William Tecumseh Sherman
William Tecumseh Sherman was an American soldier, businessman, educator, and author. He served as a general in the Union Army during the American Civil War. He received recognition for his command of military strategy as well as criticism for the harshness of the scorched earth policies he implemented in conducting total war against the Confederate States.
About William Tecumseh Sherman in brief
William Tecumseh Sherman was an American soldier, businessman, educator, and author. He served as a general in the Union Army during the American Civil War. He received recognition for his command of military strategy as well as criticism for the harshness of the scorched earth policies he implemented in conducting total war against the Confederate States. British military theorist and historian B. H. Liddell Hart declared that Sherman was “the first modern general” Sherman’s unusual given name has always attracted considerable attention. Sherman reported that his father had a fancy for the great chief of the Shawnees, ‘TecumseH’ – his middle name. Sherman was born in 1820 in Lancaster, Ohio, near the banks of the Hocking River. His father, Charles Robert Sherman, a successful lawyer who sat on the Ohio Supreme Court, died unexpectedly in 1829. He left his widow, Mary Hoyt Sherman, with eleven children and no inheritance. After his father’s death, the nine-year-old Sherman was raised by a Lancaster neighbor and family friend, attorney Thomas Ewing, Sr. Sherman would marry his foster sister, Ellen Boyle Ewing at age 30 and have eight children with her. Two of his foster brothers served as major generals in the Civil War: Hugh Boyle E Wing, later an ambassador and author, and Thomas EWing, Jr., who would serve as defense attorney in the military trials of the Lincoln conspirators. In 1875, Sherman published his Memoirs, one of the best-known first-hand accounts of the Civil war.
Sherman accepted the surrender of all the Confederate armies in the Carolinas, Georgia, and Florida in April 1865, but the terms that he negotiated were considered too lenient by US Secretary of War Edwin Stanton, who ordered General Grant to modify them. He steadfastly refused to be drawn into politics and in 1869, Sherman succeeded him as Commanding General of the Army. He was responsible for the U.S. Army’s engagement in the Indian Wars during that period. The story is contested, however, that he was named for his father, Saint William of Montegine, who named him for the saint’s feast day of June 25, possibly the day of the feast of Saint William. Sherman’s older brother Charles Taylor Sherman became a federal judge. One of his younger brothers, John Sherman, served as U. S. senator and Cabinet secretary. Another younger brother, HoyT Sherman, was a successful banker. Sherman then led the capture of the strategic city of Atlanta, a military success that contributed to the re-election of President Abraham Lincoln. Sherman’s subsequent march through Georgia and the Carolines involved little fighting but large-scale destruction of cotton plantations and other infrastructure, a systematic policy intended to undermine the ability and willingness of the Confederacy to continue fighting. According to these accounts, it has often been reported that, an infant, Sherman was named simply Tecumsemseh.
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