[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. [6] British military theorist and historian B.H. Liddell Hart declared that Sherman was "the first modern general".[7][8]. 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. Another younger brother, Hoyt Sherman, was a successful banker. He later began a new climb to success at Shiloh and Corinth under Grant. For more detailed discussion of this overall period, see Marszalek. "[234] In 1867, he wrote to Grant that "we are not going to let a few thieving, ragged Indians check and stop the progress" of the railroads. My average demerits, per annum, were about one hundred and fifty, which reduced my final class standing from number four to six. 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. [164] Sherman proceeded with some of his troops to Washington, where they marched in the Grand Review of the Armies on May 24, 1865. He lived in Lancaster, Fairfield, Ohio, United States in 1860. He interrupted his military career in 1853 to pursue private business ventures, without much success. [166][167][168] 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slavery, although he opposed breaking up slave families and advocated that laws forbidding the education of slaves be repealed. Copies of Letters of William Tecumseh Sherman in 1859-61 and Other Communications, etc. For other uses, see. 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. Sherman had dismissed the intelligence reports from militia officers, refusing to believe that Confederate general Albert Sidney Johnston would leave his base at Corinth. 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". [16] Sherman had already been baptized as an infant by a Presbyterian minister[17][18] and recent biographers believe, contrary to Lewis's claims, that he was probably given the first name "William" at that time. [101] Sherman's operations were supposed to be coordinated with an advance on Vicksburg by Grant from another direction. [183][184] Those orders, which became the basis of the claim that the Union government had promised freed slaves "forty acres and a mule", were revoked later that year by President Johnson. After the fall of Atlanta in 1864, Sherman ordered the city's immediate evacuation. [231], Sherman regarded the expansion of the railroad system "as the most important element now in progress to facilitate the military interests of our Frontier". [26], Upon graduation in 1840, Sherman entered the army as a second lieutenant in the 3rd U.S. 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. After Sherman's departure the spokesman for the black leaders, Baptist minister Garrison Frazier,[181][182] declared in response to Stanton's inquiry about the feelings of the black community: We looked upon General Sherman prior to his arrival as a man in the providence of God specially set apart to accomplish this work, and we unanimously feel inexpressible gratitude to him, looking upon him as a man that should be honored for the faithful performance of his duty. 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. William Tecumseh Sherman (1820-1891) 2. [95][96] In July, Grant's situation improved when Halleck left for the East to become general-in-chief. This made Sherman senior in rank to Ulysses S. Grant, his future commander. In his memoirs he noted that "it was a great pity to remove the Seminoles at all," as Florida "was the Indian's paradise" and still had (at the time that Sherman wrote his memoirs in the 1870s) "a population less than should make a good State. [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. [174] Sherman rejected this, arguing that it would have delayed the "successful end" of the war and the "[liberation of] all slaves". [207][208] Though exact figures are not available, the loss of civilian life appears to have been very small. Maria Ewing Sherman (1851-1913) 2. Sherman served in that capacity from 1869 until 1883 and was responsible for the U.S. Army's engagement in the Indian Wars. At the White House, Sherman met with Abraham Lincoln a few days after his inauguration as president of the United States. [98] Grant made Sherman a corps commander and put him in charge of half of his forces. [29] During that voyage, Sherman grew close to Ord and especially to the intellectually distinguished Halleck. What emerges is a landmark portrait of a brilliant but tormented soul, haunted by a family legacy of mental illness and relentlessly driven to . "[88][89], After Grant captured Fort Donelson, Sherman got his wish to serve under Grant when he was assigned on March 1, 1862, to the Army of West Tennessee as commander of the 5th Division. [133] According to Holden-Reid, "Sherman did more than any other man apart from the president in creating [the] climate of opinion" that afforded Lincoln a comfortable victory over McClellan at the polls. [268][269], Sherman's body was then transported to St. Louis, where another service was conducted at a local Catholic church on February 21, 1891. This country will be drenched in blood, and God only knows how it will end. [141] Upon reaching Savannah, Sherman appointed Private A. O. Granger as his personal secretary. 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". As a man, Sherman was an eccentric mixture of strength and weakness. "[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. [76] During the fighting, Sherman was grazed by bullets in the knee and shoulder. "[92], Despite being caught unprepared by the attack, Sherman rallied his division and conducted an orderly, fighting retreat that helped avert a disastrous Union rout. "[78], The outcome at Bull Run caused Sherman to question his own judgment as an officer and the capabilities of his volunteer troops. 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. Sherman excelled academically at West Point, but he treated the demerit system with indifference. 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. [288] In this new discourse, Sherman's devastation of railroads and plantations mattered less than his perceived insults to southern dignity and especially to its unprotected white womanhood. [286] At the same time, he was generally respected in the South as a military man, while his conservative politics were attractive to many white Southerners. [138], After November elections, Sherman began marching on November 15 with 62,000 men in the direction of the port city of Savannah, Georgia,[139] living off the land and causing, by his own estimate, more than $100million in property damage. He lived in Harvey Township, Cowley, Kansas, United States in 1900 and Oswego, Labette, Kansas, United . [75], The engagement at Bull Run ended in a disastrous defeat for the Union, dashing the hopes for a rapid resolution of the conflict over secession. William Tecumseh Sherman, (born February 8, 1820, Lancaster, Ohio, U.S.died February 14, 1891, New York, New York), American Civil War general and a major architect of modern warfare. Background The sixth of the eleven children of Charles Robert and Mary Hoyt Sherman, upon the death of his father in 1829 he went to live with the Thomas Ewings, a prominent Ohio family. [245], In 1875, ten years after the end of the Civil War, Sherman became one of the first Civil War generals to publish his memoirs. Sherman expressed grave concerns about the North's poor state of preparedness for the looming civil war, but he found Lincoln unresponsive. descendants of West and Central Africans enslaved in the lower Atlantic states from North Carolina to Florida. [134], During September and October, Sherman and Hood played a cat-and-mouse game in northern Georgia and Alabama, as Hood threatened Sherman's communications to the north. [169][170][171] Throughout the Civil War, Sherman declined to employ black troops in his armies.[172][173]. Sherman at first trivialized the corresponding threat, reportedly saying that he would "give [Hood] his rations" to go in that direction, as "my business is down south". 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 . Shortly after the Union forces occupied Corinth on May 30, Sherman persuaded Grant not to resign from his command, despite the serious difficulties he was having with Halleck. , CT, and, after his death in 1815, his widow and family migrated to OH. [80], 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. [195] 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. His performance was praised by Grant and Halleck and after the battle he was promoted to major general of volunteers, effective May 1, 1862. According to Liddell Hart, this strategy was most clearly illustrated by Sherman's series of turning movements against Johnston during the Atlanta campaign. [10][258] During this period, he remained in contact with war veterans, and he was an active member of various social and charitable organizations. [83] 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". [311], This is actually a re-printing of the second, revised edition of 1889, published by D. Appleton & Company, of New York City. Research genealogy for William Tecumseh Sherman Merchant of North Bend, Coos, Oregon, as well as other members of the Merchant family, on Ancestry. 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. [304] Saint-Gaudens's Bust of William Tecumseh Sherman, which he used as the basis for the larger Memorial, is at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Mary Elizabeth Sherman (1852-1925) 2. [188][191], Sherman's military legacy rests primarily on his command of logistics and on his brilliance as a strategist. 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. His men swore by him, and most of his fellow officers admired him. [142] Sherman then dispatched a message to Lincoln, offering him the city as a Christmas present.[143][e]. [273] He later married his foster sister Ellen, who was also a devout Catholic. Sheridan used hard-war tactics similar to those he and Sherman had employed in the Civil War. The burning of Columbia has engendered controversy ever since, with some claiming the fires were a deliberate act of vengeance by the Union troops and others that the fires were accidental, caused in part by the burning bales of cotton that the retreating Confederates left behind them.[151]. 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. His son, Thomas Ewing Sherman, who was a Jesuit priest, presided over his father's funeral masses in New York City and in St. [122] However, he enjoyed Grant's confidence and friendship. When William Tecumseh Sherman was born on 17 May 1880, in Page, Iowa, United States, his father, Franklin Sherman, was 32 and his mother, Mary Elizabeth Van Sant, was 21. 15. [162] This precipitated a deep and long-lasting enmity between Sherman and Stanton, and it intensified Sherman's disdain for politicians. [93] At Shiloh, Sherman was wounded twicein the hand and shoulderand had three horses shot out from under him. According to Sherman's biographer Robert O'Connell, "Shiloh marked the turning point of his life. [225] To escape from these difficulties, Sherman moved his headquarters to St. Louis in 1874. As the foster son of a prominent Whig politician, in Charleston the popular Lieutenant Sherman moved within the upper circles of Old South society. Johnston did catch a serious cold and died one month later of pneumonia. He married Mary Elizabeth Berry on 15 October 1899, in Greenwood, Kansas, United States. This frontal assault was intended as a diversion, but it unexpectedly succeeded in capturing the enemy's entrenchments and routing the Confederate Army of Tennessee, bringing the Union's Chattanooga campaign to a successful completion. [103] Grant, who was on poor terms with McClernand, regarded this as a politically motivated distraction from the efforts to take Vicksburg, but Sherman had targeted Arkansas Post independently and considered the operation worthwhile. [127] 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. [256] Sherman stepped down as commanding general on November 1, 1883,[257] and retired from the army on February 8, 1884. 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.. [28], While many of his colleagues saw action in the MexicanAmerican War, Sherman was assigned to administrative duties in the captured territory of California. [228] He testified in the trial on April 11 and 13, 1868. 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. "[271] He is buried in Calvary Cemetery in St. 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. "[94], In late April a Union force of 100,000 men under Halleck's leadership, with Grant relegated to second-in-command, began advancing slowly against Corinth. Liddell Hart's claims for his own influence on the German doctrine of, Sherman wrote in a letter to Halleck, dated December 24, 1864, "that we are not only fighting hostile armies, but a hostile people, and must make old and young, rich and poor, feel the hard hand of war, as well as their organized armies.". William Tecumseh Sherman married Margaret E Gleason and had 5 children. Ewing was a prominent member of the Whig Party who became U.S. senator for Ohio and the first Secretary of the Interior. [289] Sherman was thus presented by Lost-Cause authors as the antithesis of the Southern ideals of chivalry supposedly embodied by General Lee. [255], Sherman lived most of the rest of his life in New York City. [252], On June 19, 1879, Sherman delivered an address to the graduating class of the Michigan Military Academy, in which he may have uttered the famous phrase "War is Hell". Sherman to Grant, May 28, 1867, quoted in Fellman, Louisiana State Seminary of Learning & Military Academy, campaign to capture the city of Vicksburg, Commanding General of the United States Army, General William Tecumseh Sherman Monument, "An Unspoken Address to the Loyal Legion", List of American Civil War generals (Union), The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, "Madness, Genius, & Sherman's Ruthless March", "Survey Report: Raised Streets & Hollow Sidewalks, Sacramento, California", "Family Trees of the Interconnected Sherman and Ewing Families", "Department of Military Science: Unit History", "15th Regiment Cavalry Pennsylvania Volunteers: The Fifteenth at General Joe Johnston's Surrender", "Minutes of an interview between the colored ministers and church officers at Savannah with the Secretary of War and Major-Gen. Sherman", "Order by the Commander of the Military Division of the Mississippi: Special Field Orders, No. Sherman would eventually become one of the few high-ranking officers of the U.S. Civil War who had not fought in Mexico. William Tecumseh Sherman (1854-1863) 2. [117], At Chattanooga, Grant instructed Sherman to attack the right flank of Bragg's forces, which were entrenched along Missionary Ridge overlooking the city. [165], Sherman was not an abolitionist before the war and, like others of his time and background, he did not believe in "Negro equality". [19][20] As an adult, Sherman signed all his correspondence including to his wife "W. T. [272], Sherman's birth family was Presbyterian and he was originally baptized as such. Born William Tecumseh SHERMAN American soldier, businessman, educator and author Born on February 08, 1820 in Lancaster, Ohio, USA , United States Died on February 14, 1891 in New York City, New York, USA Born on February 08 48 Deceased on February 14 31 Family tree Report an error Sherman Daniel 1721 - 1799 Taylor Mindwell 1720 - 1798 Stoddard 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 "made up his mind that there had been no such army in existence since the days of Julius Caesar". The massive Confederate attack on the morning of April 6, 1862, took most of the senior Union commanders by surprise. [33] Sherman and Halleck lived in a house in Monterey, now known as the "Sherman Quarters", from 1847 to 1849. [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. [262] However, Sherman did include the views of some others in the appendices to the new edition.[j][k]. He married Maud Colby Bates on 7 October 1913. William Tecumseh Sherman (1820-1891), American soldier, was a Union general during the Civil War. [68] In early April, Sherman declined Montgomery Blair's offer of the administrative position of chief clerk in the War Department, despite Blair's promise that it would be followed by nomination as Assistant Secretary of War after the U.S. Congress assembled in July. General William Tecumseh "Cump" Sherman Born 8 Feb 1820 in Lancaster, Fairfield, Ohio, USA Ancestors Son of Charles Robert Sherman and Mary (Hoyt) Sherman [104][105] Arkansas Post was taken by the Union army and navy on January 11, 1863. Death: January 04, 1924 (68) Immediate Family: Son of Preserve B Sherman and Emily Lacow. [226], 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. [210] 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 is mercy in the end". General William Tecumseh Sherman is best remembered for his leadership during the Civil War. William Tecumseh Sherman described the San Francisco banking panic in his memoirs. This message was put on a vessel on December 22, passed on by telegram from Fort Monroe, Virginia, and apparently received by Lincoln on Christmas Day itself. [114][115], Ordered to relieve the Union forces besieged in the city of Chattanooga, Tennessee, Sherman departed from Memphis on October 11, 1863, aboard a train bound for Chattanooga. This helped ensure that the Mississippi River would remain in Union hands for the remainder of the war. [209] Consuming supplies, wrecking infrastructure, and undermining morale were Sherman's stated goals, and several of his Southern contemporaries noted this and commented on it. There, Sherman had replaced his army comrade, the co-founder Henry Smith Turner when family matters forced the latter to return to St. Louis. His father died when he was nine years old, and Sherman was raised by Senator Thomas Ewing and eventually married into the fam [113] His family traveled from Ohio to visit him at the camp near Vicksburg. He passed away in 1949. per familysearch.org . [a] According to Sherman's Memoirs, he was named "William Tecumseh", his father having "caught a fancy for the great chief of the Shawnees, 'Tecumseh'". Sherman wrote both to his brother, Senator John Sherman, and to General Grant vehemently repudiating any such promotion.