Historian Mark Grimsley promoted the use of the term "hard war" to refer to this strategy in the context of the U.S. Civil War. He had at least 2 daughters with Elizabeth Bell Dyer. [156][157] Also present at the City Point conference was Rear Admiral David Dixon Porter. [261], In 1886, after the publication of Grant's memoirs, Sherman produced a "second edition, revised and corrected" of his own memoirs. [118], After Chattanooga, Sherman led a column to relieve Union forces under Ambrose Burnside thought to be in peril at Knoxville. [81][82] He was promptly replaced by Don Carlos Buell and transferred to St. Louis. However, Sherman had proceeded without authority from Grant, the newly installed President Andrew Johnson, or the Cabinet. On November 25, Sherman took his assigned target of Billy Goat Hill at the north end of the ridge, only to find that it was separated from the main spine by a rock-strewn ravine. "[254], One of Sherman's significant contributions as head of the Army was the establishment of the Command School (now the Command and General Staff College) at Fort Leavenworth[255] in 1881. The documentary's title refers to U.S. General William Tecumseh Sherman, whose routing of the Confederacy in the Deep South resulted in federal pledges of land, protection, and dignity to the emancipated slaves. Boyd later recalled witnessing that, when news of South Carolina's secession from the United States reached them at the Seminary, "Sherman burst out crying, and began, in his nervous way, pacing the floor and deprecating the step which he feared might bring destruction on the whole country. Sherman then became the military governor of occupied Memphis. [305] Arlington National Cemetery features a smaller version of Saint-Gaudens's statue of Victory. [236], Displacement of the Plains Indians was facilitated by the growth of the railroads and the eradication of the bison. William Tecumseh Sherman (1820-1891) 2. 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. He interrupted his military career in 1853 to pursue private business ventures, without much success. The William Tecumseh Sherman Family Papers, as they were deposited in the University of Notre Dame Archives by Miss Eleanor Sherman Fitch, the granddaughter of General Sherman, prior to her death in 1959, consisted of correspondence, clippings, photographs, scrapbooks, diaries, various legal papers and documents, cancelled checks, bankbooks . [304] Sherman is represented astride his horse Ontario and led by a winged female figure of Victory. At the White House, Sherman met with Abraham Lincoln a few days after his inauguration as president of the United States. [13], Sherman's older brother Charles Taylor Sherman became a federal judge. 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. All other "editions" of Sherman's memoirs are re-printings of the 1889 or, in some cases, the 1875 edition. ", Sherman to Grant, February 15, 1862, Papers of Ulysses S. Grant 4:216n, Sherman to Grant, December 28, 1866, Papers of Ulysses S. Grant 16:422. [67] While trying to hold himself aloof from politics, he observed first-hand the efforts of Congressman Frank Blair, who later served under Sherman in the U.S. Army, to keep Missouri in the Union. [253] On April 11, 1880, he addressed a crowd of more than 10,000 in Columbus, Ohio: "There is many a boy here today who looks on war as all glory, but, boys, it is all hell. [33] Sherman and Halleck lived in a house in Monterey, now known as the "Sherman Quarters", from 1847 to 1849. 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". 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". "Fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom." [237][238] Sherman encouraged bison hunting by private citizens and, when Congress passed a law in 1874 to protect the bison from over-hunting, Sherman helped convince President Grant to use a pocket veto to prevent it from coming into force. [176] Their fate soon became a pressing military and political issue. Grant may have had to intervene to save Sherman from dismissal for having overstepped his authority. This helped ensure that the Mississippi River would remain in Union hands for the remainder of the war. [40] Even though he earned a brevet promotion to captain in 1848 for his "meritorious service", his lack of combat experience and relatively slow advancement within the army discouraged him. Still, if he muffed his Vicksburg assignment, which had begun unfavorably, he would rise no higher. [155], In late March, Sherman briefly left his forces and traveled to City Point, Virginia, to confer with Grant. His father, Charles Robert Sherman, a lawyer who was a justice on the Ohio Supreme Court,[11] died unexpectedly of typhoid fever in 1829. [34] In June 1848, Sherman accompanied the military governor of California, Col. Richard Barnes Mason, to inspect the gold mines at Sutter's Fort. [29] During that voyage, Sherman grew close to Ord and especially to the intellectually distinguished Halleck. Lincoln happened to be at City Point at the same time, making possible the only three-way meeting of Lincoln, Grant, and Sherman during the war. "[60] In what some authors have seen as an accurate prophecy of the conflict that would engulf the United States during the next four years,[61][62] Boyd recalled Sherman declaring: You people of the South don't know what you are doing. You are bound to fail. William Tecumseh Sherman (1854-1863) 2. His father died when he was nine years old, and Sherman was raised by Senator Thomas Ewing and eventually married into the fam The North can make a steam engine, locomotive, or railway car; hardly a yard of cloth or pair of shoes can you make. He served as a general in the Union Army during the American Civil War (18611865), achieving recognition for his command of military strategy as well as criticism for the harshness of the scorched-earth policies that he implemented against the Confederate States. Schofield. Contents 1 Early life 1.1 Sherman's given names 1.2 Military training and service 1.3 Marriage and business career 1.4 Military college superintendent 1.5 St. Louis interlude 2 Civil War service 2.1 First commissions and Bull Run 2.2 Kentucky and breakdown 2.3 Shiloh 2.4 Vicksburg 2.5 Chattanooga 2.6 Atlanta 2.7 March to the Sea He passed away on 5 August 1939 in Greenwood County, Kansas, United States of America. [126] He conducted a series of flanking maneuvers through rugged terrain against Confederate general Joseph E. Johnston's Army of Tennessee, attempting a direct assault only at the Battle of Kennesaw Mountain. [24] 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". The Confederate victory at Kennesaw Mountain did little to halt Sherman's advance towards Atlanta. [211] One of Sherman's tactics was to destroy the railways by pulling up the rails, heating them over a bonfire, and twisting them to leave behind what came to known as "Sherman's neckties". The site was chosen because Sherman was reported to have stood there while reviewing returning Civil War troops in May 1865. [10], Sherman was born in 1820 in Lancaster, Ohio, near the banks of the Hocking River. I am not and cannot be. At Shiloh, he may have wished to avoid appearing overly alarmed in order to escape the kind of criticism he had received in Kentucky. Eventually, Sherman won approval from his superiors for a plan to cut loose from his communications and march south, having advised Grant that he could "make Georgia howl". [87] Operating from Paducah, Kentucky, he provided logistical support for the operations of Grant to capture Fort Donelson in February 1862. [235] In 1873, Sherman wrote in a private letter that "during an assault, the soldiers can not pause to distinguish between male and female, or even discriminate as to age. In 1859, he became superintendent of the Louisiana State Seminary of Learning & Military Academy (now Louisiana State University), a position from which he resigned when Louisiana seceded from the Union. This meeting was memorialized in G. P. A. Healy's painting The Peacemakers. Four or more generations of descendants of William Tecumseh Sherman (1820-1891) if they are properly linked: 1. [178] On January 12, Sherman and Stanton met in Savannah with twenty local black leaders, most of them Baptist or Methodist ministers, invited by Sherman. He steadfastly refused to be drawn into party politics and in 1875 published his memoirs, which became one of the best-known first-hand accounts of the Civil War. According to Holden-Reid, Sherman finally "had cut his teeth as an army commander" with the Jackson Expedition. President Zachary Taylor, vice president Millard Fillmore and other political luminaries attended the wedding. What emerges is a landmark portrait of a brilliant but tormented soul, haunted by a family legacy of mental illness and relentlessly driven to . He led the capture of the strategic city of Atlanta, a military success that contributed to the re-election of President Abraham Lincoln. There, Sherman had replaced his army comrade, the co-founder Henry Smith Turner when family matters forced the latter to return to St. Louis. [91], With a heavy rain coming down [at the end of the first day of fighting at Shiloh, Sherman] came upon Grant standing under a large oak tree, his cigar glowing in the darkness. [113] His family traveled from Ohio to visit him at the camp near Vicksburg. [43], Sherman was appointed as captain in the Army's Commissary Department on September 27, 1850, with offices in St. Louis, Missouri. Father James A. Ryder, president of Georgetown College, officiated at the Washington, D.C., ceremony. When William Tecumseh Sherman Jr. was born on 8 June 1854, in St. Louis, St. Louis, Missouri, United States, his father, Gen. William Tecumseh Sherman, was 34 and his mother, Eleanor Boyle Ewing, was 29. [142] Sherman then dispatched a message to Lincoln, offering him the city as a Christmas present.[143][e]. [35][36] Sherman unwittingly helped to launch the California Gold Rush by drafting the official documents in which Governor Mason confirmed that gold had been discovered in the region. Sherman believed that bison eradication should be encouraged as a means of weakening Indian resistance to assimilation. William Tecumseh Sherman was a Union general during the Civil War, playing a crucial role in the victory over the Confederate States and becoming one of the most famous military leaders in U.S.. [179][180] 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."[176]. Indeed, he had written to his wife that if he took more precautions "they'd call me crazy again". [135] In response, Hood moved north into Tennessee. He was the son of lawyer Charles R. Sherman and Mary Hoyt both originally of Norwalk, CT. . Sherman commanded the division on the extreme right of the Union's right wing (under George Henry Thomas). He was born in Lancaster, Ohio as William Tecumseh Sherman into a family of eleven. 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 youCommand me in any way. [90] His first major test under Grant was at the Battle of Shiloh. Although he was impatient, often irritable and depressed, petulant, headstrong, and unreasonably gruff, he had solid soldierly qualities. [296] Former U.S. Defense Secretary Robert McNamara refers equivocally to the statement that "war is cruelty and you cannot refine it" in both the book Wilson's Ghost[297] and in his interview for the documentary film The Fog of War (2003). You are rushing into war with one of the most powerful, ingeniously mechanical, and determined people on Earthright at your doors. This was the largest single capitulation of the war. [160], Sherman believed that the terms that he had agreed to were consistent with the views that Lincoln had expressed at City Point, and that they offered the best way to prevent Johnston from ordering his men to go into the wilderness and conduct a destructive guerrilla campaign. In The White Tecumseh, Stanley Hirshson has crafted a beautiful and rigorous work of scholarship, the only life of Sherman to draw on regimental histories and testimonies by the general's own men. Since that time he has not been a communicant of any church. When comparing Sherman's scorched-earth campaigns to the actions of the British Army during the Second Boer War (18991902) another war in which civilians were targeted because of their central role in sustaining a belligerent power South African historian Hermann Giliomee claims 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". [26], Upon graduation in 1840, Sherman entered the army as a second lieutenant in the 3rd U.S. [97], On November 1862, U. S. Grant, acting as commander of the Union forces in the state of Mississippi, launched a campaign to capture the city of Vicksburg, the principal Confederate stronghold along the Mississippi River. 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. [290], In the early 20th century, Sherman's role in the Civil War attracted attention from influential British military intellectuals, including Field Marshal Lord Wolseley, Maj. Gen. J. F. C. Fuller, and especially Capt. In 1875, Henry V. Boynton published a critical review of Sherman's memoirs "based upon compilations from the records of the war office". Unbeknownst to Sherman, Grant abandoned his advance, and Sherman's river expedition met more resistance than expected. In October 1876, Grant, after issuing a proclamation, instructed Sherman to gather all available Atlantic region troops and dispatch them to South Carolina to stop the mob violence. [165], Sherman was not an abolitionist before the war and, like others of his time and background, he did not believe in "Negro equality". George H. Thomas and John M. Schofield to deal with Hood; their forces eventually smashed Hood's army in the battles of Franklin (November 30) and Nashville (December 1516). [175] 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. [188][189][190] In that essay, Sherman called upon the South to "let the negro vote, and count his vote honestly", adding that "otherwise, so sure as there is a God in Heaven, you will have another war, more cruel than the last, when the torch and dagger will take the place of the muskets of well-ordered battalions". [152] Thereafter, his troops did relatively little damage to the civilian infrastructure. Maria Ewing Sherman (1851-1913) 2. [188][191], Sherman's military legacy rests primarily on his command of logistics and on his brilliance as a strategist. This letter was to James E. Yeatman, May 21, 1865, and is excerpted more extensively (and with slight variations) in Bowman and Irwin. In response to this threat, Grant instructed Sherman to attack Johnston. [243][244] During this time, Sherman also reorganized the U.S. Army forts to better accommodate the shifting frontier. . [147], Grant then ordered Sherman to embark his army on steamers and join the Union forces confronting Lee in Virginia, but Sherman instead 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. 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. For other uses, see. After the marriage of their son Charles R. Sherman to Mary Hoyt, they . [19][20] As an adult, Sherman signed all his correspondence including to his wife "W. T. Fires began that night and by next morning most of the central city was destroyed. [274], Sherman wrote to his wife in 1842: "I believe in good works rather than faith. [177] 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. Besides, where are your men and appliances of war to contend against them? 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. William Tecumseh Sherman. Johnston, ignoring instructions from President Davis, accepted those terms on April 26, 1865, formally surrendered his army and all the Confederate forces in the Carolinas, Georgia, and Florida. 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. "Well, Grant, we've had the devil's own day, haven't we?" 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. William Tecumseh Sherman (/tkms/ tih-KUM-s;[4][5] February 8, 1820 February 14, 1891) was an American soldier, businessman, educator, and author. The massive Confederate attack on the morning of April 6, 1862, took most of the senior Union commanders by surprise. Sherman served in that capacity from 1869 until 1883 and was responsible for the U.S. Army's engagement in the Indian Wars. He captured Atlanta and Savannah and wrought great destruction in marches through Georgia and the Carolinas. 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