Ohio. He was educated at the U. S. Military Academy and later went onto become a Union General in the U. S.
civil war. Sherman resigned fromthe army in 1853 and became a partner in a banking firm in SanFrancisco. He became the president of the Military College inLouisiana(now Louisiana state University) from 1859-1861. Shermanoffered his services at the outbreak of the Civil War in 1861 and wasput in command of a volunteer infantry regiment, becoming a brigadiergeneral of volunteers after the first Battle of bull run. He led hisdivision at the Battle of Shiloh and was then promoted to majorgeneral of volunteers.
Soon after Sherman fought in the battle ofChattanooga he was made supreme commander of the armies in the west. Sherman fought many battles with such people as Ulysses S. Grant, andagainst people such as Robert E. Lee before he was commissionedlieutenant general of the regular army.
Following Grants election topresidency he was promoted to the rank of full general and givencommand of the entire U. S. Army. William Sherman published hispersonal memoirs in 1875, retired in 1883, and died in 1891. William Tecumseh Sherman, as you have read, was a verytalented and very successful man.
He is remembered by manyaccomplishments, but probably most remembered by his famous March tothe sea. Sherman’s march to the sea was probably the most celebratedmilitary action, in which about sixty thousand men marched withSherman from Atlanta to the Atlantic ocean, then north through SouthCarolina destroying the last of the souths economic resources. Bedford Forrest was in Tennessee, and with Atlanta secured,Sherman dispatched George H. Thomas to Nashville to restore the orderthere. John B.
Hood threatened Thomas’s supply line, and for about amonth, they both fought north of Atlanta. Sherman decided to do thecomplete opposite of what the strategic plan laid down by Grant sixmonths earlier had proposed to do. In that plan Grant had insistedthat Confederate armies were the first and foremost objectives forUnion strategy. What Sherman decided now was that he would completelyignore the Confederate armies and go for the “spirit that sustainedthe Confederate nation itself”, the homes, the property, the families,and the food of the Southern heartland.
He would march for Savannah,Georgia and the seacoast, abandoning his own line of supply, and liveoff the land and harvests of the Georgia Country. Grant finallyapproved Sherman’s plan, so Sherman set off on his march eastward,”smashing things to the sea. ” On November 15, 1864, Sherman began hismarch to the sea. “I can make .
. . Georgia howl!” he promised. Sherman left Atlanta, setting it up in flames as they left,with 62,000 men, 55,000 of them on foot, 5,000 on cavalry horses,and about 2,000 riding artillery horses.
It was an army of 218regiments, 184 of them from the West, and of these 155 were from theold Northwest Territory. This army was remembered as a lean and strongone. The bulk of the army was made up of Germans, Irish, Scotch, andEnglish. Sherman and his army arrived in Georgia where there was noopposition, and the march was very leisurely. The army fanned outwidely, covering a sixty mile span from one side to the other.
Thearmy destroyed, demolished and crushed whatever got in their way, theland, homes, buildings, and people. Bridges, railroads, machine shops,warehouses- anything of this nature that was in Shaman’s path wasburned and destroyed. As a result of this march eliminatinga lot of the food to feed the Confederate army and its animals, thewhole Confederate war effort would become weaker and weaker andweaker. Sherman went on toward the sea while the Confederacy could donothing. Sherman’s march to the sea was a demonstration that theConfederacy could not protect its own.
Many agree that Sherman was toobrutal and cruel during the march to the sea, but Sherman and his menwere effectively demolishing the Confederate homeland, and that wasall that mattered to Sherman. Because Sherman “waged an economic waragainst civilians”, he has been called the first modern general. Sherman is remembered by some as one of the best generals of the U. S. Civil War, and by others(mainly whom live in the south) as a cruel,brutal, horrible, and evil man. William Tecumseh Sherman is believedto have coined the phrase, “War is hell.
” “There is many a boy herewho looks on war as all glory, but, boys, it is all hell. You can bearthis warning voice to generations to come. “—RESOURCES1. SHERMAN FIGHTING PROPHET By LLOYD LEWIS HARCOURT, BRACE & WORLD,INC.
NEW YORK2. The AMERICAN HERITAGE Picture History of THE CIVIL WAR VOLUME TWOBy the Editors of AMERICAN HERITAGE3. Peoples Chronology, License from Henry Holt and Company, Inc4. The Concise Columbia Encyclopedia, Columbia University Press
