[28], While many of his colleagues saw action in the MexicanAmerican War, Sherman was assigned to administrative duties in the captured territory of California. The magazine Confederate Veteran, based in Nashville, dedicated more attention to Sherman than to any other Union general, in part to enhance the visibility of the Civil War's western theater. Holden-Reid, for instance, argued that "the concept of 'total war' is deeply flawed, an imprecise label that at best describes the two world wars but is of dubious relevance to the U.S. Civil War."[203]. [174] Sherman rejected this, arguing that it would have delayed the "successful end" of the war and the "[liberation of] all slaves". Despite his harsh treatment of the warring tribes, Sherman spoke out against speculators and government agents who abused the Native Americans living within the reservations. "[64], Sherman departed Louisiana and traveled to Washington, D.C., possibly in the hope of securing a position in the U.S. Army. His father, a lawyer and jurist, died when he was nine and the children were parceled out to relatives and friends. Sherman was distantly related to US founding father Roger Sherman. They were the parents of at least 1 son and 3 daughters. [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. [160], Sherman believed that the terms that he had agreed to were consistent with the views that Lincoln had expressed at City Point, and that they offered the best way to prevent Johnston from ordering his men to go into the wilderness and conduct a destructive guerrilla campaign. [233] Sherman's views on Indian matters were often strongly expressed. Worldwide Delivery. Only in your spirit and determination are you prepared for war. Genealogy for William Tecumseh Sherman (c.1866 - 1867) family tree on Geni, with over 230 million profiles of ancestors and living relatives. He was born in Lancaster, Ohio as William Tecumseh Sherman into a family of eleven. You are bound to fail. Oftentimes the family trees listed as still in progress have derived from research into famous people who have a kinship to this person. Grant may have had to intervene to save Sherman from dismissal for having overstepped his authority. In 1875, Henry V. Boynton published a critical review of Sherman's memoirs "based upon compilations from the records of the war office". We live through his campaigns in the company of Sherman himself. He captured Atlanta and Savannah and wrought great destruction in marches through Georgia and the Carolinas. 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. . Sherman proved instrumental to mounting the successful Union counterattack of the following day, April 7, 1862. Senator John Sherman (his younger brother and a political ally of President Lincoln) and other connections in Washington helped him to obtain a commission. [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. "[27] Sherman was later stationed in Georgia and South Carolina. [212] This made repairs extremely difficult at a time when the Confederacy lacked both iron and heavy machinery.[213]. [24] Fellow cadet William Rosecrans remembered Sherman as "one of the brightest and most popular fellows" at the academy and as "a bright-eyed, red-headed fellow, who was always prepared for a lark of any kind". Thousands of refugees, both black and white, joined Sherman's columns, which on February 20 finally withdrew towards Canton. Ellen's father, Thomas Ewing, was the US Secretary of the Interior at that time. Eleanor Mary Sherman (1859-1915) 2. Sherman conducted the ensuing Jackson Expedition, which concluded successfully on July 25 with the re-capture of the city of Jackson. 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. He returned to Washington in 1876, when the new Secretary of War, Alphonso Taft, promised him greater authority. [112], After the surrender of Vicksburg and the re-capture of Jackson, Sherman was given the rank of brigadier general in the regular army, in addition to his rank as a major general of volunteers. [179][180] According to historian Eric Foner, "the 'Colloquy' between Sherman, Stanton, and the black leaders offered a rare lens through which the experience of slavery and the aspirations that would help to shape Reconstruction came into sharp focus."[176]. [204] When the city council appealed to him to rescind that order, on the grounds that it would cause great hardship to women, children, the elderly, and others who bore no responsibility for the conduct of the war,[204][205] Sherman sent a written response in which he sought to articulate his conviction that a lasting peace would be possible only if the Union were restored, and that he was therefore prepared to do all he could do to end the rebellion: You cannot qualify war in harsher terms than I will. [164] Sherman proceeded with some of his troops to Washington, where they marched in the Grand Review of the Armies on May 24, 1865. [134], During September and October, Sherman and Hood played a cat-and-mouse game in northern Georgia and Alabama, as Hood threatened Sherman's communications to the north. When William Tecumseh Sherman was born on 26 November 1884, in Omnia Township, Cowley, Kansas, United States, his father, John Wingert, was 50 and his mother, Charlotte Wagner, was 32. In 1864, she took up temporary residence in South Bend, Indiana in order to have her young family educated at the University of Notre Dame and St. Mary's College, both Catholic institutions. He interrupted his military career in 1853 to pursue private business ventures, without much success. Some of us called upon him immediately upon his arrival, and it is probable he would not meet the Secretary [Stanton] with more courtesy than he met us. [277] Thomas's decision to abandon his career as a lawyer in 1878 to join the Jesuits and prepare for the Catholic priesthood caused Sherman profound distress, and he referred to it as a "great calamity". [176] Their fate soon became a pressing military and political issue. Looting was officially forbidden, but historians disagree on how rigorously this regulation was enforced. He voiced this view in remarks to a joint session of the Texas legislature in 1875, although the U.S. Army under Sherman's command never conducted its own program of bison extermination. William T. Sherman was born in Lancaster, Ohio, on Feb. 8, 1820. [10], Sherman was born in 1820 in Lancaster, Ohio, near the banks of the Hocking River. He had at least 2 daughters with Elizabeth Bell Dyer. [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. Sherman then succeeded Grant at the head of the Army of the Tennessee. [34] In June 1848, Sherman accompanied the military governor of California, Col. Richard Barnes Mason, to inspect the gold mines at Sutter's Fort. William Tecumseh Sherman (1820-1891), American soldier, was a Union general during the Civil War. [237][238] Sherman encouraged bison hunting by private citizens and, when Congress passed a law in 1874 to protect the bison from over-hunting, Sherman helped convince President Grant to use a pocket veto to prevent it from coming into force. [135] In response, Hood moved north into Tennessee. Therefore, he believed that the North had to conduct its campaign as a war of conquest, employing scorched earth tactics to break the backbone of the rebellion. However, Sherman had proceeded without authority from Grant, the newly installed President Andrew Johnson, or the Cabinet. The army took 4,000 prisoners and commandeered many wagons and horses. The burning of Columbia has engendered controversy ever since, with some claiming the fires were a deliberate act of vengeance by the Union troops and others that the fires were accidental, caused in part by the burning bales of cotton that the retreating Confederates left behind them.[151]. [178] On January 12, Sherman and Stanton met in Savannah with twenty local black leaders, most of them Baptist or Methodist ministers, invited by Sherman. [84] In his private correspondence, Sherman later wrote that the concerns of command "broke me down" and admitted to having contemplated suicide. [72] On June 3, he wrote in a letter to his brother-in-law: "I still think it is to be a long warvery longmuch longer than any Politician thinks. "[282] Upon Sherman's death, his son Thomas publicly declared: "My father was baptized in the Catholic Church, married in the Catholic Church, and attended the Catholic Church until the outbreak of the civil war. All other "editions" of Sherman's memoirs are re-printings of the 1889 or, in some cases, the 1875 edition. [152] Thereafter, his troops did relatively little damage to the civilian infrastructure. Boyd later recalled witnessing that, when news of South Carolina's secession from the United States reached them at the Seminary, "Sherman burst out crying, and began, in his nervous way, pacing the floor and deprecating the step which he feared might bring destruction on the whole country. 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". [23] Sherman roomed with and befriended another important future Civil War general for the Union, George H. Thomas. Grant then ordered Thomas to attack at the center of the Confederate line. [69][70], After the April 1213 bombardment of Fort Sumter and its subsequent capture by the Confederacy, Sherman hesitated about committing to military service. [268][269], Sherman's body was then transported to St. Louis, where another service was conducted at a local Catholic church on February 21, 1891. [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. Supplemental Report Of The Joint Committee On The Conduct Of The War: In Two Volumes ; Supplemental To Senate Report No. American historian Wesley Moody has argued that these commentators tended to filter Sherman's actions and his hard-war strategy through their own ideas about modern warfare, thereby contributing to the exaggeration of his "atrocities" and unintentionally feeding into the negative assessment of Sherman's moral character associated with the "Lost Cause" school of Southern historiography. He tells us what he thought and what he felt, and he never strikes any attitudes or pretends to feel anything he does not feel. [21] His friends and family called him "Cump".[22]. 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 . [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. Gen. Rufus Saxton, an abolitionist from Massachusetts who had previously directed the recruitment of black soldiers, to implement that plan. The massive Confederate attack on the morning of April 6, 1862, took most of the senior Union commanders by surprise. At the White House, Sherman met with Abraham Lincoln a few days after his inauguration as president of the United States. [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. [241], Sherman's early tenure as Commanding General was marred by political difficulties, many of which stemmed from disagreements with Secretary of War Rawlins and his successor, William W. Belknap, both of whom Sherman felt had assumed too much power over the army and reduced the position of Commanding General to a sinecure. [37][38], At John Augustus Sutter Jr.s request, Sherman assisted Capt. Although he was impatient, often irritable and depressed, petulant, headstrong, and unreasonably gruff, he had solid soldierly qualities. He married Emily Cynthia Babbitt in 1854. , CT, and, after his death in 1815, his widow and family migrated to OH. His performance was praised by Grant and Halleck and after the battle he was promoted to major general of volunteers, effective May 1, 1862. [298] The admiration of scholars such as B. H. Liddell Hart,[299] Lloyd Lewis, Victor Davis Hanson,[300] John F. Marszalek,[301] and Brian Holden-Reid[302] for Sherman owes much to what they see as an approach to the exigencies of modern armed conflict that was both effective and principled. This new edition, published by Appleton, added a second preface, a chapter about his life up to 1846, a chapter concerning the post-war period (ending with his 1884 retirement from the army), several appendices, portraits, improved maps, and an index. 142, 38Th Congress, 2D Session by Gen William Tecumseh Sherman, George Henry Thomas, John Pope, 9780342519576, available at LibroWorld.com. [150], Sherman captured Columbia, the state capital, on February 17, 1865. [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. The Confederate victory at Kennesaw Mountain did little to halt Sherman's advance towards Atlanta. Sherman expressed grave concerns about the North's poor state of preparedness for the looming civil war, but he found Lincoln unresponsive. His conduct and deportment toward us characterized him as a friend and a gentleman. "[71] In May, however, he offered himself for service in the regular Army. According to critic Edmund Wilson, Sherman: [H]ad a trained gift of self-expression and was, as Mark Twain says, a master of narrative. William Tecumseh Sherman (WTS) was born in Lancaster, Fairfield County, OH, and he died in New York City, NY. Father and son, however, were reconciled when Thomas returned to the United States in August 1880, after having travelled to England for his religious instruction. 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". Louis. For further details about Sherman's banking career, see Dwight L. Clarke. People Projects Discussions Surnames On April 20, Sherman dispatched a memorandum with those terms to the government in Washington. [148][149] His army proceeded north through South Carolina against light resistance from the troops of Confederate general Johnston. [85] His problems were compounded when the Cincinnati Commercial described him as "insane". Johnston replied: "If I were in [Sherman's] place, and he were standing in mine, he would not put on his hat." 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." 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. [114][115], Ordered to relieve the Union forces besieged in the city of Chattanooga, Tennessee, Sherman departed from Memphis on October 11, 1863, aboard a train bound for Chattanooga. Mary Elizabeth Sherman (1852-1925) 2. In 1850 Sherman married one of the Ewing daughters, Ellen. William Tecumseh Sherman Print Family Tree General Born 8 February 1820 - Lancaster, Fairfield Co., OH Deceased 14 February 1891 - New York, NY,aged 71 years old Buried - Calvary Cem., St. Louis, MO 1 file available Parents Charles Robert Sherman, Judge 1788-1829 Mary Hoyt 1787-1852 Spouses 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. One of his younger brothers, John Sherman, was one of the founders of the Republican Party and served as a U.S. congressman, senator, and cabinet secretary. [274], Sherman wrote to his wife in 1842: "I believe in good works rather than faith. The assassination of Lincoln had caused the political climate in Washington to turn against the prospect of a rapid reconciliation with the defeated Confederates and the Johnson administration rejected Sherman's terms. [48][49] Late in life, Sherman said of his time in a San Francisco gripped by the frenzy of real estate speculation: "I can handle a hundred thousand men in battle, and take the City of the Sun, but am afraid to manage a lot in the swamp of San Francisco. They are a peaceable people but an earnest people, and they will fight, too. [165], Sherman was not an abolitionist before the war and, like others of his time and background, he did not believe in "Negro equality". [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. Sherman believed that bison eradication should be encouraged as a means of weakening Indian resistance to assimilation. Husband of Alice Matteson. 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. Fires began that night and by next morning most of the central city was destroyed. William Tecumseh Sherman married Margaret E Gleason and had 5 children. Death: January 04, 1924 (68) Immediate Family: Son of Preserve B Sherman and Emily Lacow. [87] Operating from Paducah, Kentucky, he provided logistical support for the operations of Grant to capture Fort Donelson in February 1862. [155], In late March, Sherman briefly left his forces and traveled to City Point, Virginia, to confer with Grant. [83] While he was at home, his wife Ellen wrote to his brother, Senator John Sherman, seeking advice and complaining of "that melancholy insanity to which your family is subject". Sherman would eventually become one of the few high-ranking officers of the U.S. Civil War who had not fought in Mexico. This made Sherman senior in rank to Ulysses S. Grant, his future commander. "[260] Such a categorical rejection of a candidacy is now referred to as a "Shermanesque statement". [121], The Meridian campaign marked the end of Sherman's brief tenure as commander of the Army of the Tennessee. [266] President Benjamin Harrison, who served under Sherman, sent a telegram to Sherman's family and ordered all national flags to be flown at half staff. Another younger brother, Hoyt Sherman, was a successful banker. My average demerits, per annum, were about one hundred and fifty, which reduced my final class standing from number four to six.