William T Sherman: The First Modern General

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Welcome to Biographics! I’m your host, Eric Malachite, and today’s protagonist is William T. Sherman, with a script provided by Larry Holsworth. If Larry has provided social links, they’ll be next to links to my storytelling deep dive channel, StoryRant, and my books. With that said, let’s dive right in and take a look at the first modern general.

William Tecumseh Sherman is forever linked with his famed March to the Sea in the late autumn of 1864. In truth, his subsequent march through South Carolina and part of North Carolina was far more destructive, a fact Sherman acknowledged in his memoirs. He commanded a regiment in the First Battle of Bull Run, a Union defeat, which led him to suffer a bout of depression. Northern newspapers questioned his sanity, with one Cincinnati newspaper openly calling him insane. He served under Ulysses S. Grant in Kentucky and Tennessee, including the bloodbath at Pittsburgh Landing, known as the Battle of Shiloh. He participated in the campaign that led to the capture of Vicksburg, where he worked closely with U.S. Navy commanders operating on the Mississippi and Yazoo rivers.

However, it was his capture of Atlanta, the destruction of that city, and his subsequent march through enemy territory to Savannah that remains his most well-known achievement, as well as his most controversial. Sherman’s tactics have been called the first episode of total war, targeting civilian populations and non-military assets. This assertion is often debated. He is also recorded as having said, “War is hell,” a misquotation that appeared in a Northern newspaper.

His post-Civil War military career included using similar tactics to eliminate the enemy’s ability to resupply themselves during conflicts with Native American tribes in three major wars in the West. He came from a politically influential family; his brother John was the writer of the Sherman Antitrust Act while serving as a U.S. senator. Sherman was one of the first Civil War generals to publish his memoirs, which received acclaim from literary critics and the public. Yet, he is chiefly remembered for his campaign in which he dedicated his army to, in his own words, “make Georgia howl.”

There is much more to his life that should be remembered. Charles Robert Sherman was an associate justice of the Ohio Supreme Court when his wife Mary gave birth to their second son in 1820, naming him after the Shawnee warrior Tecumseh. They resided in Lancaster, Ohio, near where Tecumseh had urged the tribes to unite against American settlers. Charles Sherman died unexpectedly during a typhoid epidemic in 1829, and young Tecumseh was taken into the home of Thomas Ewing, a prominent politician and the first Secretary of the Interior in U.S. history. Sherman’s foster parents had him baptized as a Catholic, although some biographers dispute this, claiming he was baptized into the Presbyterian faith as an infant.

Whichever account is correct, he did not sign his name using either first name, instead using W.T. Sherman for most of his life. His lifelong nickname, used by friends and relatives, was “C.” The Ewings had a large family of their own when they took in the young Sherman, whose own family consisted of his widowed mother and ten siblings. The Sherman children remained in Lancaster with their mother, receiving help from friends and extended family. William learned early the need to excel in his endeavors and the results of competition among siblings. He was a quick learner in school, enjoying mathematics, though he disliked the teasing he received from fellow students over his fiery red hair.

His stepfather was serving as a U.S. senator when he secured an appointment for Sherman to the U.S. Military Academy at West Point in 1836. Sherman proved indifferent to military appearance and discipline at the Academy, acquiring a significant number of demerits, but he excelled in his classroom studies, graduating in 1840 as sixth in his class. He later claimed in his memoirs that his standing would have been much higher if not for the demerits. He accepted a commission as a second lieutenant in the artillery and saw his first action in the Second Seminole War in Florida, a conflict he later considered unjust.

During the Mexican War, Sherman, unlike many of his fellow officers, did not see combat but was assigned to garrison duty in California. He spent 198 days at sea sailing around Cape Horn before arriving at his duty station in Monterey in 1847. There, in addition to drafting army reports that confirmed the discovery of gold at Sutter’s Mill, Sherman assisted in laying out the street grid for the town of Sacramento in 1848. In May 1850, Sherman traveled to Washington, where he married his stepsister Ellen Ewing. The prominence of the Ewing family made it a social event in Washington, attended by President Zachary Taylor, Vice President Millard Fillmore, and other notables. The Catholic wedding was conducted by the president of Georgetown College, Father James Ryder. Sherman consented to raise their children in the Catholic faith, and they eventually had eight children together—four girls and four boys.

Militarily, he was ordered to St. Louis to serve in the commissary department. By 1853, disgusted with the slow rate of promotion in the peacetime army, he resigned his commission and accepted work as a bank manager in San Francisco. In 1857, he traveled again by sea to New York to manage a branch of the same bank. That same year, a national economic downturn known as the Panic of 1857 led to the bank’s failure. In 1858, he entered a law firm owned by two of his brothers-in-law in Leavenworth, Kansas. Unsuccessful in the practice of law, he accepted a teaching and administrative position as superintendent at the Louisiana State Seminary of Learning and Military Academy, which eventually evolved into Louisiana State University.

He was there when Louisiana seceded from the Union in 1861. Sherman resigned and returned to St. Louis, where he was present when Fort Sumter was bombarded by Southern troops. He offered his services, although he disagreed with Abraham Lincoln’s call for 75,000 volunteers. Sherman believed the war would be long and that many more men would be needed before the South could be pacified. Nonetheless, he accepted a commission as a colonel of volunteers in command of an infantry regiment.

Sherman commanded a regiment in the First Battle of Bull Run, a disastrous round for the Union Army. Though his own troops fought commendably, he was promoted to brigadier general of volunteers in the aftermath of that defeat and ordered to the Western theater in Kentucky. He made his headquarters at Louisville and was visited there in October 1861 by Secretary of War Simon Cameron. Shortly after Cameron’s visit, reports disparaging Sherman’s command abilities began appearing in Northern newspapers. From then until the end of the war, Sherman contended that war correspondents were a threat to the Union war effort.

In November, Sherman requested a leave of absence. In December, the theater commander, Henry Halleck, placed Sherman on leave due to health reasons. Sherman suffered what was then called a nervous breakdown, described by his wife in a private letter as “melancholy insanity.” Newspapers carried the story of Sherman’s collapse in disparaging terms. Halleck had shared quarters with Sherman during their days together in California during the Mexican War and stood by his old friend. By late December, Sherman felt well enough to return to duty, and Halleck assigned him to duties in the West.

By March 1862, Sherman was in command of a division under Ulysses Grant. The Battle of Shiloh, taking place on April 6th and 7th, 1862, cemented Sherman’s reputation as a capable battlefield commander. On the first day of the battle, he succeeded in holding the Union right in a fighting withdrawal, and the following day, he led the successful counterattack that resulted in Union victory in what was at the time the bloodiest battle ever fought on American soil. It was only a precursor to the massive battles that were to follow and also restored his peace of mind. He wrote to Grant that this single battle gave him new life.

Later in 1862, Grant began a campaign to capture the Confederate stronghold at Vicksburg, Mississippi, and seize control of the Mississippi River’s entire length, with Sherman participating in the operations in command of the corps, which consisted of nearly half of Grant’s army. The campaign was long and complicated, containing several Union repulses. Accusations of Grant’s drunkenness and Sherman’s insanity were repeated in complaining Union newspapers. It took numerous dangerous maneuvers, coordinating with the Navy, and a long siege before Vicksburg surrendered to Grant’s army on July 4th, 1863. It was the same day Robert E. Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia began its retreat from the Battle of Gettysburg in Pennsylvania.

Following the Union’s campaign in Eastern Tennessee, where Grant’s forces captured Chattanooga and defeated the Confederate forces under Braxton Bragg, Sherman became one of Grant’s most trusted subordinates. In early 1864, Lincoln assigned Grant to Washington as commander of all Union forces. Grant chose to accept the command but made his headquarters in the field rather than in a Washington office, traveling with the Army of the Potomac. Grant assigned Sherman to succeed him as commander of the Department of the Mississippi, placing him in command of the entire Western theater.

Before Sherman initiated the campaign against Atlanta, he had already formulated his strategy for conducting the war in the Deep South. He wrote to Grant, “If you can whip Lee and I can march to the Atlantic, I think Old Uncle Abe will give us 20 days leave to see the young folks.” Despite the disparaging reference to Abraham Lincoln, Sherman later included this comment in his memoirs. It was his first known reference to a march to the sea.

In May 1864, as Grant moved against Lee in Virginia’s Wilderness, Sherman launched an invasion of Georgia. Unlike Grant, who pushed down through Virginia in a series of bloody battles in places like Spotsylvania and Cold Harbor, Sherman conducted a campaign of maneuver against first Confederate General Joseph Johnston and then, after Johnston was relieved, against John Bell Hood. Only at the Battle of Kennesaw Mountain did Sherman compel his troops to make frontal assaults. Throughout the summer, the armies skirmished, and after the arrival of Hood, fought in major engagements. The Union armies moved forward, gradually closing around Atlanta.

On September 2nd, 1864, Sherman occupied Atlanta after briefly pursuing Hood’s army in Tennessee. Sherman returned to Atlanta in mid-November, ordering civilians to leave the city. He ordered the destruction of all military and government buildings and property, as well as railroad property, including depots, warehouses, rolling stock, locomotives, and maintenance facilities. He was ready to begin his march to the sea with the expressed intent to “make Georgia howl.”

Since time immemorial, armies had sustained themselves on the march by living off the land and seizing the produce and livestock of civilians. In some instances, they made some form of payment; in others, they simply took what they needed or wanted. The roughly 60,000 men Sherman led across Georgia were under strict orders not to loot private homes or harass civilians who did not display hostility toward Union troops. They were to take what foodstuffs they needed to sustain themselves, any horses and mules, and fodder, then destroy anything deemed of military value. This included workshops, factories, railroads, wagons, bridges, boats, and anything that might conceivably be used to gain an advantage in war.

The march took place in three major columns, each of which was further divided according to available roads. The army cut a swath over 60 miles wide, and in some cases, spurs were set out even wider to complete the destruction of railroads. As the troops marched, foraging parties branched out in all directions, confiscating supplies to feed the army and the growing trail of refugees that followed. The troops pulled up railroad tracks, built fires with the wooden ties, and heated the rails until they could be bent into loops around trees or telegraph poles. The rails scattered along the army’s path became known as “Sherman’s neckties.”

Ahead of Sherman’s army, retreating Confederates wrought their own destruction on the landscape. Animal carcasses were thrown into wells and watering holes to poison the water, and bales of cotton and other crops were burned. Confederate troops, chiefly cavalry, harassed the advancing Union columns to little avail. Sherman reached Savannah on December 10th, where 10,000 entrenched Confederates protected the city. After making contact with the Union Navy, Sherman sent a surrender demand to the Confederate commander of the defenses, William Hardy. On December 17th, Hardy opted to escape rather than fight or surrender, fleeing by crossing the Savannah River on a hastily assembled pontoon bridge. On December 20th, the following day, Sherman occupied the city.

His army had destroyed over 300 miles of railroads, seized over 9,000 horses and mules, 13,000 heads of cattle, and freed more than 10,000 enslaved people. In 1864 dollars, Sherman estimated the economic damage to the South to have been $100 million, just under $1 billion today. Yet Sherman was far from finished. Grant had intended for Sherman to embark his troops on Navy ships at Savannah, which would convey them to join his armies besieging Lee at Richmond and Petersburg. Sherman had other plans; he convinced Grant to allow him to continue his march north through the Carolinas before joining with Grant in Virginia. Grant agreed to Sherman’s request, and after resting in Savannah for a few weeks, Sherman’s army was on the march again.

In South Carolina, widely viewed in the North as the home of secession, the damage done vastly exceeded that wrought in Georgia. As Sherman’s troops marched across South Carolina, the Confederates abandoned Charleston and its fortifications, retreating to the northwest. Sherman again advanced in multiple columns along roads mired by late winter and spring mud. His troops built corduroy roads, crossed rivers on pontoon bridges, and advanced quickly. On February 17th, 1865, Sherman captured Columbia, where his troops encountered fires throughout the city caused by the disorganized burning of bales of cotton to deny them to the Union. There was rioting throughout the city, whiskey flowed freely, and fires spread.

As he had in Georgia, Sherman ordered the destruction of anything deemed useful to the Southern war effort. The burning of Columbia, which Sherman did not order and during which he directed firefighting operations, has remained a point of controversy and dispute ever since. Sherman’s army covered 425 miles in only 50 days during the campaign across the Carolinas, which ended on April 18th, 1865, with the surrender of the last Confederate army in the field under General Joseph Johnston. Lee had surrendered in Virginia nine days earlier. In the interim, Lincoln had been assassinated.

Sherman was among the first generals in history to adopt the policy of destroying an enemy’s ability to make war rather than concentrating solely on the destruction of its armies in battle. He reasoned, correctly as it turned out, that by destroying infrastructure, food supplies, and civilian morale, support for the army would wane, and the army itself would wither away through low morale, desertion, starvation, and sickness. By the time Joseph Johnston surrendered his army to Sherman, the Confederate general commanded just 13,000 men; his army had simply vanished.

Sherman began the war with no command experience, no combat experience, and grave doubts about his own abilities. He ended it as an acclaimed strategic and tactical genius with a reputation for being a stern disciplinarian who was nonetheless deeply concerned with the well-being of the troops he commanded. He opted to remain in the army after the war, and when Grant entered the presidency in 1869, Sherman became the commanding general of the United States Army. He served in that role during the ensuing Indian Wars as the railroads pushed west.

Following the Civil War, the railroads encroached upon lands controlled by Western tribes, splitting the migration paths of the bison upon which their cultures depended. The U.S. Army was deployed to protect the railroads, the settlers traveling west to take advantage of the Homestead Acts, and the towns and cities that rose in their wake. During the Indian Wars, numerous atrocities were committed by both sides, though there is no evidence Sherman ever said, “The only good Indian is a dead Indian,” as he is often accused of. He did advocate for total war against the tribes.

During the Great Sioux War, Sherman did write to President Grant, “We must act with vindictive earnestness against the Sioux, even to their extermination.” As he had during the latter half of the Civil War, Sherman advocated destroying the enemy’s ability to make war. The Plains Indians and their way of life could not survive without the American bison; they used them for food, medicine, clothing, shelter, tools, and weapons. Sherman became an early and ardent advocate for the eradication of the bison. Though he did not commit the army toward that end, he endorsed the railroads and other entities that organized massive bison hunts.

The eradication of the bison advanced so rapidly that Congress passed a law to protect them from overhunting in 1874. Sherman convinced his close friend, President Ulysses Grant, to prevent the law from being enforced through the use of the pocket veto. In the end, ruthless though his means were, it was the destruction of the herds that forced the Plains Indians to give up their way of life and enter the reservations established for them.

In 1875, Sherman published his memoirs, which focused primarily on the Civil War and his part in it, along with some criticisms of his former commander, Ulysses Grant. When Grant read what his old friend had written, he commented, “I found I approved every word.” The book was one of the earliest Civil War memoirs, sold well, and drew acclaim from critics for Sherman’s prose. He resigned as commanding general in 1883 and retired from the army in 1884, moving to New York City. There, he became a popular dinner guest and public speaker. He famously declined to be considered for the Republican nominee for president in 1884, stating, “I will not accept if nominated and will not serve if elected.” He resided in New York for the rest of his life, dying there in February 1891 from the effects of pneumonia.

Joseph Johnston, his old adversary, served as an honorary pallbearer at his funeral and stood hatless in the wintry weather, refusing to cover his head and expressing his belief that had the situation been reversed, Sherman would not have covered his head while attending Johnston’s funeral. Johnston died of pneumonia a month later. Sherman’s body went by train to St. Louis, where it was interred following a Catholic service.

William Tecumseh Sherman remains a controversial figure—loathed by many, admired by many, respected for his military talents, and reviled for his scorched earth tactics. He conducted war with relentless determination, yet when he offered peace terms,