Sherman, William Tecumseh

William Tecumseh (1820-1891), an American general. He was born at Lancaster, Ohio, February 8, 1820, and died at New York, February 14, 1891. He was graduated at West Point in 1840 and gained his first military experience in the Seminole War. During the Mexican War he took part in an expedition to California. In 1853 he resigned from the army to accept a position in a bank in San Francisco. Later he was principal of a military academy at Alexandria, Louisiana. At the outbreak of the Civil War he reentered the Union Army as a colonel. He commanded a brigade at Bull Run. In the following July he was made a major-general of volunteers. He took part in the capture of Vicksburg, and was in the battle of Chattanooga. When Grant took command of the army in 1864 he placed Sherman in charge of operations in the West. Sherman outmaneuvered General Joseph E. Johnston's army at Dalton and Resaca and forced him back into Atlanta by a series of flanking movements and engagements that have been praised highly by military critics. After President Davis had replaced Johnston by Hood, Sherman defeated the latter in three severe battles near Atlanta and took the city. He then left Thomas to reckon with Hood and started from Atlanta on his famous march to the sea. He started November 12th, and reached Savannah at Christmas time. His army cut loose from its base of supplies and subsisted entirely on the country. A belt sixty miles in width, greatly relied upon by the Confederates for meat and meal, was swept bare. No doubt Sherman's march did much to cripple the Confederacy, but it is to be regretted that he deemed it a military necessity to destroy the homes and property of thousands of people, especially at a period so near the end of the war. In 1866 General Sherman was promoted to be lieutenant-general. He succeeded Grant as commander-in-chief in 1869. Sherman held the respect of his soldiers, who dubbed him "old Tecumseh." He retired from the army in 1883. He used the first year of his Jeisure to write Memoirs of William T. Sherman by Himself. General Sherman was a brother of Senator John Sherman of Ohio, President Hayes' secretary of the treasury. See Army; Civil War