William Tecumseh Sherman

William Tecumseh Sherman (1820-1891), United States general in the American Civil War (1861-1865). Sherman is remembered for his campaign in Georgia and the Carolinas in which the Northern troops devastated the Southern landscape and resources.

Sherman was born on February 8, 1820, in Lancaster, Ohio, and educated at the U.S. Military Academy. After an undistinguished military career he resigned from the army in 1853 to become a partner in a banking firm in San Francisco. He was president of a military college in Alexandria, Louisiana (now Louisiana State University) from 1859 to the beginning of 1861, when Louisiana seceded from the Union. At the outbreak of the Civil War in 1861, he offered his services to the Union Army and was put in command of a volunteer infantry regiment, becoming a brigadier general of volunteers after the First Battle of Bull Run. Sherman led a division at the Battle of Shiloh on April 6 and 7, 1862, and was rewarded for his part in the victory by being promoted to major general of volunteers. In December of that year he failed in an attempt to seize the Confederate stronghold of Vicksburg, on the Mississippi River, but in 1863 he fought under General Ulysses S. Grant in the campaign that ended in the capture of that city in July. He was given command of the Army of Tennessee in the fall of 1863 and fought in the Battle of Chattanooga.

In 1864 Sherman was made supreme commander of the armies in the West and was ordered to move against Atlanta, Georgia. During the opening months of the campaign, he lost the Battle of Kennesaw Mountain, and he did not capture Atlanta until almost three months later, on September 1. After ordering the burning of the military resources of the city, he launched his most celebrated military action, known as Sherman’s march to the sea, in which, with about 60,000 picked men, he marched from Atlanta to Savannah, Georgia, on the Atlantic coast. After reaching Savannah, Sherman next set out to join forces with Grant in Virginia by marching from Georgia up through North and South Carolina. During Sherman’s march, the Northern soldiers pillaged the areas they passed through demolishing military resources along with houses, farms, and railroads. Destruction was especially severe in South Carolina because Union soldiers blamed the state for starting the war. In February 1865 Columbia, the capital of South Carolina, was burned to the ground, although the origins of the fire are unknown. Sherman hoped that the destruction of his march would lower Southern morale and help end the war.

After three months of fighting, Sherman reached Raleigh, North Carolina, and was prepared to continue north to Virginia. However, the war came to an end. Following the surrender of Confederate General Robert E. Lee to Grant on April 9, the Confederate army confronting Sherman surrendered to him at Durham Station on April 26, 1865.

After the war Sherman was commissioned lieutenant general in the regular army and, following Grant’s election to the presidency, he was promoted to the rank of full general on March 4, 1869 and given command of the entire U.S. Army. He published his Memoirs in 1875 and retired in 1883. The famous phrase “war is hell” is attributed to Sherman.