William Tecumseh Sherman

William Tecumseh Sherman was, in the words of British military historian B. H. Liddell Hart, "the most original genius of the American Civil War" and "the first modern general."

Born into a prominent Ohio political family — his father was a state supreme court justice, one brother would become a U.S. senator and another would become a federal judge — Sherman attended West Point and finished sixth in his graduating class. When the future Confederate states began to secede, Sherman was superintendent of the Louisiana State Seminary of Learning & Military Academy — essentially the president of what would become Louisiana State University. But he gave no thought to supporting the nascent rebellion, resigning his post and declaring, prophetically:

"You 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 spent most of the early war in the west, working under Ulysses S. Grant at Shiloh and Vicksburg and throughout Tennessee. When Grant was placed in charge of all Union armies, Sherman assumed his position in command of the Western Theater.

His forces then captured Atlanta and began Sherman's famous "march to the sea," in which Sherman aimed to destroy the military and economic infrastructure of Georgia and the Carolinas, leading to the Confederate's surrender. Upon reaching the Atlantic Ocean in late December 1864, he sent a telegram to Abraham Lincoln saying: "I beg to present you as a Christmas gift the City of Savannah." A large number of recently enslaved men, women, and children joined the march, which led Sherman to issue Special Field Order No. 15, which ordered the seizure of 400,000 acres of plantation land and its distribution among the newly freed population in parcels of not more than 40 acres — the origin of the "40 acres and a mule" myth. (Unfortunately, the order was overturned by Pres. Andrew Johnson after Lincoln's assassination.) Propaganda from southern historians made Sherman's March a synonym for brutal tyranny, but later historians have viewed it as essential to the Confederate defeat.

After Grant ascended to the presidency in 1869, Sherman became commanding general of the U.S. Army, the military's highest rank, which he held until his retirement in 1883. (During that time, he led the military in a series of destructive wars against Native Americans.) In 1884, he could have easily been the Republican nominee for president, but he rejected the idea, issuing what would from thenceforth be known as a "Shermanesque statement": "I will not accept if nominated and will not serve if elected." He died of pneumonia in 1891.

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