Biography:

William Tecumseh Sherman was one of the Union’s most famous generals, best known for his efforts to demoralize the South through the destruction of property, epitomized in his March through Georgia in the fall of 1864. Sherman was born in Lancaster, Ohio, in 1820, to a prominent state judge, one of 11 children. The death of his father in 1829, however, left his family destitute, and William became the ward of Ohio lawyer and politician Thomas Ewing. In 1836, Sherman entered the US Military Academy, where he excelled. After his graduation in 1840, he served mostly in the South, including in the Seminole War. During the Mexican War, he was stationed in California, where he saw no combat. He returned east in 1850, where he married Ewing’s daughter, Ellen Ewing. He left the military at her insistence in 1853. From 1853 until 1861, Sherman worked as a banker and businessman in various locations. By 1859, Sherman was eager to reenter the army and was able to secure the position of superintendent of the Louisiana Military Seminary, where he served until February 1861, when he left when Louisiana seceded from the Union. A few months later he became a colonel in the regular army. Sherman performed valiantly at Shiloh and served as military governor of Memphis in 1862, where he came to recognize the important role that civilians—and morale—played in the war. In 1863, Sherman participated in the Vicksburg campaign and was promoted to brigadier general. That fall, Sherman was named commander of the Department of the Army of the Tennessee. Sherman first implemented his strategy to break the South through the widespread destruction of property in the Meridian Campaign of early 1864, leaving behind a path of destruction from Jackson to Meridian, Mississippi. In March 1864, Sherman became commander of the Military Division of the Mississippi and in charge of all military operations in the West. Sherman began his famous March through Georgia on September 1, 1864, following the fall of Atlanta, reaching Savannah on December 21.
 
Despite his devastating approach to war, Sherman advocated a lenient peace, and in April 1865 he negotiated such a peace with Confederate general Joseph Johnston. A nation recently traumatized by Lincoln’s assassination, however, forced him to renegotiate the peace treaty. After the war, Sherman remained in the army, and when Grant was elected president, Sherman became commanding general. Sherman retired in 1883 and later settled in New York City, where he died in 1891.