WILLIAM T. SHERMAN, HERO OF THE

MARCH THROUGH GEORGIA

IF General Grant had not risen to the position of commander-in-chief of the Union armies General Sherman might have done so, for the American Civil War produced no abler or more popular soldier. Grant looked upon him as his right-hand man, and while he was hammering away at Lee in Virginia, Sherman was fighting his way from Chattanooga to Atlanta and making his spectacular march from Atlanta to the sea" and from Savannah to Raleigh.

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A man

of nervous temperament and intense energy, with a genius for war, Sherman rarely struck without something giving way, and among the famous heroes of the Civil War the North had no greater favorite.

William Tecumseh Sherman was born at Lancaster, Ohio, on the 8th of February, 1820. His father, Charles R. Sherman, had once been a judge of the superior court of Ohio, and his brother, John Sherman, became an American senator, Secretary of the Treasury, and Secretary of State. After his father's death in 1829, leaving a large family and small income, William was adopted as a son by Senator Thomas Ewing, a devoted friend of his father, and grew up in his family. Here he formed a warm attachment for the senator's daughter Ellen, then a charming girl, whom he continued to love and who in time became his wife.

Senator Ewing gained him admission to the West Point Military Academy in 1836. Here he was a dili

gent student, though he showed no special desire to be a soldier. Graduating in 1840, he was commissioned second lieutenant in the artillery service, and during the years that followed was kept busily engaged, at first against the Seminoles in Florida, and afterwards at Fort Moultrie and in California. His marriage with Ellen Ewing took place in Washington in 1850, he was made captain in 1851, and in 1853 he resigned from the army and became a banker in San Francisco.

During the eight years that followed Sherman was not very successful in business. The bank went out of existence in 1857; then he vainly tried his hand as a lawyer in Kansas, and in 1860 got a position as superintendent of a new military academy in Louisiana. In January, 1861, the Southern States were seceding and Sherman was warmly implored to serve under the flag of the South. His reply was warm with patriotism: "I will maintain my allegiance to the old Constitution as long as a fragment of it survives."

In March he went to Washington, where his brother John was just taking his seat in the Senate. The two tried in vain to induce the President to prepare for war; but when Fort Sumter was fired upon there was a sudden change, seventy-five thousand three-months' men were called out, and Sherman was sent for. When he reached Washington he told the authorities that they were making a great mistake by enlisting short-term men. "You might as well try to put out the flames of a burning house with a squirt gun," he said, and refused to go to Ohio to enroll three-months' volunteers. He was one of the few men in the army who saw from the start that the government had a great war, not a temporary rebellion, on its hands.

In June Sherman was commissioned colonel of an

infantry regiment, and at the battle of Bull Run, July 21, he commanded a brigade, doing his utmost to save the army from defeat. On August 3 he was made brigadier-general of volunteers and in September was sent to Kentucky. In October he was given the chief command of that department, and the secretary of war asked him how many men he needed. He replied, with a keen prevision of coming events, " sixty thousand to drive the enemy out of Kentucky and two hundred thousand to finish the war in this section." This was considered so wildly extravagant that he was removed from the command, as an unsafe, if not mentally deficient man, and was put in a subordinate position under General Halleck. It was not long before they learned that the man they had deemed insane was wiser than they.

It was not till April, 1862, that Sherman, as commander of the fifth division of General Grant's army, was able to show the metal of which he was made. On the 6th and 7th of that month the desperate battle of Shiloh was fought, and here his coolness, skill, and energy went far to save the day. Grant wrote of him, "At the battle of Shiloh, on the first day, he held, with raw troops, the key-point of the landing. Το his individual efforts I am indebted for the success of that battle." Halleck also wrote to the effect that Sherman saved the fortunes of the day on the 6th. On the 7th he led his battered troops with heroic energy into the fight, and after the victory he pushed out and whipped the enemy's cavalry, capturing a large supply of ammunition. Rousseau said of him, "He fights by the week." During the battle he was wounded in the hand and had three horses shot under

It was evident that in Sherman the North had a fighting soldier, and in May he was raised in rank to major-general of volunteers. A few days later he took an active part in the siege of Corinth, which was evacuated on the 29th. Sherman's next important work was in Grant's operations against Vicksburg, which began in December, 1862, and continued till July, 1863. He led the division that made the first direct assault upon Vicksburg, striking at the stronghold from the mouth of the Yazoo River, on the north side. The attempt was unsuccessful, not from any lack of courage or skill, but simply because the place was too strong to be taken by assault. Only a siege could reduce it, and this Grant recognized when he cut loose from his base and "swung around to the south."

In the battles that followed in the rear of Vicksburg Sherman was active; he took part in an assault on the city on May 22, and after its fall on July 4, he marched against General Johnston and drove him from Jackson, the capital of Mississippi. About this time he expressed his sentiments as follows: "The people of the North must conquer or be conquered. There can be no middle course.' The event proved that he was correct in this as in his former utterances.

Chattanooga, on the Tennessee, was the next point of interest. Here General Thomas, after the day of disaster at Chickamauga, led his troops and held the place, threatened by Bragg in front and by starvation in the rear. Grant hurried to his relief, and sent for Sherman, then in command at Memphis, four hundred miles away. He responded with his usual promptness and by a forced march reached Chattanooga about November 15. It was the men under his command who, on the 25th, led by him, made that phenomenal

rush up the steep face of Missionary Ridge, which swept Bragg and his men from their strongholds, and put an effectual end to the siege. Immediately afterwards he marched to the relief of Burnside, who was besieged at Knoxville, his cavalry reaching there on the 3d of December, to find that the enemy had not waited for his coming. He wrote in his official report:

"The men had marched for long periods, without regular rations of any kind, through mud and over rocks, sometimes barefoot, and without a murmur. Without a moment's rest, after a march of over four hundred miles, without sleep for three successive nights, they crossed the Tennessee River, fought their part in the battle of Chattanooga, pursued the enemy out of Tennessee, then turned once more one hundred miles north and compelled Longstreet to raise the siege of Knoxville, which had been a source of anxiety to the whole country."

During the winter that followed Sherman made a raid to Meridian, in central Mississippi, destroying railroads and capturing large quantities of stores. But the great opportunity in his career came after March 12, 1864, when Grant was made commander-in-chief of all the armies. The forces between the Mississippi and the Alleghanies were put under Sherman, and when Grant projected his great movement against Lee in the beginning of May, he ordered Sherman to move at the same time against Johnston, then commanding the Confederate forces in his front. Grant wrote to him with warm commendation, saying: "I express my thanks to you and McPherson as the men to whom, above all others, I feel indebted for whatever I have had of success."

On May 5, the movement began. Of its purpose