William Tecumseh Sherman:

His March To The Sea

William Tecumseh Sherman was born on May 8, 1820 in Lancaster, Ohio. He was educated at the U.S. Military Academy and later went on to become a Union General in the U.S. Civil War. Sherman resigned from the army in 1853 and became a partner in a banking firm in San Francisco. He became the president of the Military College in Louisiana (now Louisiana State University) from 1859-1861. Sherman offered his services at the outbreak of the Civil War in 1861 and was put in command of a volunteer infantry regiment, becoming a brigadier general of volunteers after the first Battle of Bull Run. He led his division at the Battle of Shiloh and was then promoted to major general of volunteers.

Soon after Sherman fought in the Battle of Chattanooga he was made supreme commander of the armies in the west. Sherman fought many battles with such people as Ulysses S. Grant, and against people such as Robert E. Lee before he was commissioned lieutenant general of the regular army. Following Grants election to presidency, he was promoted to the rank of full general and given command of the entire U.S. Army. William Sherman published his personal memoirs in 1875, retired in 1883, and died in 1891.

William Tecumseh Sherman, was a very talented and very successful man. He is remembered by many accomplishments, but probably most remembered by his famous March to the sea. Sherman's march to the sea was probably the most celebrated military action, in which about sixty thousand men marched with Sherman from Atlanta to the Atlantic Ocean, then north through South Carolina destroying the last of the south's economic resources.

Bedford Forrest was in Tennessee, and with Atlanta secured, Sherman dispatched George H. Thomas to Nashville to restore the order there. John B. Hood threatened Thomas's supply line, and for about a month, they both fought north of Atlanta. Sherman decided to do the complete opposite of what the strategic plan laid down by Grant six months earlier had proposed to do. In that plan Grant had insisted that Confederate armies were the first and foremost objectives for Union strategy. What Sherman decided now was that he would completely ignore the Confederate armies and go for the "spirit that sustained the Confederate nation itself", the homes, the property, the families, and the food of the Southern heartland. He would march for Savannah, Georgia and the seacoast, abandoning his own line of supply, and live off the land and harvests of the Georgia Country. Grant finally approved Sherman's plan, so Sherman set off on his march eastward, "smashing things to the sea." On November 15, 1864, Sherman began his march to the sea. "I can make . . . Georgia howl!" he promised.

Sherman left Atlanta, setting it up in flames as they left, with 62,000 men, 55,000 of them on foot, 5,000 on cavalry horses, and about 2,000 riding artillery horses. It was an army of 218 regiments, 184 of them from the West, and of these 155 were from the old Northwest Territory. This army was remembered as a lean and strong one. The bulk of the army was made up of Germans, Irish, Scotch, and English. Sherman and his army arrived in Georgia where there was no opposition, and the march was very leisurely. The army fanned out widely, covering a sixty mile span from one side to the other. The army destroyed, demolished and crushed whatever got in their way, the land, homes, buildings, and people. Bridges, railroads, machine shops, warehouses- anything of this nature that was in Shaman's path was burned and destroyed. As a result of this march eliminating a lot of the food to feed the Confederate army and its animals, the whole Confederate war effort would become weaker and weaker and weaker. Sherman went on toward the sea while the Confederacy could do nothing.

Sherman's march to the sea was a demonstration that the Confederacy could not protect its own. Many agree that Sherman was too brutal and cruel during the march to the sea, but Sherman and his men were effectively demolishing the Confederate homeland, and that was all that mattered to Sherman.

Because Sherman "waged an economic war against civilians", he has been called the first modern general. Sherman is remembered by some as one of the best generals of the U.S. Civil War, and by others (mainly who live in the south) as a cruel, brutal, horrible, and evil man. William Tecumseh Sherman is believed to have coined the phrase, "War is hell. There is many a boy here who looks on war as all glory, but, boys, it is all hell. You can bear this warning voice to generations to come."

RESOURCES:

Lewis, Lloyd. Sherman Fighting Prophet. Harcourt, Brace & World, Inc.: New York.

The American Heritage Picture History of the Civil War. Vol. 2. Editors of American Heritage.

Peoples Chronology. License from Henry Holt and Company, Inc.

The Concise Columbia Encyclopedia, Columbia University Press.