William Tecumseh Sherman And His March To The Sea Essay, Research Paper

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, as you have read, 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 souths

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 whom 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

1. SHERMAN FIGHTING PROPHET By LLOYD LEWIS

HARCOURT, BRACE & WORLD, INC. NEW YORK

2. The AMERICAN HERITAGE Picture History of THE CIVIL WAR

VOLUME TWO By the Editors of AMERICAN HERITAGE

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

4. The Concise Columbia Encyclopedia, Columbia University Press