William T. Sherman - Early Life

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Early Life

Sherman was born in 1820 in Lancaster, Ohio, near the shores 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. Following this tragedy, the nine-year-old Sherman was raised by a Lancaster neighbor and family friend, attorney Thomas Ewing, a prominent member of the Whig Party who served as senator from Ohio and as the first Secretary of the Interior. Sherman was distantly related to the politically influential Baldwin, Hoar & Sherman family and grew to admire American founding father Roger Sherman.[1]

Sherman's older brother Charles Taylor Sherman became a federal judge. One of his younger brothers, John Sherman, served as a U.S. senator and Cabinet secretary. Another younger brother, Hoyt Sherman, was a successful banker. Two of his foster brothers served as major generals in the Union Army during the Civil War: Hugh Boyle Ewing, later an ambassador and author, and Thomas Ewing, Jr., who would serve as defense attorney in the military trials against the Lincoln conspirators.

Sherman's given names

Sherman's unusual given name has always attracted considerable attention.[2] Sherman himself reports that his middle name grew from the fact that his father "caught a fancy for the great chief of the Shawnees, 'Tecumseh.'"[3] Since 1932, it has often been reported that, as an infant, Sherman was named simply Tecumseh. According to these accounts, Sherman only acquired the name "William" at age nine or ten, after being taken into the Ewing household. His foster mother, Maria Ewing, who was of Irish ancestry, was a devout Catholic. In the Ewing home, Sherman was baptized by a Dominican priest who supposedly used the name William because the event took place on a Saint William's Day – possibly June 25, the feast day of Saint William of Montevergine.[4] However, this colorful account is dubious. Sherman himself states in his Memoirs that his father named him William Tecumseh, and there is corroborating evidence that Sherman was baptized by a Presbyterian minister as an infant and given the name William at that time.[5] As an adult, Sherman signed all his correspondence (even to his wife) "W.T. Sherman,"[6] but his friends and family always called him "Cump."[7] Despite having been baptized twice in his youth, Sherman did not adhere to any organized religion for the latter part of his adult life. (His wife, Ellen Ewing Sherman, was a devout Catholic and his son Thomas became a Catholic priest; according to Thomas, Sherman attended the Catholic Church till the outbreak of the Civil War but not thereafter.)[8]

Military training and service

Portrait of a young William T. Sherman in military uniform

Senator Ewing secured an appointment for the 16-year-old Sherman as a cadet in the United States Military Academy at West Point,[9] where he roomed and became good friends with another important future Civil War General, George H. Thomas. There Sherman excelled academically, but he treated the demerit system with indifference. Fellow cadet William Rosecrans would later remember Sherman at West Point as "one of the brightest and most popular fellows," and "a bright-eyed, red-headed fellow, who was always prepared for a lark of any kind."[10] 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. Then, as now, neatness in dress and form, with a strict conformity to the rules, were the qualifications required for office, and I suppose I was found not to excel in any of these. In studies I always held a respectable reputation with the professors, and generally ranked among the best, especially in drawing, chemistry, mathematics, and natural philosophy. My average demerits, per annum, were about one hundred and fifty, which reduced my final class standing from number four to six."[11]


Upon graduation in 1840, Sherman entered the Army as a second lieutenant in the 3rd U.S. Artillery and saw action in Florida in the Second Seminole War against the Seminole tribe. He was later stationed in Georgia and South Carolina. As the foster son of a prominent Whig politician, in Charleston, the popular Lt. Sherman moved within the upper circles of Old South society.[12]


While many of his colleagues saw action in the Mexican-American War, Sherman performed administrative duties in the captured territory of California. He and fellow officer Lieutenant Edward Ord reached the town of Yerba Buena two days before its name was changed to San Francisco. In 1848, Sherman accompanied the military governor of California, Col. Richard Barnes Mason, in the inspection that officially confirmed the claim that gold had been discovered in the region, thus inaugurating the California Gold Rush.[13] Sherman, along with the above-mentioned Edward Ord, assisted in surveys for the sub-divisions of the town that would become Sacramento.


Sherman earned a brevet promotion to captain for his "meritorious service", but his lack of a combat assignment discouraged him and may have contributed to his decision to resign his commission. Sherman would become one of the relatively few high-ranking officers in the Civil War who had not fought in Mexico.

Marriage and business career

In 1850, Sherman was promoted to the substantive rank of Captain and married Thomas Ewing's daughter, Eleanor Boyle ("Ellen") Ewing, in a Washington ceremony attended by President Zachary Taylor and other political luminaries. (Thomas Ewing was serving as the first Secretary of the Interior at the time.) [14] Like her mother, Ellen Ewing Sherman was a devout Roman Catholic, and the Shermans' eight children were reared in that faith. In 1874, with Sherman having become world famous, their eldest child, Marie Ewing ("Minnie") Sherman, also had a politically prominent wedding, attended by President Ulysses S. Grant and commemorated by a generous gift from the Khedive of Egypt. [15] Another of the Sherman daughters, Eleanor, was married to Alexander Montgomery Thackara at General Sherman’s home in Washington, D.C. on May 5, 1880. To Sherman's great displeasure and sorrow, one of his sons, Thomas Ewing Sherman, was ordained a Jesuit priest in 1879.[16]


In 1853, Sherman resigned his Captaincy and became manager of the San Francisco branch of a St. Louis based bank. He returned to San Francisco at a time of great turmoil in the West. He survived two shipwrecks and floated through the Golden Gate on the overturned hull of a foundering lumber schooner.[17] Sherman suffered from stress-related asthma because of the city's brutal financial climate.[18] Late in life, regarding his time in real-estate-speculation-mad San Francisco, Sherman recalled: "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."[19] In 1856, during the vigilante period, he served briefly as a major general of the California militia.[20]


Sherman's San Francisco branch closed in May 1857, and he relocated to New York on behalf of the same bank. When the bank failed during the financial Panic of 1857, he turned to the practice of law in Leavenworth, Kansas, at which he was also unsuccessful.[21]

Military college superintendent

In 1859, Sherman accepted a job as the first superintendent of the Louisiana State Seminary of Learning & Military Academy in Pineville, Louisiana, a position he sought at the suggestion of Major D. C. Buell and secured due to General G. Mason Graham.[22] He proved an effective and popular leader of that institution, which would later become Louisiana State University (LSU). Colonel Joseph P. Taylor, the brother of the late President Zachary Taylor, declared that "if you had hunted the whole army, from one end of it to the other, you could not have found a man in it more admirably suited for the position in every respect than Sherman."[23]


On hearing of South Carolina's secession from the United States, Sherman observed to a close friend, Professor David F. Boyd of Virginia, an enthusiastic secessionist, almost perfectly describing the four years of war to come:

You people of the South don't know what you are doing. This country will be drenched in blood, and God only knows how it will end. It is all folly, madness, a crime against civilization! You people speak so lightly of war; you don't know what you're talking about. War is a terrible thing! You mistake, too, the people of the North. They are a peaceable people but an earnest people, and they will fight, too. They are not going to let this country be destroyed without a mighty effort to save it… Besides, where are your men and appliances of war to contend against them? The North can make a steam engine, locomotive, or railway car; hardly a yard of cloth or pair of shoes can you make. You are rushing into war with one of the most powerful, ingeniously mechanical, and determined people on Earth—right at your doors. You are bound to fail. Only in your spirit and determination are you prepared for war. In all else you are totally unprepared, with a bad cause to start with. At first you will make headway, but as your limited resources begin to fail, shut out from the markets of Europe as you will be, your cause will begin to wane. If your people will but stop and think, they must see in the end that you will surely fail.[24]


In January 1861 just before the outbreak of the Civil War, Sherman was required to accept receipt of arms surrendered to the State Militia by the U.S. Arsenal at Baton Rouge, Louisiana. Instead of complying, he resigned his position as superintendent and returned to the North, declaring to the governor of Louisiana, "On no earthly account will I do any act or think any thought hostile ... to the ... United States."[25]


After the war, General Sherman donated two cannons to the institution. These cannons had been captured from Confederate forces and had been used to start the war when fired at Fort Sumter, South Carolina. They are still currently on display in front of LSU's Military Science building.[26]

St. Louis interlude

Immediately following his departure from Louisiana, Sherman traveled to Washington, D.C., possibly in the hope of securing a position in the army, and met with Abraham Lincoln in the White House during inauguration week. Sherman expressed concern about the North's poor state of preparedness but found Lincoln unresponsive.[27]


Thereafter, Sherman became president of the St. Louis Railroad, a streetcar company, a position he would hold for only a few months. Thus, he was living in border-state Missouri as the secession crisis came to a climax. While trying to hold himself aloof from controversy, he observed firsthand the efforts of Congressman Frank Blair, who later served under Sherman, to hold Missouri in the Union. In early April, he declined an offer from the Lincoln administration to take a position in the War Department that might have resulting in his becoming Assistant Secretary of War.[28] After the bombardment of Fort Sumter, Sherman hesitated about committing to military service and ridiculed Lincoln's call for 75,000 three-month volunteers to quell secession, reportedly saying: "Why, you might as well attempt to put out the flames of a burning house with a squirt-gun."[29] However, in May, he offered himself for service in the regular army, and his brother (Senator John Sherman) and other connections maneuvered to get him a commission in the regular army.[30] On June 3, he wrote that "I still think it is to be a long war – very long – much longer than any Politician thinks."[31] He received a telegram summoning him to Washington on June 7.[32]

Notes

  1. ↑ See, William T. Sherman papers, Notre Dame University CSHR 19/67 Folder:Roger Sherman's Watch 1932–1942
  2. ↑ One nineteenth century source, for example, states that "General Sherman, we believe, is the only eminent American named from an Indian chief."Howe's Historical Collections of Ohio (Columbus, 1890), I:595.
  3. ↑ Sherman, Memoirs, p. 11.
  4. ↑ Lewis, p. 34.
  5. ↑ Sherman, Memoirs, p. 11; Lewis, p. 23; Schenker, "'My Father . . . Named Me William Tecumseh': Rebutting the Charge That General Sherman Lied About His Name," Ohio History (2008), vol. 115, p. 55; Sherman biographer John Marszalek considers the cited article to "present a convincing case regarding Sherman's name." Marszalek, "Preface" to 2007 edition of Sherman: A Soldier's Passion for Order, pp. xiv-xv n.1.
  6. ↑ See, e.g., the many Civil War letters reproduced in Brooks D. Simpson & Jean V. Berlin, Sherman's Civil War: Selected Correspondence of William T. Sherman (Chapel Hill: Univ. of North Carolina Press, 1999).
  7. ↑ See, for instance, Walsh, p. 32.
  8. ↑ For discussion of Sherman's religious views, see Hirshson, pp. 387–388. At the time of Sherman's death, his son Thomas, a Jesuit, reportedly said: "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. Since that time he has not been a communicant of any church . . . ." Thomas C. Fletceher, Life and Reminiscences of General Wm. T. Sherman by Distinguished Men of His Time (Baltimore: R.H. Woodward Co., 1891), 139.
  9. ↑ Sherman, Memoirs, p. 14
  10. ↑ Quoted in Hirshson, p. 13
  11. ↑ Sherman, Memoirs, p. 16
  12. ↑ See, for instance, Hirshson, p. 21
  13. ↑ See Sherman at the Virtual Museum of San Francisco and excerpts from Sherman's Memoirs
  14. ↑ Katherine Burton, Three Generations: Maria Boyle Ewing - Ellen Ewing Sherman - Minnie Sherman Fitch (Longmans, Green & Co., 1947), pp. 72-78.
  15. ↑ Burton, pp. 217-21, 226-27.
  16. ↑ See, for instance, Hirshson, pp. 362–368, 387
  17. ↑ Sherman, Memoirs, pp. 125–129.
  18. ↑ Sherman, Memoirs, pp. 131–134, 166.
  19. ↑ Quoted in Royster, pp. 133–134
  20. ↑ Memoirs, chronology, p. 1093.
  21. ↑ Sherman, Memoirs, pp. 150–61.
  22. ↑ Sherman, Memoirs, pp. 160-62.
  23. ↑ Quoted in Hirshson, p. 68.
  24. ↑ Exchange between W.T. Sherman and Prof. David F. Boyd, December 24, 1860. Quoted in Lewis, p. 138
  25. ↑ Letter by W.T. Sherman to Gov. Thomas O. Moore, January 18, 1861. Quoted in Sherman, Memoirs, p. 156
  26. ↑ Department of Military Science: Unit History
  27. ↑ Sherman, Memoirs, pp. 184-86.
  28. ↑ Sherman, Memoirs, pp. 186-89.
  29. ↑ Samuel M. Bowman & Richard B. Irwin, Sherman and His Campaigns (New York, 1865), 25.
  30. ↑ Sherman, Memoirs, pp. 189-90; Hirshson, pp. 83-86.
  31. ↑ WTS to Thomas Ewing Jr., June 3, 1861, in Sherman & Berlin 97-98.
  32. ↑ WTS 1861 Diary, University of Notre Dame Archives, microfilm roll 12, 0333, 0355.
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