First commissions and Bull Run photographed Sherman, . Sherman was first commissioned as
colonel of the
13th U.S. Infantry Regiment, effective May 14, 1861. This was a new regiment yet to be raised. In fact, Sherman's first command was a brigade of three-month volunteers who fought in the
First Battle of Bull Run on July 21, 1861. It was one of the four brigades in the division commanded by General
Daniel Tyler, which was in turn one of the five divisions in the Army of Northeastern Virginia under General
Irvin McDowell. The engagement at Bull Run was a disastrous defeat for the Union, dashing hopes for a rapid resolution of the conflict. Sherman was one of the few Union officers to distinguish himself in the field and historian
Donald L. Miller has characterized Sherman's performance at Bull Run as "exemplary". During the fighting, Sherman was grazed by bullets in the knee and shoulder. According to British military historian
Brian Holden-Reid, "if Sherman had committed tactical errors during the attack, he more than compensated for these during the subsequent retreat". Holden-Reid also concluded that Sherman "might have been as unseasoned as the men he commanded, but he had not fallen prey to the naïve illusions nursed by so many on the field of First Bull Run." The outcome at Bull Run caused Sherman to question his own judgment as an officer and the capabilities of his volunteer troops. However, Sherman impressed Lincoln during the President's visit to the troops on July 23, and Lincoln promoted Sherman to
brigadier general of volunteers effective May 17, 1861. This made Sherman senior in rank to
Ulysses S. Grant, his future commander. Sherman was then assigned to serve under
Robert Anderson in the Department of the Cumberland, in
Louisville, Kentucky. In October, Sherman succeeded Anderson in command of that department. In his memoirs, Sherman would later write that he saw that new assignment as breaking a promise by President Lincoln that he would not be given such a prominent leadership position.
Kentucky and breakdown painted an oil portrait of Sherman in 1866. Having succeeded Anderson at Louisville, Sherman now had principal military responsibility for
Kentucky, a border state in which the Confederates held
Columbus and
Bowling Green, and were also present near the
Cumberland Gap. He became exceedingly pessimistic about the outlook for his command and he complained frequently to Washington about shortages, while providing exaggerated estimates of the strength of the rebel forces and requesting inordinate numbers of reinforcements. Critical press reports about Sherman began to appear after the
U.S. Secretary of War,
Simon Cameron, visited Louisville in October 1861. In early November, Sherman asked to be relieved of his command. He was promptly replaced by
Don Carlos Buell and transferred to St. Louis. In December, he was put on leave by
Henry W. Halleck, commander of the
Department of the Missouri, who found him unfit for duty and sent him to Lancaster, Ohio, to recuperate. While he was at home, his wife Ellen wrote to his brother, Senator John Sherman, seeking advice and complaining of "that melancholy insanity to which your family is subject". In his private correspondence, Sherman later wrote that the concerns of command "broke me down" and admitted to having contemplated suicide. His problems were compounded when the
Cincinnati Commercial described him as "insane". By mid-December 1861 Sherman had recovered sufficiently to return to service under Halleck in the Department of the Missouri. In March, Halleck's command was redesignated the
Department of the Mississippi and enlarged to unify command in the West. Sherman's initial assignments were rear-echelon commands, first of an instructional barracks near St. Louis and then in command of the District of Cairo. Operating from
Paducah, Kentucky, he provided logistical support for the operations of Grant to
capture Fort Donelson in February 1862. Grant, the previous commander of the District of Cairo, had just won a major victory at
Fort Henry and been given command of the ill-defined
District of West Tennessee. Although Sherman was technically the senior officer, he wrote to Grant, "I feel anxious about you as I know the great facilities [the Confederates] have of concentration by means of the River and R[ail] Road, but [I] have faith in you—Command me in any way."
Shiloh After Grant captured Fort Donelson, Sherman got his wish to serve under Grant when he was assigned on March 1, 1862, to the
Army of West Tennessee as commander of the 5th
Division. His first major test under Grant was at the
Battle of Shiloh. The massive Confederate attack on the morning of April 6 took most of the senior Union commanders by surprise. Sherman had dismissed the intelligence reports from militia officers, refusing to believe that Confederate General
Albert Sidney Johnston would leave his base at
Corinth. He took no precautions beyond strengthening his picket lines, and refused to entrench, build
abatis, or send out reconnaissance patrols. At Shiloh, he may have wished to avoid appearing overly alarmed in order to escape the kind of criticism he had received in Kentucky. Indeed, he had written to his wife that if he took more precautions "they'd call me crazy again". Despite being caught unprepared by the attack, Sherman rallied his division and conducted an orderly, fighting retreat that helped avert a disastrous Union rout. With a heavy rain coming down at the end of the first day of fighting at Shiloh, Sherman came upon Grant standing under a large oak tree, his cigar glowing in the darkness. Heeding, Sherman later said, "some wise and sudden instinct not to mention retreat," he made a noncommittal remark: "Well, Grant, we've had the devil's own day, haven't we?" "Yes," Grant replied, puffing on his cigar. "Lick 'em tomorrow, though." Sherman proved instrumental to mounting the successful Union counterattack of the following day, April 7. At Shiloh, Sherman was wounded twice—in the hand and shoulder—and had three horses shot out from under him. His performance was praised by Grant and Halleck, and after the battle he was promoted to major general of volunteers, effective May 1. This success contributed greatly to raising Sherman's spirits and changing his personal outlook on the Civil War and his role in it. According to Sherman's biographer Robert O'Connell, "Shiloh marked the turning point of his life." In late April, a Union force of 100,000 men under Halleck, with Grant relegated to second-in-command, began advancing slowly against
Corinth. Sherman commanded the division on the extreme right of the Union's right wing (under
George Henry Thomas). Shortly after the Union forces occupied Corinth on May 30, Sherman persuaded Grant not to resign his command, despite the serious difficulties he was having with Halleck. Sherman offered Grant an example from his own life: "Before the battle of Shiloh, I was cast down by a mere newspaper assertion of 'crazy', but that single battle gave me new life, and I'm now in high feather." He told Grant that, if he remained in the army, "some happy accident might restore you to favor and your true place". In July, Grant's situation improved when Halleck left for the East to become
general-in-chief. Sherman then became the military governor of occupied
Memphis.
Vicksburg In November 1862, Grant, acting as commander of the Union forces in the state of Mississippi, launched a
campaign to capture the city of Vicksburg, the principal Confederate stronghold along the
Mississippi River. Grant made Sherman a
corps commander and put him in charge of half of his forces. According to historian
John D. Winters's
The Civil War in Louisiana (1963), at this stage Sherman 's flotilla of gunships and transports arriving below Vicksburg on April 16, 1863, with General Sherman rowing a
yawl to the
USS Benton. In December, Sherman's forces suffered a severe repulse at the
Battle of Chickasaw Bayou, just north of
Vicksburg. Sherman's operations were supposed to be coordinated with an advance on Vicksburg by Grant from another direction. Unbeknownst to Sherman, Grant abandoned his advance, and Sherman's river expedition met more resistance than expected. Soon after, Major General
John A. McClernand ordered Sherman's
XV Corps to join in his
assault on Arkansas Post. Grant, who was on poor terms with McClernand, regarded this as a politically motivated distraction from the efforts to take Vicksburg, but Sherman had targeted Arkansas Post independently and considered the operation worthwhile. Arkansas Post was taken by the Union army and navy on January 11, 1863. The failure of the first phase of the campaign against Vicksburg led Grant to formulate an unorthodox new strategy, which called for the invading Union army to leave its
supply train and subsist by foraging. Sherman initially expressed reservations about the wisdom of these plans, but he soon submitted to Grant's leadership and the campaign in the spring of 1863 cemented Sherman's personal ties to Grant. The bulk of Grant's forces were now organized into three corps: the
XIII Corps under McClernand, the XV Corps under Sherman, and the
XVII Corps under Sherman's young protégé, Maj. Gen.
James B. McPherson. During the long and complicated
maneuvers against Vicksburg, one newspaper complained that the "army was being ruined in
mud-turtle expeditions, under the leadership of a drunkard [Grant], whose confidential adviser [Sherman] was a lunatic". When Vicksburg fell on July 4, 1863, after a prolonged siege, the Union had achieved a major strategic victory, putting navigation along the Mississippi River entirely under Union control and effectively cutting off
the western half of the Confederacy from the eastern half. During the siege of Vicksburg, Confederate General
Joseph E. Johnston had gathered a force of 30,000 men in
Jackson, Mississippi, with the intention of relieving the garrison under the command of
John C. Pemberton that was trapped inside Vicksburg. After Pemberton surrendered to Grant on July 4, Johnston advanced toward the rear of Grant's forces. In response to this threat, Grant instructed Sherman to attack Johnston. Sherman conducted the ensuing
Jackson Expedition, which concluded successfully on July 25 with the re-capture of the city of Jackson. This helped ensure that the Mississippi River would remain in Union hands for the remainder of the war. According to Holden-Reid, Sherman finally "had
cut his teeth as an army commander" with the Jackson Expedition.
Chattanooga in 1863 After the surrender of Vicksburg and the re-capture of Jackson, Sherman was given the rank of brigadier general in the
regular army, in addition to his rank as a major general of volunteers. His family traveled from Ohio to visit him at the camp near Vicksburg. Sherman's nine-year-old son, Willie, the "Little Sergeant", died from typhoid fever contracted during the trip. Ordered to relieve the Union forces besieged in the city of
Chattanooga, Tennessee, Sherman departed from
Memphis on October 11, 1863, aboard a train bound for Chattanooga. When Sherman's train passed Collierville it
came under attack by 3,000 Confederate cavalry and eight guns under
James Ronald Chalmers. Sherman took command of the infantrymen in the local Union garrison and successfully repelled the Confederate attack. Following the defeat of the
Army of the Cumberland at the
Battle of Chickamauga by Confederate general
Braxton Bragg's
Army of Tennessee, President Lincoln re-organized the Union forces in the West as the
Military Division of the Mississippi, placing it under General Grant's command. Sherman then succeeded Grant at the head of the
Army of the Tennessee. At Chattanooga, Grant instructed Sherman to attack the right flank of Bragg's forces, which were entrenched along
Missionary Ridge overlooking the city. On November 25, Sherman took his assigned target of Billy Goat Hill at the north end of the ridge, only to find that it was separated from the main spine by a rock-strewn ravine. When he attempted to attack the main spine at Tunnel Hill, his troops were repeatedly repelled by
Patrick Cleburne's heavy division, the best unit in Bragg's army. Grant then ordered Thomas to attack the center of the Confederate line. This frontal assault was intended as a diversion, but it unexpectedly succeeded in capturing the enemy's entrenchments and routing the Confederate Army of Tennessee, bringing the Union's
Chattanooga campaign to a successful completion. After Chattanooga, Sherman led a column to relieve Union forces under
Ambrose Burnside, thought to be in peril at
Knoxville. In February 1864, he commanded an
expedition to Meridian, Mississippi, intended to disrupt Confederate infrastructure and communications. Sherman's army captured the city of
Meridian on February 14 and proceeded to destroy 105 miles of railroad and 61 bridges, while burning at least 10 locomotives and 28 railcars. The army took 4,000 prisoners and commandeered many wagons and horses. Sherman was formally
Thanked by Congress for his services on February 19. Thousands of refugees, both black and white, joined Sherman's columns, which on February 20 finally withdrew toward
Canton.
Atlanta The Meridian campaign marked the end of Sherman's brief tenure as commander of the Army of the Tennessee. Sherman had, up to that point, achieved mixed success as a general, and controversy attached especially to his performance at Chattanooga. However, he enjoyed Grant's confidence and friendship. When Lincoln called Grant east in the spring of 1864 to take command of all the Union armies, Grant appointed Sherman (by then known to his soldiers as "Uncle Billy") to succeed him as head of the Military Division of the Mississippi, which entailed command of Union troops in the
Western Theater of the war. As Grant took overall command of the armies of the United States, Sherman wrote to him outlining his strategy to bring the war to an end: "If you can whip
Lee and I can march to the Atlantic I think ol' Uncle Abe [Lincoln] will give us twenty days leave to see the young folks." Sherman proceeded to invade the state of Georgia with three armies: the 60,000-strong Army of the Cumberland under Thomas, the 25,000-strong Army of the Tennessee under
James B. McPherson, and the 13,000-strong
Army of the Ohio under
John M. Schofield. He conducted a series of
flanking maneuvers through rugged terrain against Confederate general Joseph E. Johnston's Army of Tennessee, attempting a direct assault only at the
Battle of Kennesaw Mountain. The Confederate victory at Kennesaw Mountain did little to halt Sherman's advance toward Atlanta. In July, the cautious Johnston was replaced by the more aggressive
John Bell Hood, who played to Sherman's strength by challenging him to direct battles on open ground. Meanwhile, in August, Sherman "learned that I had been commissioned a major-general in the regular army, which was unexpected, and not desired until successful in the capture of Atlanta". in September 1864. Sherman's
Atlanta campaign concluded successfully on September 2, 1864, with the capture of the city, which Hood had been forced to abandon. After ordering almost all civilians to abandon the city in September, Sherman gave instructions that all military and government buildings in Atlanta be burned, although many private homes and shops were burned as well. The capture of Atlanta made Sherman a household name and was decisive in ensuring
Lincoln's re-election in November. Sherman's success caused the collapse of the once powerful "
Copperhead" faction within the
Democratic Party, which had advocated immediate peace negotiations with the Confederacy. It also dealt a major blow to the popularity of the Democratic presidential candidate,
George B. McClellan, whose victory in the election had until then appeared likely to many, including Lincoln himself. According to Holden-Reid, "Sherman did more than any other man apart from the president in creating [the] climate of opinion" that afforded Lincoln a comfortable victory over McClellan at the polls.
March to the Sea was Sherman's headquarters after his capture of
Savannah, in December 1864. During September and October, Sherman and Hood played a cat-and-mouse game in northern Georgia and Alabama, as Hood threatened Sherman's communications to the north. Eventually, Sherman won approval from his superiors for a plan to cut loose from his communications and march south, having advised Grant that he could "make Georgia howl". In response, Hood moved north into Tennessee. Sherman at first trivialized the corresponding threat, reportedly saying that he would "give [Hood] his rations" to go in that direction, as "my business is down south". Sherman left forces under Major Generals George H. Thomas and John M. Schofield to deal with Hood; their forces eventually smashed Hood's army in the battles of
Franklin (November 30) and
Nashville (December 15–16). After the November elections, Sherman began marching on November 15 with 62,000 men in the direction of the port city of
Savannah, Georgia, living off the land and causing, by his own estimate, more than $100 million in property damage. At the end of this campaign, known as
Sherman's March to the Sea, his troops took Savannah on December 21. Upon reaching Savannah, Sherman appointed Private
A. O. Granger as his personal secretary. Sherman then dispatched a message to Lincoln, offering him the city as a Christmas present. Sherman's success in Georgia received ample coverage in the Northern press at a time when Grant seemed to be making little progress in his fight against General
Robert E. Lee's
Army of Northern Virginia. A bill was introduced in Congress to promote Sherman to Grant's rank of
lieutenant general, probably with a view toward having him replace Grant as commander of the Union Army. Sherman wrote both to his brother, Senator John Sherman, and to General Grant vehemently repudiating any such promotion. According to a war-time account, it was around this time Sherman made his memorable declaration of loyalty to Grant: While in Savannah, Sherman learned from a newspaper that his infant son Charles Celestine had died during the
Savannah campaign; the general had never seen the child.
Final campaigns in the Carolinas for ''
Harper's Weekly''. Grant then ordered Sherman to embark his army on steamers and join the Union forces confronting Lee in Virginia, but Sherman instead persuaded Grant to allow him to
march north through the Carolinas, destroying everything of military value along the way, as he had done in Georgia. He was particularly interested in targeting
South Carolina, the first state to secede from the Union, because of the effect that it would have on Southern morale. His army proceeded north through South Carolina against light resistance from the troops of General Johnston. Upon hearing that Sherman's men were advancing on
corduroy roads through the
Salkehatchie swamps at a rate of a dozen miles per day, Johnston "made up his mind that there had been no such army in existence since the days of Julius Caesar". Sherman was again formally
Thanked by Congress on January 10, 1865. Sherman
captured Columbia, the state capital, on February 17, 1865. Fires began that night and by next morning most of the central city was destroyed. The burning of Columbia has engendered controversy ever since, with some claiming the fires were a deliberate act of vengeance by the Union troops and others that the fires were accidental, caused in part by the burning bales of cotton that the retreating Confederates left behind them. Local Native American
Lumbee guides helped Sherman's army cross the
Lumber River, which was flooded by torrential rains, into
North Carolina. According to Sherman, the trek across the Lumber River and through the swamps,
pocosins, and creeks of
Robeson County was "the damnedest marching I ever saw". Thereafter, his troops did relatively little damage to the civilian infrastructure. North Carolina, unlike its southern neighbor, was regarded by the Union troops as a reluctant Confederate state, having been second from last to secede from the Union, ahead only of Tennessee. ,
Lincoln, and
Porter meeting aboard the
River Queen on March 27, 1865, near
City Point, Virginia,
The Peacemakers by
G. P. A. Healy, is displayed in the
White House.|alt=Painting of the four men conferring in a ship's cabin. The only general engagement during Sherman's marches through Georgia and the Carolinas, the
Battle of Bentonville, took place on March 19–21. Having defeated the Confederate forces under Johnston at Bentonville, Sherman proceeded to rendezvous at
Goldsboro with the Union troops that awaited him there after the captures of the coastal cities of
New Bern and
Wilmington. In late March, Sherman briefly left his forces and traveled to
City Point, Virginia, to confer with Grant. Lincoln happened to be at City Point at the same time, making possible the only three-way meeting of Lincoln, Grant, and Sherman during the war. Also present at the City Point conference was Rear Admiral
David Dixon Porter. This meeting was memorialized in
G. P. A. Healy's painting
The Peacemakers. After returning to Goldsboro, Sherman marched to the state capital,
Raleigh, where Sherman sought to communicate with Johnston's army regarding possible terms for ending the war. On April 9, Sherman relayed to his troops the news that Lee had surrendered to Grant at
Appomattox Court House and that the Confederate Army of Northern Virginia had ceased to exist.
Confederate surrender Following Lee's surrender and the
assassination of Lincoln on April 14, 1865, Sherman met with Johnston on April 17 at
Bennett Place in
Durham, North Carolina, to negotiate a Confederate surrender. At the insistence of Johnston, Confederate President
Jefferson Davis, and Secretary of War
John C. Breckinridge, Sherman conditionally agreed to generous terms that dealt with both military and political issues. On April 20, Sherman dispatched a memorandum with those terms to the government in Washington. photographed Sherman with
Howard,
Logan,
Hazen,
Davis,
Slocum, and
Mower. Sherman believed that the terms that he had agreed to were consistent with the views that Lincoln had expressed at City Point, and that they offered the best way to prevent Johnston from ordering his men to go into the wilderness and conduct a destructive
guerrilla campaign. However, Sherman had proceeded without authority from Grant, the newly installed President
Andrew Johnson, or the Cabinet. The assassination of Lincoln had caused the political climate in Washington to turn against the prospect of a rapid reconciliation with the defeated Confederates, and the Johnson administration rejected Sherman's terms. Grant may have had to intervene to save Sherman from dismissal for having overstepped his authority. The U.S. Secretary of War,
Edwin M. Stanton, leaked Sherman's memorandum to
The New York Times, intimating that Sherman might have been bribed to allow Davis to escape capture by the Union troops. This precipitated a deep and long-lasting enmity between Sherman and Stanton, and it intensified Sherman's disdain for politicians. Grant then offered Johnston purely military terms, similar to those that he had negotiated with Lee at Appomattox. Johnston, ignoring instructions from President Davis, accepted those terms on April 26, 1865, formally surrendered his army and all the Confederate forces in the Carolinas, Georgia, and Florida. This was the largest single capitulation of the war. Sherman proceeded with some of his troops to Washington, where they marched in the
Grand Review of the Armies on May 24. ==Slavery and emancipation==