[165], Sherman was not an abolitionist before the war and, like others of his time and background, he did not believe in "Negro equality". William Tecumseh Sherman (WTS) was born in Lancaster, Fairfield County, OH, and he died in New York City, NY. [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. War is a terrible thing! [135] In response, Hood moved north into Tennessee. According to Sherman's biographer Robert O'Connell, "Shiloh marked the turning point of his life. "[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. He told Grant that, if he remained in the army, "some happy accident might restore you to favor and your true place". [225] On July 25, 1866, the U.S. Congress created the new rank of General of the Army for Grant, while also promoting Sherman to Grant's previous rank of lieutenant general. [140] At the end of this campaign, known as Sherman's March to the Sea, his troops took Savannah on December 21, 1864. In maneuver warfare, a commander seeks to defeat the enemy on the battleground through shock, disruption, and surprise, while minimizing frontal attacks on well-defended positions. Some pro-Confederate sources have repeated a claim that Oliver Otis Howard, the commander of Sherman's 15th Corps, said in 1867 that "It is useless to deny that our troops burnt Columbia, for I saw them in the act. He was devoted to the theater and to amateur painting and was in demand as a colorful speaker at dinners and banquets, in which he indulged a fondness for quoting Shakespeare. After Pemberton surrendered to Grant on July 4, Johnston advanced towards the rear of Grant's forces. [175], Tens of thousands of escaped slaves nonetheless joined Sherman's marches through Georgia and the Carolinas as refugees. 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. Sherman expressed grave concerns about the North's poor state of preparedness for the looming civil war, but he found Lincoln unresponsive. Sherman, beset by hallucinations and unreasonable fears and finally contemplating suicide, had been relieved from command in Kentucky. 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". Oftentimes the family trees listed as still in progress have derived from research into famous people who have a kinship to this person. "Fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom." Sherman commanded a brigade of volunteers at the First Battle of Bull Run in 1861 before being transferred to the Western Theater. [152] Thereafter, his troops did relatively little damage to the civilian infrastructure. 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 observed but did not join in the religious ceremonies of the Ewing household. His son, Thomas Ewing Sherman, who was a Jesuit priest, presided over his father's funeral masses in New York City and in St. [236], Displacement of the Plains Indians was facilitated by the growth of the railroads and the eradication of the bison. North Carolina, unlike its southern neighbor, was regarded by the Union troops as a reluctant Confederate state,[153] having been second from last to secede from the Union, ahead only of Tennessee. You are bound to fail. This appears to have been a consequence of the animosity felt by Union soldiers and officers for the state that they regarded as the "cockpit of secession". Afterwards the rank of Commander, Military Division of the Mississippi, 1864-1866; Commander, Military Division of the Missouri, 1866-1869. [12] He left his widow, Mary Hoyt Sherman, with eleven children and no inheritance. He married Mary Elizabeth Berry on 15 October 1899, in Greenwood, Kansas, United States. In his memoirs, Sherman said, "In my official report of this conflagration, I distinctly charged it to General Wade Hampton, and confess I did so pointedly, to shake the faith of his people in him, for he was in my opinion boastful, and professed to be the special champion of South Carolina. [242], Much of Sherman's time as Commanding General was devoted to making the Western and Plains states safe for settlement through the continuation of the Indian Wars, which included three significant campaigns: the Modoc War, the Great Sioux War of 1876, and the Nez Perce War. 15", "Hard War in Virginia during the Civil War", "James M. Calhoun, Mayor, E. E. Pawson and S. C. Wells, representing City Council of Atlanta", "The complicated history of Gen. Philip Sheridan", "Timeline: A Chronology of Key Events in the Life of William T. Sherman, 18201891", "Sorrow at the Capital: Formal Announcement by the President Eulogies in the Senate", "In Headquarters, Military Division of the Mississippi In the Field, Savannah, Geo. The Sherman's were well educated and highly cultured by Lancaster standards at this time. Sherman had dismissed the intelligence reports from militia officers, refusing to believe that Confederate general Albert Sidney Johnston would leave his base at Corinth. [287] By the 1880s, however, Southern "Lost Cause" writers began to demonize Sherman for his attacks on civilians in Georgia and South Carolina. Louis. Thus, he was living in the border state of Missouri as the secession crisis reached its climax. He took no precautions beyond strengthening his picket lines, and refused to entrench, build abatis, or push out reconnaissance patrols. William was sent to the family of Thomas Ewing, a next-door neighbor who was a U.S. senator and a cabinet member. Sherman proved instrumental to mounting the successful Union counterattack of the following day, April 7, 1862. On November 25, Sherman took his assigned target of Billy Goat Hill at the north end of the ridge, only to find that it was separated from the main spine by a rock-strewn ravine. Another younger brother, Hoyt Sherman, was a successful banker. [90] This success contributed greatly to raising Sherman's spirits and changing his personal outlook on the Civil War and his role in it. descendants of West and Central Africans enslaved in the lower Atlantic states from North Carolina to Florida. In February 1864, he commanded an expedition to Meridian, Mississippi, intended to disrupt Confederate infrastructure and communications. In fact, Sherman's first command was a brigade of three-month volunteers who fought in the First Battle of Bull Run on July 21, 1861. He was born in Lancaster, Ohio as William Tecumseh Sherman into a family of eleven. In early 1858, he returned to California to finalize the bank's outstanding accounts there. Along with fellow Lieutenants Henry Halleck and Edward Ord, Sherman embarked from New York City on the 198-day journey around Cape Horn, aboard the converted sloop USS Lexington. William H. Warner in surveying the new city of Sacramento, laying its street grid in 1848. "[275] In letters written in 1865 to Thomas, his eldest surviving son, General Sherman said "I don't want you to be a soldier or a priest, but a good useful man",[276] and complained that Thomas's mother Ellen "thinks religion is so important that everything else must give way to it". Concerning Him (1859-1864) Made by L. Bourgeois and Affirmed to be True Copies by David F. Boyd, 30 September 1875; Copies of Letters to and by William Tecumseh Sherman; Drafts of Letters, Reports, and Speeches by William Tecumseh Sherman [177] Some abolitionists accused Sherman of doing too little to alleviate the precarious living conditions of these refugees, motivating Secretary of War Stanton to travel to Georgia in January 1865 to investigate the situation. Eleanor Mary Sherman (1859-1915) 2. [101] Sherman's operations were supposed to be coordinated with an advance on Vicksburg by Grant from another direction. [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. I am not and cannot be. [253] On April 11, 1880, he addressed a crowd of more than 10,000 in Columbus, Ohio: "There is many a boy here today who looks on war as all glory, but, boys, it is all hell. [25] About his time at West Point, Sherman says only the following in his Memoirs: At the Academy I was not considered a good soldier, for at no time was I selected for any office, but remained a private throughout the whole four years. Research genealogy for William Tecumseh Sherman Merchant of North Bend, Coos, Oregon, as well as other members of the Merchant family, on Ancestry. After the marriage of their son Charles R. Sherman to Mary Hoyt, they . He was stationed in Kentucky, where his pessimism about the outlook of the war led to a breakdown that required him to be briefly put on leave. But you cannot have peace and a division of our country. [166][167][168] Before the war, Sherman expressed some sympathy with the view of Southern whites that the black race was benefiting from slavery, although he opposed breaking up slave families and advocated that laws forbidding the education of slaves be repealed. The publication of Sherman's memoirs sparked controversy and drew complaints from many quarters. [163], Grant then offered Johnston purely military terms, similar to those that he had negotiated with Lee at Appomattox. [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. [7] Liddell Hart's views on the historical significance of Sherman have since been discussed and, to varying extents, defended by subsequent military scholars such as Jay Luvaas,[192] Victor Davis Hanson,[193] and Brian Holden-Reid. At the White House, Sherman met with Abraham Lincoln a few days after his inauguration as president of the United States. One 19th-century source, for example, states that "General Sherman, we believe, is the only eminent American named from an Indian chief". [30] In his memoirs, Sherman relates a hike with Halleck to the summit of Corcovado, overlooking Rio de Janeiro in Brazil, in order to examine the city's aqueduct design. The family tree for General William Tecumseh Sherman should not be considered exhaustive or authoritative. 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. General William Tecumseh Sherman is best remembered for his leadership during the Civil War. He married Maud Colby Bates on 7 October 1913. [158] After returning to Goldsboro, Sherman marched with his troops to the state capital, Raleigh, where Sherman sought to communicate with Johnston's army regarding possible terms for ending the war. In 1859, he became superintendent of the Louisiana State Seminary of Learning & Military Academy (now Louisiana State University), a position from which he resigned when Louisiana seceded from the Union. William Tecumseh Sherman married Margaret E Gleason and had 5 children. In one amusing change to his text, Sherman dropped the assertion that, A "third edition, revised and corrected" of Sherman's memoirs was put out in 1890 by, According to Victor Davis Hanson, "In the eyes of Lewis and Liddell Hart, Sherman was a great man, who is judged on what he did and not on what he wrote: he saved lives and shortened the war; and he used military science to teach his nation what war is ultimately for. William Tecumseh Sherman family tree Parents James Edgar Sherman 1839 - 1919 Joanna Williams 1836 - 1899 Spouse (s) Margaret E . Sherman, William T. (William Tecumseh), 1820-1891. The massive Confederate attack on the morning of April 6, 1862, took most of the senior Union commanders by surprise. "[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. I know him well. [220], In this general connection, it is also noteworthy that Sherman and his subordinates (particularly John A. Logan) took steps to protect Raleigh, North Carolina, from acts of revenge after the assassination of President Lincoln.[221][222]. On the other hand, he was adamantly opposed to the secession of the southern states. After ordering almost all civilians to abandon the city in September, Sherman gave instructions that all military and government buildings in Atlanta be burned, although many private homes and shops were burned as well. William was born in 1865. His performance was praised by Grant and Halleck and after the battle he was promoted to major general of volunteers, effective May 1, 1862. Sherman then became the military governor of occupied Memphis. [154] Having defeated the Confederate forces under Johnston at Bentonville, Sherman proceeded to rendezvous at Goldsboro with the Union troops that awaited him there after the captures of the coastal cities of New Bern and Wilmington. [91], With a heavy rain coming down [at the end of the first day of fighting at Shiloh, Sherman] came upon Grant standing under a large oak tree, his cigar glowing in the darkness. I did not want them to cast in our teeth what General Hood had once done at Atlanta, that we had to call on their slaves to help us to subdue them. In all else you are totally unprepared, with a bad cause to start with. [21] His friends and family called him "Cump".[22]. When comparing Sherman's scorched-earth campaigns to the actions of the British Army during the Second Boer War (18991902) another war in which civilians were targeted because of their central role in sustaining a belligerent power South African historian Hermann Giliomee claims that it "looks as if Sherman struck a better balance than the British commanders between severity and restraint in taking actions proportional to legitimate needs". "[125], Sherman proceeded to invade the state of Georgia with three armies: the 60,000-strong Army of the Cumberland under Thomas, the 25,000-strong Army of the Tennessee under James B. McPherson, and the 13,000-strong Army of the Ohio under John M. When William Tecumseh Sherman was born on 12 December 1828, in Columbia, New York, United States, his father, Roger Stevens Sherman, was 32 and his mother, Orilla Moses, was 34. [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. [243][244] During this time, Sherman also reorganized the U.S. Army forts to better accommodate the shifting frontier. [84] In his private correspondence, Sherman later wrote that the concerns of command "broke me down" and admitted to having contemplated suicide. He lived in Washington Township, Page, Iowa, United States for about 20 years and Locust Grove . Sherman conducted the ensuing Jackson Expedition, which concluded successfully on July 25 with the re-capture of the city of Jackson. He interrupted his military career in 1853 to pursue private business ventures, without much success. [295], The influential literary critic Edmund Wilson found in Sherman's Memoirs a fascinating and disturbing account of an "appetite for warfare" that "grows as it feeds on the South". [188][189][190] In that essay, Sherman called upon the South to "let the negro vote, and count his vote honestly", adding that "otherwise, so sure as there is a God in Heaven, you will have another war, more cruel than the last, when the torch and dagger will take the place of the muskets of well-ordered battalions". [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. [35][36] Sherman unwittingly helped to launch the California Gold Rush by drafting the official documents in which Governor Mason confirmed that gold had been discovered in the region. [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. [164] Sherman proceeded with some of his troops to Washington, where they marched in the Grand Review of the Armies on May 24, 1865. 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. [128][129] Meanwhile, in August, Sherman "learned that I had been commissioned a major-general in the regular army, which was unexpected, and not desired until successful in the capture of Atlanta". As with all family trees on this website, the sources for each ancestor are listed on the family group pages so that you can personally judge the reliability of the information. 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