"[64], Sherman departed Louisiana and traveled to Washington, D.C., possibly in the hope of securing a position in the U.S. Army. When William Tecumseh Sherman was born on 17 May 1880, in Page, Iowa, United States, his father, Franklin Sherman, was 32 and his mother, Mary Elizabeth Van Sant, was 21. [148][149] His army proceeded north through South Carolina against light resistance from the troops of Confederate general Johnston. [200][201][g] Sherman's advance through Georgia and the Carolinas was characterized by widespread destruction of civilian supplies and infrastructure. [98] Grant made Sherman a corps commander and put him in charge of half of his forces. Oftentimes the family trees listed as still in progress have derived from research into famous people who have a kinship to this person. [214] One of the most serious accusations against Sherman was that he allowed his troops to burn the city of Columbia. The family tree for General William Tecumseh Sherman should not be considered exhaustive or authoritative. I know him well. "[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. [228] He testified in the trial on April 11 and 13, 1868. William Tecumseh Sherman (1820-1891) 2. [245], In 1875, ten years after the end of the Civil War, Sherman became one of the first Civil War generals to publish his memoirs. [14], Sherman's unusual given name has always attracted attention. Sherman expressed grave concerns about the North's poor state of preparedness for the looming civil war, but he found Lincoln unresponsive. He was Promoted to general (lieutenant general), 4 Mar 1869. "[27] Sherman was later stationed in Georgia and South Carolina. [306], The General William Tecumseh Sherman Monument (1903) by Carl Rohl-Smith[307] stands near President's Park in Washington, D.C.[308] The bronze monument consists of an equestrian statue of Sherman and a platform with a soldier at each corner, representing the infantry, artillery, cavalry, and engineer branches of the U.S. Army. [138], After November elections, Sherman began marching on November 15 with 62,000 men in the direction of the port city of Savannah, Georgia,[139] living off the land and causing, by his own estimate, more than $100million in property damage. "[88][89], After Grant captured Fort Donelson, Sherman got his wish to serve under Grant when he was assigned on March 1, 1862, to the Army of West Tennessee as commander of the 5th Division. [174] Sherman rejected this, arguing that it would have delayed the "successful end" of the war and the "[liberation of] all slaves". [256] Sherman stepped down as commanding general on November 1, 1883,[257] and retired from the army on February 8, 1884. [99] According to historian John D. Winters's The Civil War in Louisiana (1963), at this stage Sherman, had yet to display any marked talents for leadership. [225] Sherman also clashed with Eastern humanitarians who were critical of the army's harsh treatment of the Indians and who had apparently found an ally in President Grant. Since that time he has not been a communicant of any church. According to British military historian Brian Holden-Reid, "if Sherman had committed tactical errors during the attack, he more than compensated for these during the subsequent retreat". Maria Ewing Sherman (1851-1913) 2. William Tecumseh Sherman was one of the most famous military leaders of the Civil War, perhaps third after General Ulysses Grant and General Robert E. Lee. [212] This made repairs extremely difficult at a time when the Confederacy lacked both iron and heavy machinery.[213]. Senator John Sherman (his younger brother and a political ally of President Lincoln) and other connections in Washington helped him to obtain a commission. "[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". [106], The failure of the first phase of the campaign against Vicksburg led Grant to formulate an unorthodox new strategy, which called for the invading Union army to separate from its supply train and subsist by foraging. For further details about Sherman's banking career, see Dwight L. Clarke. According to Holden-Reid, Sherman finally "had cut his teeth as an army commander" with the Jackson Expedition. Only in your spirit and determination are you prepared for war. [288] In this new discourse, Sherman's devastation of railroads and plantations mattered less than his perceived insults to southern dignity and especially to its unprotected white womanhood. Born William Tecumseh SHERMAN American soldier, businessman, educator and author Born on February 08, 1820 in Lancaster, Ohio, USA , United States Died on February 14, 1891 in New York City, New York, USA Born on February 08 48 Deceased on February 14 31 Family tree Report an error Sherman Daniel 1721 - 1799 Taylor Mindwell 1720 - 1798 Stoddard Before the Civil War, however, the more conservative William T. had expressed some sympathy for the white Southerners' defense of their traditional agrarian system, including the institution of slavery. [68] In early April, Sherman declined Montgomery Blair's offer of the administrative position of chief clerk in the War Department, despite Blair's promise that it would be followed by nomination as Assistant Secretary of War after the U.S. Congress assembled in July. [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. [294] More recently, historians such as Brian Holden-Reid have challenged such readings of Sherman's record and of his contributions to modern warfare. 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. 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. When Grant became president of the United States in March 1869, Sherman succeeded him as Commanding General of the Army. [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. 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. There, Sherman had replaced his army comrade, the co-founder Henry Smith Turner when family matters forced the latter to return to St. Louis. Sherman then became the military governor of occupied Memphis. 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. The influential 20th-century British military historian and theorist B.H. Liddell Hart ranked Sherman as "the first modern general" and one of the most important strategists in the annals of war, along with Scipio Africanus, Belisarius, Napoleon Bonaparte, T.E. Lawrence, and Erwin Rommel. Sherman commanded a brigade of volunteers at the First Battle of Bull Run in 1861 before being transferred to the Western Theater. He served as a general in the Union Army during the American Civil War (18611865), achieving recognition for his command of military strategy as well as criticism for the harshness of the scorched-earth policies that he implemented against the Confederate States. I am not and cannot be. Though the commission was responsible for the negotiation of the Medicine Lodge Treaty and the Treaty of Fort Laramie, Sherman did not play a significant role in the drafting of those treaties because in both cases he was called away to Washington during the negotiations. 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. [246] The Memoirs of General William T. Sherman. [155], In late March, Sherman briefly left his forces and traveled to City Point, Virginia, to confer with Grant. The publication of Sherman's memoirs sparked controversy and drew complaints from many quarters. W. T. Sherman (1887)[285], In the years immediately after the war, Sherman was popular in the North and well regarded by his own soldiers. Sherman was one of the few Union officers to distinguish himself in the field and historian Donald L. Miller has characterized Sherman's performance at Bull Run as "exemplary". [85] His problems were compounded when the Cincinnati Commercial described him as "insane". [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 helped ensure that the Mississippi River would remain in Union hands for the remainder of the war. Sherman was then the San Francisco manager of Lucas, Turner & Co. 100% Safe Payment. Ewing was a prominent member of the Whig Party who became U.S. senator for Ohio and the first Secretary of the Interior. Sherman's initial assignments were rear-echelon commands, first of an instructional barracks near St. Louis and then in command of the District of Cairo. [42] Ellen Ewing Sherman was a devout Catholic, and the couple's children were reared in that faith. [147], Grant then ordered Sherman to embark his army on steamers and join the Union forces confronting Lee in Virginia, but Sherman instead persuaded Grant to allow him to march north through the Carolinas, destroying everything of military value along the way, as he had done in Georgia. Johnston replied: "If I were in [Sherman's] place, and he were standing in mine, he would not put on his hat." [223][h], In June 1865, two months after Lee's surrender at Appomattox, Sherman received his first postwar command, originally called the Military Division of the Mississippi, later the Military Division of the Missouri, which came to comprise the territory between the Mississippi River and the Rocky Mountains. "[92], Despite being caught unprepared by the attack, Sherman rallied his division and conducted an orderly, fighting retreat that helped avert a disastrous Union rout. In 1864, Sherman succeeded Grant as the Union commander in the Western Theater. 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