by
Patricia Daniels
Member Lee County Civil War Roundtable
Presentation given 12/04/2025
Perhaps the most
savage of the Civil War period, William Tecumseh Sherman is recognized today for
his command of military strategy and criticized for the harshness of his
scorched earth policies during the Civil War.
He was one of its most valuable military officers. His drive and determination succeeded in
cutting the Confederacy in half, the of taking Atlanta by siege, and then continuing
onward with his march to the sea and north through the Carolinas. He was a hero in the North and a monster in
the South.
The British
historian B.H. Liddell Hart in the 1930’s recognized him as, “the most original
genius of the Civil War and the first modern general.” He was a complex and intelligent man who was
influenced dramatically by his early childhood upbringing.
Born February 8,
1820, in Lancaster, Ohio to the politically prominent family of Judge Charles
R. and Mary Hoyt Sherman, William Tecumseh Sherman was the third son and the sixth
child in a family of 11 children. His
father named him after the Shawnee Chief, Tecumseh, an American Indian who had
sided with the British and was killed during the War of 1812.
A justice on Ohio’s
State Supreme Court, Charles Sherman would die unexpectedly of typhoid fever at
the age of 41, while riding the circuit.
Tecumseh was known as ‘Cump’ by his family. He was nine when his father died. His mother, Mary, and the children were left penniless. Destitute, Mary would keep her three youngest
children. Her oldest was finishing at Ohio University
and would be on his own, and her second, Elizabeth, was about to be
married. The other six middle children
were taken and raised by neighbors, friends, and relatives.
Cump was selected
for adoption by wealthy friends of his parents, Thomas and Maria Ewing of
Lancaster. Maria agreed to the adoption
but wanted only the brightest of the six available children. Cump was her choice. She would become the chief disciplinarian for
her family’s children and Cump. The
Ewings were a strict Roman Catholic family, and Maria was ridged and
uncompromising in matters of religion. Though
Cump had been initially baptized in the Presbyterian faith, Maria insisted he
be baptized again in the Catholic faith.
There is some
difference of opinion among historians whether ‘William’ was added at the time
of his Catholic baptism or if it had been part of Cump’s original baptismal
name. The name “Cump” would continue
throughout Sherman’s life among those who knew him well and were his friends. He would use W. T. Sherman on his official
papers, and his soldiers during the war would refer to him as “Uncle Billy.”
Sherman’s wealthy
adoptive father, Thomas Ewing, was a kind and generous man, though he and Cump
would disagree often in the ensuing years.
Thomas Ewing was prominent in political circles and was responsible for Sherman’s
acceptance at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point which he entered at the
age of 16, in 1844. Tecumseh would
graduate 3rd academically in his class but would be ranked 6th
because of his earned demerits.
As a child he
seemed to be shy and sensitive, though he saw himself as a mischievous and
adventurous boy. The loss of his father
and the separation from his mother whom he would struggle to help financially
with his meager income had psychological consequences in the emotional crises
he would experience during his war years.
Following army
duty in Florida, South Carolina and California during the Mexican War he would
resign from the army and seek success in law and banking. Somehow failure seemed to follow him in
civilian life. In 1859, he became the superintendent
of the new Louisiana State Military College known today as Louisiana State
University. He was recommended for the
position by Don Carlos Buell and friend, Braxton Bragg, two of his West Point
classmates, one who would later prove his enemy, and the other who would provide
him support at Shiloh. Sherman was
excellent in the Louisiana Military College position and became familiar and
fond of the South during the time he spent there.
With Southern
secession he would be offered, and reject, a commission in the Confederate
Army. He distrusted democracy but was a
Northern man and a loyal Unionist.
His marriage to
his half-sister, Elenor Ewing, following a seven-year engagement was a
difficult and confrontational one. She
adored her father, loved Landcaster, and expected to live and be respected as a
person of social standing and wealth.
She was a devout and determined Roman Catholic. She was not submissive as an ideal wife at
the time ought to be. She considered herself “a civilized, refined and sickly
woman.”
Sherman hated
Landcaster, had no interested in formal religion of any kind, and struggled to
become successful in an era of male dominance and machoism. He struggled to achieve success and
recognition in each of his pursuits and wanted desperately to be recognized and
appreciated. He saw Ohio as his
doom. He was often unhappy and deeply
depressed.
Theirs was a
disjointed marriage. Their unresolved
personality conflicts festered for years.
Ellen saw herself as man’s better half, not his slave, and did not
appreciate Sherman’s need for manly standing.
Worst of all was her ceaseless campaign to convert Sherman to what he
considered an intolerant Catholic faith.
Much of their marriage was lived apart, and in their correspondence, they
shared little affection. He deeply resented
her “bottomless material needs.” She
would still be most supportive of him throughout the war years.
Sherman believed
an excess of democracy caused the Civil War.
He felt the popular opinion
formulated in bar rooms and village newspapers had broken the law and caused
the collapse of constitutional democracy.
He saw the negro as an inferior race, and he defended slavery. He believed only the army and men like
himself could save the country.
With secession he
left his Louisiana position, returned to Washington, and was assigned a command
of Wisconsin and New York volunteers.
Bull Run would be his first experience.
An old army man, he had never been in battle, and Bull Run would prove a
disaster.
He would redeem
himself at Vicksburg, Shiloh and in Tennessee.
After the capture
of Atlanta, Sherman’s idea to wage war against the civilian population
crystalized when he decided military occupation of southern cities was
crippling the army. He felt conquered
cities should be destroyed instead of occupied.
Occupation was crippling the Federal armies by forcing them to leave
detachments behind to guard and protect the interests of a hostile population.
He supported the
psychological terror caused by the evacuating of Atlanta and the forages,
burning, and pillaging by his troops while in Georgia.
He was a famous
and furious man, “brilliant, insightful, garrulous, complicated, tightly wound,
energetic, aggressive, salty, angry and racist.
He was grudge-bearing, yet often kind, insecure and positive,” about
what the war was about and how it would end.
Following his early
Kentucky episode of “despair” in 1861, newspapers often mentioned Sherman’s “lunacy.” In the 20th Century a condition such
as his was often referred to as manic depressive. Today the condition is referred to as
bi-polar disorder, and today, the current theory is that Sherman carried a
“narcissistic injury” that was inflicted at an early age. Its hallmarks are notions of exaggerated
self-esteem, vaulting confidence, infallibility and omnipotence. “The
narcissist is a restless person, often a workaholic at a job he does well. He never admits to failure or shortcomings
and rationalizes his errors by assigning blame to others or to circumstances
beyond his control.”
Following his
controversial handling of Joe Johnston’s surrender of all Confederate forces east
and west of the Mississippi in April 1865, it was reported that Sherman had
once again lapsed into “lunacy.” He was aware
that he had earned the official displeasure of President Johnson and Secretary
of War, Edwin M. Stanton, and he was most concerned about how he stood with his
superiors in Washinton.
At the same time Sherman,
the soldier, was broadly popular with the public in the North.
After the war, his
family moved to the booming city of St. Louis, Missouri, and Sherman plunged
into his new command which left him little time for the family he cared for
deeply. (He still suffered from the loss of his favorite, Willie, to typhoid fever in 1863, at age 9, after Willie,
his mother and sister, Minnie, came to visit him at Big Black River, a camp 20
miles south of Vicksburg following that victory.)
His new command, The
Division of the Missouri, more than a million square miles and a full third of
the continental United States, was vast and varied. There were new challenges that were not
familiar to him, including the baffling and inscrutable red man, the Department
of the Interior and its Office of Indian Affairs, and Congress. Sherman had
neither political nor diplomatic skill.
He saw for the Indians extinction or confinement, and he felt they
should be confined to areas where the settlers moving west would not or could
not live. He felt the same about the
herds of buffalo that were a primary source of food for the Indians. By the late 1870’s, his job of moving Indians
to reservations or destroying them and replacing the buffalo with settlers’ cattle
was for the most part successfully completed as far as he was concerned.
But at the same
time, and contrary to all this, Sherman visited the Navajo who had been forced
from their homeland and were living at Bosque Redondo, an area he compared to
the Confederate prisoner of war camp at Andersonville, Georgia with soil too
poor to grow crops, no water, and living on minimal diets of army rations. Despite considerable opposition he moved the
Navajo back to their original home. A similar
situation with settlers and the Utes resulted in his defense of the Indians
rather than the settlers, all seemingly incongruous in light of his earlier forced
actions against the red man.
In 1868, U.S. Grant
was elected president, and Sherman moved with his family to Washington. He became the commanding general of the
United State Army, a position in which he would serve until 1884. In 1874, He
would transfer his headquarters from Washington to St. Louis, with Grant’s approval.
Then in 1878, his
son Tom completed his studies at Yale and entered law school in St. Louis. He then sent a letter to his father the
following spring indicating he would not handle the family’s future financial
interests but was answering a higher calling to become a Jesuit priest. His father was devastated. Tom would leave the U.S. for Europe and Rome.
William and Ellen decided
then to spend their last years in their home in St. Louis. Willie’s body would be buried there in the
Calvary Cemetery with them along with Charles Celestine Sherman, an infant son
conceived at Big Black River, whom the general had never seen. (The baby had been born in 1864, when his
father was driving on Atlanta. Sherman
learned of his death from a Savanah newspaper six month later.)
But things
changed, and St. Louis would not be their final home. The children had moved East, and Ellen wanted
to be near them. In 1888, Sherman bought
a house on West Seventy-first Street in New York. Ellen’s health was deteriorating, and in
November she died there. It was a
terrible blow to him. Then, three years
later, on February 14, 1891, William Tecumseh Sherman would also die, probably
of pneumonia.
The Civil War
began as a “good war,” a gentlemanly affair in which the operations of the
contending armies were to be carried out with the civil population as simple
spectators. It would not remain so. Sherman carried out a policy that would bring
the enemy civilians in the army’s path stress, privation and loss. For that he received extensive condemnation,
though future military figures would ultimately give him an impressive stamp of
approval.
In the current
U.S. Army’s doctrinal manual, FM 100-5, Sherman’s “indirect approach…not only
carried on war against the enemy’s resources more extensively and systemically
than anyone else had done, but he developed also a delicate strategy of terror
directed against the enemy people’s mind.”
In the end,
Sherman has come in death to enjoy all that he sought in life. The “fair fame” he sought in life had finally
come to him.
(In 1844, the
Sisters of the Holy Cross founded the St. Mary’s Academy in Bertrand, MI. In 1855, they moved it to South Bend,
IN. Its founder, Mother Angela Gillespie
was a cousin of Ellen Ewing Sherman. (William
Tecumseh Sherman would not allow his children to be educated in Catholic
schools.) In 1864, Ellen took temporary
residence in South Bend so her young family could be formally educated at Notre
Dame and St. Mary’s Academy. The academy
gradually became today’s St. Mary’s College.
Minnie Sherman was the first female to become a student at Notre Dame!)
Resources
Fellman, Michael. Citizen Sherman: a life of William
Tecumseh Sherman. Lawrence:
University Press of Kansas, 1995.
Flood, Charles
Bracelen. Grant and Sherman. New York:
Harper Perenniel, 2005.
Kennett, Lee
B. Sherman: a Soldier’s Life. New York: HarperCollins Publishers, 2001.
McNeely, Patricia
G. Sherman’s Flame & Blame
Campaign. Columbia, S.C., 2014.
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