(1820-1891)
[Footnote 10: A Copyright, 1894, by Selmar Hess.]
[Illustration: William Sherman. [TN]]
Achievement wins applause. And when the steps toward achievement are
tinged with mystery, romance, or daring, the applause is irresistible
and continuous. So it has come to pass that by the side of Xenophon's
masterly "retreat of the Ten Thousand," of Cortes's burning his ships
at Vera Cruz, and of Marlborough's bold march through the heart of
Germany to the victory at Blenheim, stands Sherman's March to the Sea
and his "Christmas Gift" of captured Savannah. And yet this brilliant
leader of men had never seen a hostile shot fired until he was
forty-one, and his first battle was the defeat at Bull Run.
The March to the Sea, upon which Sherman's fame as a soldier so
largely rests, was by no means the greatest or most significant of his
many achievements. His record as a soldier is filled with examples of
his courage, his shrewdness, and his tenacity, while his mingling of
gentle ways and grim determination, of restlessness and calm, of
forethought, fearlessness, and frankness, make him at once a unique
and central figure in the decade of war and reconstruction that forms
so important a chapter in the story of the United States of America.
William Tecumseh Sherman was born on February 8, 1820, in the town of
Lancaster, the county-seat of that fair and fertile section known as
Fairfield County, in the southern part of the State of Ohio--the busy
commonwealth that furnished 300,000 men to the armies of the Union,
and gave to the Civil War its three greatest generals; for Grant and
Sherman were Ohio born, and Sheridan's boyhood was spent in the same
State.
But Sherman's ancestors were of stout Puritan stock, dating back
almost to the days of the Mayflower. His first American "forebear" was
a Puritan minister, Rev. John Sherman, an emigrant to the Connecticut
colony from Essex in England. Of one of the collateral branches was
Roger Sherman, drafter and signer of the Declaration of Independence.
The father of the soldier was Judge Sherman, of the Ohio Supreme
Court; his mother was "a Hoyt of New England."
William Tecumseh Sherman was the sixth of eleven children, a younger
brother being the lad who, later, became Senator John Sherman of Ohio.
Judge Sherman, the father of the boys, died in 1829, and William was
adopted into the family of Senator Thomas Ewing, of Ohio, a resident
of Lancaster, and a notable figure in American history, for he was
senator and cabinet minister for nearly forty years.
Sherman's training was that of a soldier from boyhood. At sixteen, he
was entered as a cadet at the Military Academy at West Point, from
which he graduated in 1840, standing sixth in a class of 42.
Engineering was his favorite study, but devotion to his books seems
not to have kept him out of mischief. He was not, he himself admitted
later, "a Sunday-school cadet," his record for behavior being 124 in
the Academy standard--not so very far from the foot. But Grant, it
must be remembered, ranked even lower in his behavior record, standing
at 149.
The twenty years that followed Sherman's graduation from West Point
were variously spent. He was commissioned second lieutenant in the
Third Artillery, July 1, 1840, and ordered to Florida to face the
hostile Seminoles. He was promoted to be first lieutenant November 30,
1841, and in 1842 was ordered to Fort Morgan, in Alabama. From 1843 to
1846 he was stationed at Fort Moultrie, in Charleston Harbor (where
the afterward famous Major Robert Anderson was his superior officer),
at Bellefontaine, Alabama, and at Pittsburg, in Pennsylvania, on
recruiting service. When the war with Mexico was declared, Lieutenant
Sherman was sent to California, then a debatable land. He reached
Monterey Bay, by way of "the Horn," in January, 1847, and spent three
years in California, returning east as bearer of despatches to the War
Department in 1850. In May, 1850, he married Miss Ellen Ewing,
daughter of Senator Ewing, then Secretary of the Interior under
President Taylor, and in September following he was commissioned as
captain and sent to St. Louis.
It was at this time, so Sherman notes in his "Memoirs," that he felt a
great disappointment to think that the war with Mexico was fought to a
finish without his having been "in it," and he adds, "of course, I
thought it was the last and only chance in my day, and that my career
as a soldier was at an end." It was at an end for a time, for after
garrison duty at St. Louis and New Orleans, he resigned from the army,
and, in 1853, sought to make his fortune in business.
He first went to California as manager of the San Francisco branch of
a St. Louis bank, but the ill success of the enterprise drove him east
again in 1857, when he engaged in the banking business in New York
City. To this enterprise, however, the famous panic of 1857 put an
early end, and in 1858 he was embarked in the law, with an office at
Leavenworth, Kan. This, too, failing to supply sufficient bread and
butter, he tried farming in Ohio for a while, and then applied for a
government position in Washington. Instead of this, however, he
secured an appointment as Superintendent and Professor of Engineering
in a new military college just started at Alexandria, in Louisiana. He
entered upon the duties of his position on the 1st of January, 1860,
when the mutterings of rebellion were already abroad; and just as he
had put the academy into good working order the war-cloud became so
black that Sherman, in a manly letter to Governor Moore, of Louisiana,
declared his intention of maintaining his allegiance to "the old
constitution as long as a fragment of it survives," resigned his
office, and returned to Ohio. In April, 1861, he accepted the
presidency of a St. Louis street railway company. Then Sumter was
fired on, the war fever filled the land, troops were hurried to the
front, and Sherman signified to the Secretary of War his desire to
serve his country "in the capacity for which I was trained." On May
14, 1861, he was appointed colonel of the Thirteenth United States
Infantry, and assigned to inspection duty in Washington under General
Scott, the commander-in-chief; and then the real story of his life
began.
At first fate seemed to be against him. He was too outspoken and
hard-headed to suit the reckless and effusive boasters of those early
days of the war, which he insisted would be long and bloody, unless
the whole military power of the Republic was put into the field to
crush the rebellion before it could grow into a revolution. He was as
disgusted as Washington had been in revolutionary times, with
short-service enlistments, and refused point-blank to go to Ohio to
enlist "three-months men," saying, in his blunt way, "You might as
well try to put out fire with a squirt gun as expect to put down this
rebellion with three-months troops." He was assigned to the command of
the Third Brigade of the First Division of McDowell's army, and had
his "baptism of fire" upon the disastrous field of Bull Run, which he
has characterized as "one of the best planned and worst fought battles
of the war." That famous "skedaddle," as it was the fashion to call
it, he frankly admitted, in his official report, began among the men
of his brigade, and the "disorderly retreat" speedily became a
humiliating rout, which only a few cool-headed officers, such as
Colonel Sherman, could check or control.
The chagrin over the stampede at Bull Run was so great, that the more
conscientious Union officers expected to be held responsible for it
and duly court-martialed; but to Colonel Sherman's surprise, his
superiors saw beyond the demoralization of the moment, and in August,
1861, he was made brigadier-general of volunteers and transferred to
the Department of the Cumberland, with head-quarters at Louisville,
Ky. From thenceforth all his fighting and all his fame was associated
with the armies of the West.
At once he saw the desperate condition of affairs in Kentucky--a
border State, only to be held for the Union by prompt and decisive
measures. He called for reinforcements frequently and emphatically,
and when the Secretary of War visited him on a tour of inspection, and
asked his views on the situation, Sherman paralyzed him by asserting
that for the defence of Kentucky, 60,000 men were needed at once, and
that 200,000 would be necessary there before the war in that State
could be ended. This was so out of proportion to the Secretary's
estimate that Sherman was declared crazy; he was deprived of his
command at the front and relegated to a camp of instruction near St.
Louis.
But so shrewd and correct an observer, so energetic a leader, and so
determined a fighter, could not long be left in retirement, and in
February, 1862, General Sherman was ordered to assume command of the
forces at Paducah, Ky. Desperate fighting soon followed. The battle of
Shiloh (sometimes called Pittsburg Landing) showed of what stuff the
"crazy Sherman," as the newspapers had called him, was made, and from
Shiloh's bloody field in 1862, to Johnston's surrender at Raleigh in
1865, Sherman's fame rose steadily, until it left him one of the three
greatest generals of the Civil War, and one of the famous commanders
of the century.
From Shiloh to Raleigh, Sherman stood, in a measure, as Grant's right
hand, for, even when Grant was "hammering away" in Virginia, Sherman,
by his strategy, shrewdness, and daring in the West was giving him
material support and help. In the three years of fighting, from 1862
to 1865, these events stand prominently out in Sherman's military
record--the tenacity with which he held the right of the line at
Shiloh, the faithful service he rendered as commander of the left
before Vicksburg, his rapid relief of Knoxville, his brilliant capture
of Atlanta, his daring and famous march to the sea and the capture of
Savannah, his equally daring march through the Carolinas to the help
of Grant, and his final capture of Johnston's army, which was the real
close of the war.
In all these events the peculiar traits of character that made Sherman
so conspicuous a success stood out in bold relief--his coolness in
danger, his bravery in action, his daring in devices, his readiness of
invention, his electric surprises, his scientific strategy, his
ruthlessness in destruction, his courtesy to the conquered, his
devotion to his soldiers, his loyalty to his superior in command, his
restlessness, his energy, his determination to succeed. These all
contributed to the result that made "Sherman's army" famous the world
over, and stamped him as the hero of a campaign that, according to
military critics, "stands alone in the history of modern warfare."
His scientific fencing with General Joseph E. Johnston, the
Confederate leader, was as masterly as it was effective. He forced his
rival from the stand he had taken as warder of the gateways to the
South's supply land, fighting him step by step from Dalton backward to
Atlanta, and capturing that stronghold of the Confederacy by
persistent and desperate fighting. Then, when Atlanta was won,
Sherman's ability to cut the Gordian knot, as no other man dared, was
displayed with especial force. Instead of frittering away his precious
time by simply holding Atlanta, or wasting strength unnecessarily by
hunting up a baffled and elusive foe, or devoting all his energy to
keeping open his long line of communication and supply, he determined
to strike a disastrous blow at the Confederacy, swiftly and
unexpectedly. Cutting loose from his connection with the West, he
would live on the enemy and lay waste the storehouse of the
Confederacy--or, as he expressed it in outlining his plans to General
Grant, "move through Georgia, smashing things, to the sea."
The boldness of this desperate measure at first attracted, as it
afterward alarmed, the authorities at Washington. Consent was given
and then recalled, but, before the recall could reach him Sherman had
acted quickly, fearing this same countermand. Upon receipt of the
order consenting to his march, he cut the telegraph wires to the
north, then he burned his bridges, tore up the railroad that connected
him with the West, and, with his army reduced to its actual available
fighting strength of 60,000 men, with banners streaming, gun-barrels
glistening in the sun, bands playing, and the men singing lustily
"Glory, glory, hallelujah!" Atlanta was left behind, and "Sherman's
army" set its face eastward and commenced its memorable march to the
sea.
In two parallel columns the army of invasion and destruction moved
through the fertile land, cutting a swath of desolation forty miles
wide, and crippling the Confederacy by dissipating its most cherished
resources. For fully a month the army was practically lost, so far as
communication with the North was concerned. Then it struck the sea at
Savannah, captured that beautiful city, and, in the celebrated
despatch which actually reached President Lincoln on Christmas Eve,
General Sherman presented to the President and the country "the city
of Savannah, as a Christmas gift."
Savannah taken, the more difficult march northward was determined
upon, so as to make a junction with Grant before Richmond, and end the
war by one final and tremendous stroke. The "Campaign of the
Carolinas," as this northward march was called, was a really greater
achievement than the march to the sea, for it was against more
formidable natural odds, and was done in midwinter. The distance
covered, from Savannah to Goldsboro, in North Carolina, was four
hundred and twenty-five miles; five large rivers were crossed, three
important cities were captured, and the Stars and Stripes were once
more flung to the breeze above the ruins of Fort Sumter. And yet, in
fifty days from the start, the army reached Goldsboro, "in superb
order," and concluded what Sherman himself designates as "one of the
longest and most important marches ever made by an organized army in a
civilized country." It was a great achievement, but it was without the
novelty, the mystery, and the dramatic qualities of the earlier
cross-country campaign, and so it has come to pass that the first has
been the most famous, and Sherman's march to the sea has gone into
history as one of the romances and glories of the War of the
Rebellion.
The campaign of the Carolinas fitly ended, as had the march to the
sea, in victory; and the successes at Averysboro and Burtonville
culminated on April 26, 1865, in the surrender, near Raleigh, of
Johnston, and the last organized army of the Confederacy.
The war was over. Sherman's army marched northward to Washington,
where, on May 24, 1865, on the second day of the famous Grand Review,
General Sherman and his victorious army marched past the presidential
reviewing stand--"sixty-five thousand men," says General Sherman, "in
splendid physique, who had just completed a march of nearly two
thousand miles in a hostile country." Then came the disbandment;
Sherman bade his "boys" good-by in a ringing farewell order; the men
departed to their waiting homes, and the splendid "Army of the West"
was a thing of the past.
After the conclusion of the war General Sherman was, for four years,
stationed at St. Louis, as Commander of the Military Division of the
Mississippi. He was a notable public character, with a reputation for
bravery that none dare assail, and a record as a soldier that made him
one of the nation's heroes. He stood next to Grant in position, merit,
and popularity; and when, in 1869, General Grant was elected to the
presidency, Sherman, who had been named lieutenant-general in 1866,
was promoted to the vacant post as general of the army, with
head-quarters at Washington.
He visited Europe in 1871-72 and, both because of his own brilliant
record, and his official position as head of the American army, he was
everywhere received with honor and distinction. Returning home he
wrote his "Memoirs;" they were published in 1875, and stamped him, in
the opinion of critics, as "by far the ablest writer among America's
military men."
On February 8, 1884, he was placed upon the retired list--"turned out
to grass," as he expressed it, "and told I could spend the rest of my
days in peace and retirement." As an especial mark of the nation's
pride in his record, he was, as the order stated, "placed upon the
retired list of the army, without reduction in his current pay and
allowances," and the President in the same order publicly put on
record the gratitude of the American people "for the services of
incalculable value rendered by General Sherman in the War for the
Union, which his great military genius and daring did so much to end."
It was a fitting tribute to the man who had worn the uniform of his
country for forty years, faithful to every trust and equal to every
emergency, and who had risen through every grade from a cadetship and
a lieutenancy, to the proud eminence of General of the Armies of the
United States.
The twenty-six years that were his after the close of the great
struggle in which he had been one of the central figures, were filled
with a quiet enjoyment of life and a wide personal popularity.
Wherever he went he was a living hero, welcomed and honored as such by
the people who owed so much to his wise brain and his unsheathed
sword. He could have been President of the United States, had he been
willing to accept the nomination that was offered him; instead, he
declined with peremptory and characteristic bluntness, and he is, it
is believed, the only man who ever did refuse that high office.
After his retirement he made his home, first in St. Louis and then in
New York, where the last five years of his life were passed, and where
he speedily became one of the great city's familiar, honored, and
notable figures. Here, too, the final call came to him. On February
14, 1891, when he had just passed his seventy-first birthday, sounded
the order "parade is dismissed," and Sherman died in his own home, in
West Seventy-first Street, mourned by an entire nation. He was buried
in St. Louis by the side of his wife, who had died in 1890.
William Tecumseh Sherman was, in the strictest sense of the word, a
soldier. His bearing and presence told of camp and uniform. With a
military education and military environments, he could not understand,
and could not calmly brook, the cautious conservatism of the civilian,
which would often temporize when swift, determined action seemed
necessary, and which was often boastful at home, and timorous in the
field. Able in action, fierce in assault, unerring in judgment,
watchful in detail; with a sagacity and foresight that amounted almost
to genius, and a memory that was marvellous, General Sherman was a
great military leader, and one who, when the opportunity came, rode
straight into fame and reputation. As determined as he was daring, as
magnanimous as he was impulsive, as clear-headed as he was energetic,
and as gentle-hearted in peace as he was ruthless in war, he was
indeed a unique figure in America's history, and, as time goes on, his
name will stand as that of one of the great Republic's most famous men
and most cherished memories.
[Signature of the author.]