the basis of the claim that the Union government had promised freed slaves "40 acres and a mule," were revoked the following fall by President Andrew Johnson.

General Sherman's record as a tactician was mixed and his military legacy rests largely 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 demostranted by his series of turning movements against Johnston during the Atlanta Campaign. However, 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 was convinced that the Confederacy's strategic, economic, and psychological ability to wage further war had to be definitively crushed if the fighting was 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.

Sherman's advance through Georgia and South Carolina was characterized by widespread destruction of civilian supplies and infrastructure, and sometimes accompanied by looting; although officially forbidden, historians disagree on how well this regulation was enforced.span 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 property destruction. Though exact figures are not available, the loss of civilian life appears to have been very small.span Destruction of property and infrastructure was Sherman's stated goal 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 that if the scorched earth strategy served "to paralyze their husbands and fathers who are fighting ... it is mercy in the end."span

The severity of the destructive acts by Union troops was significantly greater in South Carolina than in either 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."span 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

dlthe fullest and most dispassionate study of this controversy blames all parties in varying proportions—including the Confederate authorities for the disorder that characterized the evacuation of Columbia, leaving thousands of cotton bales on the streets (some of them burning) and huge quantities of liquor undestroyed ... Sherman did not deliberately burn Columbia; a majority of Union soldiers, including the general himself, worked through the night to put out the fires.

In 1866, Congress created the rank of general of the army for Grant and promoted Sherman to lieutenant general. When Grant became president in 1869, Sherman became the commanding general of the U.S. Army. He served in that capacity until his retirement in 1883. For one month in 1869 he was interim Secretary of War, following the death of John A. Rawlins. His tenure as 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. The policies he implemented in this regard included the decimation of the buffalo, which were the primary source of food for the Plains Indians.span 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 , and the strong opinions for which Sherman has become famous. In June 19, 1879, he 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:

dlI confess without shame that I am tired and sick of war. Its glory is all moonshine. Even success the most brilliant is over dead and mangled bodies, the anguish and lamentations of distant families appealing to me for missing sons, husbands, and fathers. It is only those who have not heard a shot nor the shrieks and groans of the wounded and lacerated that cry aloud for more blood, more vengeance, more desolation.

After retiring from the army in 1883, 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 much in demand as a colorful speaker at dinners and banquets, in which he indulged a fondness for quoting Shakespeare.span Sherman was proposed as a Republican candidate for the presidential 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."

Sherman died in New York City, where he is memorialized by an equestrian statue 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 in Georgia and the Carolinas, 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 ten days later of pneumonia. span

Posthumous tributes to Sherman include the naming of the World War II M4 Sherman tank, Sherman Street and Sherman Elementary School in San Francisco, and the "General Sherman" redwood tree, the largest documented tree in the world.

Some artistic treatments of Sherman's march include the Civil War era song 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 CommandReports of Inspection Made in the Summer of 1877 by Generals P. H. Sheridan and W. T. Sherman of Country North of the Union Pacific RailroadGeneral 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 WarMarching with Sherman: Passages from the Letters and Campaign Diaries of Henry Hitchcock, Major and Assistant Adjutant General of Volunteers, November 1864 – May 1865, ed. M.A. DeWolfe Howe, Yale University Press, 1927. Reprinted in 1995 by the University of Nebraska Press, ISBN 0-8032-7276-6., pp. 794-795, and letter by W.T. Sherman to John Sherman, Aug. 1865, quoted in Liddell Hart, p. 406. There is some controversy over whether the speech actually contained the words "war is hell," commonly attributed to Sherman. For the text quoted see Liddell Hart, p. 402.William Tecumseh Sherman, from the Virtual Museum of the City of San Francisco, concentrates on Sherman's time in CaliforniaGeneral William Tecumseh Sherman, from About North Georgia, concentrates on Sherman's time in Georgia