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