But you cannot have peace and a division of our country. [55], In 1859, Sherman accepted a job as the first superintendent of the Louisiana State Seminary of Learning & Military Academy in Pineville, Louisiana, a position he sought at the suggestion of Major Don Carlos Buell and obtained through the support of General George Mason Graham. [101] Sherman's operations were supposed to be coordinated with an advance on Vicksburg by Grant from another direction. Sherman's March to the Sea (also known as the Savannah campaign or simply Sherman's March) was a military campaign of the American Civil War conducted through Georgia from November 15 until December 21, 1864, by William Tecumseh Sherman, major general of the Union Army.The campaign began with Sherman's troops leaving the captured city of Atlanta on November 15 and ended with the capture of the . Sherman had dismissed the intelligence reports from militia officers, refusing to believe that Confederate general Albert Sidney Johnston would leave his base at Corinth. [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'". Looting was officially forbidden, but historians disagree on how rigorously this regulation was enforced. [98] Grant made Sherman a corps commander and put him in charge of half of his forces. This meeting was memorialized in G. P. A. Healy's painting The Peacemakers. [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. [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. This made Sherman senior in rank to Ulysses S. Grant, his future commander. Early life and career "[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. 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". [230] In 1871, Sherman ordered that the leaders of the Warren Wagon Train Raid, an attack by a Kiowa and Comanche war party from which Sherman himself had narrowly escaped, be tried for murder in Jacksboro, Texas. [45][46] He resigned his commission in 1853 and entered civilian life as manager of the San Francisco branch of the Bank of Lucas, Turner & Co., whose corporate headquarters were in St. Louis. [291] This led to the publication of several works, notably John B. Walters's Merchant of Terror: General Sherman and Total War (1973),[292] that presented Sherman as responsible for "a mode of warfare which transgressed all ethical rules and showed an utter disregard for human rights and dignity. [97], On November 1862, U. S. Grant, acting as commander of the Union forces in the state of Mississippi, launched a campaign to capture the city of Vicksburg, the principal Confederate stronghold along the Mississippi River. The family tree for General William Tecumseh Sherman is still in progress. [102] Soon after, Major General John A. McClernand ordered Sherman's XV Corps to join in his assault on Arkansas Post. For other uses, see. Sherman took command of the infantrymen in the local Union garrison and successfully repelled the Confederate attack. 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". Sherman offered Grant an example from his own life: "Before the battle of Shiloh, I was cast down by a mere newspaper assertion of 'crazy', but that single battle gave me new life, and I'm now in high feather." I want peace, and believe it can only be reached through union and war, and I will ever conduct war with a view to perfect and early success. "[293] Following Walters, James Reston Jr. argued in 1984 that Sherman had planted the "seed for the Agent Orange and Agent Blue programs of food deprivation in Vietnam". William Tecumseh Sherman family tree Parents James Edgar Sherman 1839 - 1919 Joanna Williams 1836 - 1899 Spouse (s) Margaret E . [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. Maria Ewing Sherman (1851-1913) 2. William Tecumseh Sherman. He married Mary Elizabeth Berry on 15 October 1899, in Greenwood, Kansas, United States. "Fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom." [108] The bulk of Grant's forces were now organized into three corps: the XIII Corps under McClernand, the XV Corps under Sherman, and the XVII Corps under Sherman's young protg, Maj. Gen. James B. The massive Confederate attack on the morning of April 6, 1862, took most of the senior Union commanders by surprise. 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.. By Himself, published by D. Appleton & Company in two volumes, began with the year 1846 (when the Mexican War began) and ended with a chapter about the "military lessons of the [civil] war". [39] He also opened a general store in Coloma, which earned him $1,500 in 1849 while his army salary was only $70 a month. This helped ensure that the Mississippi River would remain in Union hands for the remainder of the war. [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. The severity of the destructive acts by Union troops was significantly greater in South Carolina than in Georgia or North Carolina. [9] He recovered by forging a close partnership with General Ulysses S. Grant. [40] Even though he earned a brevet promotion to captain in 1848 for his "meritorious service", his lack of combat experience and relatively slow advancement within the army discouraged him. General William Tecumseh "Cump" Sherman Born 8 Feb 1820 in Lancaster, Fairfield, Ohio, USA Ancestors Son of Charles Robert Sherman and Mary (Hoyt) Sherman The family tree for General William Tecumseh Sherman should not be considered exhaustive or authoritative. [214] One of the most serious accusations against Sherman was that he allowed his troops to burn the city of Columbia. People Projects Discussions Surnames 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". [33] Sherman and Halleck lived in a house in Monterey, now known as the "Sherman Quarters", from 1847 to 1849. [In his Memoirs] the vigorous account of his pre-war activities and his conduct of his military operations is varied in just the right proportion and to just the right degree of vivacity with anecdotes and personal experiences. The General William Tecumseh Sherman Monument is an equestrian statue of American Civil War Major General William Tecumseh Sherman located in Sherman Plaza, which is part of President's Park in Washington, D.C., in the United States.The selection of an artist in 1896 to design the monument was highly controversial. One 19th-century source, for example, states that "General Sherman, we believe, is the only eminent American named from an Indian chief". William Tecumseh Sherman achieved the rank of Major General during the Civil War. [30] In his memoirs, Sherman relates a hike with Halleck to the summit of Corcovado, overlooking Rio de Janeiro in Brazil, in order to examine the city's aqueduct design. 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. Fires began that night and by next morning most of the central city was destroyed. His son, Thomas Ewing Sherman, who was a Jesuit priest, presided over his father's funeral masses in New York City and in St. [21] His friends and family called him "Cump".[22]. Sherman conducted the ensuing Jackson Expedition, which concluded successfully on July 25 with the re-capture of the city of Jackson. Afterwards the rank of Commander, Military Division of the Mississippi, 1864-1866; Commander, Military Division of the Missouri, 1866-1869. It also dealt a major blow to the popularity of the Democratic presidential candidate, George B. McClellan, whose victory in the election had until then appeared likely to many, including Lincoln himself. Some of the most recently added connections of famous kin for General William Tecumseh Sherman Rainn Wilson TV and Movie Actor 6th cousin 6 times removed via Matthew Marvin "[275] In letters written in 1865 to Thomas, his eldest surviving son, General Sherman said "I don't want you to be a soldier or a priest, but a good useful man",[276] and complained that Thomas's mother Ellen "thinks religion is so important that everything else must give way to it". In 1864, Sherman succeeded Grant as the Union commander in the Western Theater. In all else you are totally unprepared, with a bad cause to start with. [121], The Meridian campaign marked the end of Sherman's brief tenure as commander of the Army of the Tennessee. Sherman's father died unexpectedly in 1829, when Sherman was nine years old, and due to the family's financial problems, he was sent to live with Lancaster . Sherman, however, succeeded in keeping his own bank solvent. Republican Governor Daniel Henry Chamberlain appealed to President Grant for military assistance. [132] The capture of Atlanta made Sherman a household name and was decisive in ensuring Lincoln's re-election in November. [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. In December, he was put on leave by Henry W. Halleck, commander of the Department of the Missouri, who found him unfit for duty and sent him to Lancaster, Ohio, to recuperate. William Tecumseh Sherman (1820-1891) 2. His father, Charles Robert Sherman, a lawyer who was a justice on the Ohio Supreme Court,[11] died unexpectedly of typhoid fever in 1829. [175] According to Sherman, My aim then was to whip the rebels, to humble their pride, to follow them to their inmost recesses, and make them fear and dread us. This strategy has been characterized by some military historians as an early form of total war, although the appropriateness of that term has been questioned by many scholars. [173] Sherman's views on race evolved significantly over time. At the White House, Sherman met with Abraham Lincoln a few days after his inauguration as president of the United States. [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. [308], Other posthumous tributes include Sherman Circle in the Petworth neighborhood of Washington, D.C.,[309] the M4 Sherman tank, which was named by the British during World War II,[310] and the "General Sherman" Giant Sequoia tree, which is the most massive documented single-trunk tree in the world. In response to this threat, Grant instructed Sherman to attack Johnston. Sherman's younger brother John was, from his seat in the U.S. Congress, a prominent advocate against slavery. [130][d], Sherman's Atlanta campaign concluded successfully on September 2, 1864, with the capture of the city, which Hood had been forced to abandon. It was a bitterly cold day and a friend of Johnston, fearing that the general might become ill, asked him to put on his hat. 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. Along with fellow Lieutenants Henry Halleck and Edward Ord, Sherman embarked from New York City on the 198-day journey around Cape Horn, aboard the converted sloop USS Lexington. He dealt in a friendly and unaffected way with the black people that he met during his career. [19][20] As an adult, Sherman signed all his correspondence including to his wife "W. T. 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. [113] His family traveled from Ohio to visit him at the camp near Vicksburg. [228], When the Medicine Lodge Treaty failed in 1868, Sherman authorized his subordinate in Missouri, Major General Philip Sheridan, to lead the winter campaign of 186869, of which the Battle of Washita River was part. As with all family trees on this website, the sources for each ancestor are listed on the family group pages so that you can personally judge the reliability of the information. [186][187] In 1888, near the end of his life, Sherman published an essay in the North American Review defending the full civil rights of black citizens in the former Confederacy. The documentary's title refers to U.S. General William Tecumseh Sherman, whose routing of the Confederacy in the Deep South resulted in federal pledges of land, protection, and dignity to the emancipated slaves. Fast Delivery. He was particularly interested in targeting South Carolina, the first state to secede from the Union, because of the effect that it would have on Southern morale. Another younger brother, Hoyt Sherman, was a successful banker. In 1859, he became superintendent of the Louisiana State Seminary of Learning & Military Academy (now Louisiana State University), a position from which he resigned when Louisiana seceded from the Union. [10][258] During this period, he remained in contact with war veterans, and he was an active member of various social and charitable organizations. War is cruelty, and you cannot refine it; and those who brought war into our country deserve all the curses and maledictions a people can pour out. [148][149] His army proceeded north through South Carolina against light resistance from the troops of Confederate general Johnston. Johnston did catch a serious cold and died one month later of pneumonia. [207][208] Though exact figures are not available, the loss of civilian life appears to have been very small. The site was chosen because Sherman was reported to have stood there while reviewing returning Civil War troops in May 1865. In February 1864, he commanded an expedition to Meridian, Mississippi, intended to disrupt Confederate infrastructure and communications. [278], Some modern historians have characterized Sherman as a deist in the manner of Thomas Jefferson,[279] while others identify him as an agnostic who accepted many Christian values but lacked faith. Sherman appointed Brig. 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. Only in your spirit and determination are you prepared for war. [128][129] Meanwhile, in August, Sherman "learned that I had been commissioned a major-general in the regular army, which was unexpected, and not desired until successful in the capture of Atlanta". In March, Halleck's command was redesignated the Department of the Mississippi and enlarged to unify command in the West. Sherman's efforts in that position were focused on protecting the main wagon roads, such as the Oregon, Bozeman and Santa Fe Trails. I know I had no hand in making this war, and I know I will make more sacrifices to-day than any of you to secure peace. [63], In January 1861, as more Southern states seceded from the Union, Sherman was required to take receipt of arms surrendered to the Louisiana State Militia by the U.S. arsenal at Baton Rouge. Sherman observed but did not join in the religious ceremonies of the Ewing household. You mistake, too, the people of the North. 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