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Sherman was born on May 8, 1820, in Lancaster, Ohio, and educated at the U.S. Military Academy. After an undistinguished military career he resigned from the army in 1853 to become a partner in a banking firm in San Francisco.
He was president of a military college in Alexandria, La. (now Louisiana State University) from 1859 to the beginning of 1861, when Louisiana seceded from the Union. At the outbreak of the Civil War in 1861, he offered his services to the Union army and was put in command of a volunteer infantry regiment, becoming a brigadier general of volunteers after the first Battle of Bull Run.
Sherman led a division at the Battle of Shiloh (April 6-7, 1862) and was rewarded for his part in the victory by being promoted to major general of volunteers. Later that year he failed in an attempt (Dec. 27-29) to seize the Confederate stronghold of Vicksburg, on the Mississippi River, but in 1863 he fought under Gen. Ulysses S. Grant in the campaign that ended in the capture of that city in July. He was given command of the Army of the Tennessee in the fall of 1863 and fought in the Battle of Chattanooga.
In 1864 Sherman was made supreme commander of the armies in the West and was ordered to move against Atlanta, Ga. During the opening months of the campaign, he lost the Battle of Kennesaw Mountain; he did not capture Atlanta until almost three months later, on Sept. 1.
After ordering the burning of the military resources of the city, he launched his most celebrated military action, known as Sherman's march to the sea, in which, with about 60,000 picked men, he marched from Atlanta to Savannah, Ga., on the Atlantic coast. Along the way the men lay waste the intervening territory and severed the Confederate government at Richmond, Va., from its western states. Sherman subsequently set out to join forces with Grant, who was moving southward toward Richmond. After three months of fighting, Sherman managed to reach Raleigh, N.C., where he was in a position to complete the encirclement of Richmond and the city's defending forces, which were led by the Confederate commander in chief Robert E. Lee. Following Lee's surrender on April 9, the Confederate army confronting Sherman surrendered to him at Raleigh, on April 17.
After the war Sherman was commissioned lieutenant general in the regular army and, following Grant's election to the presidency (1868), he was promoted to the rank of full general and given command of the entire U.S. Army. Sherman published his Memoirs in 1875 and retired in 1883. The famous phrase "war is hell" is attributed to him.
An article from Funk & Wagnalls® New Encyclopedia. © 2005 World Almanac Education Group. A WRC Media Company. All rights reserved. Except as otherwise permitted by written agreement, uses of the work inconsistent with U.S. and applicable foreign copyright and related laws are prohibited.
