Sherman, William Tecumseh (1820–1891)

In the American Civil War, union general known for destroying southern infrastructure during his infamous March to the Sea in 1864. Sherman's direct targeting of the enemy's means of production marked the first large-scale implementation of the strategy of total war.

William Tecumseh Sherman was the son of an Ohio judge who died when William was nine years old. The young Sherman was raised by a neighbor who served as a U.S. senator and who later obtained a commission for Sherman to the U.S. Military Academy at West Point. Sherman graduated from West Point in 1840 and subsequently served in the Mexican War. In 1852, he resigned his commission and became a banker in San Francisco and New York before practicing law in Leavenworth, Kansas. In 1859, Sherman took a post as head of Louisiana's state military academy. He resigned the position when Louisiana seceded from the Union in January 1861.

Upon the outbreak of the Civil War, Sherman accepted a commission as a colonel in the U.S. Army. He commanded a Union brigade at the first battle of Bull Run in July 1861 and was promoted to brigadier general in August of that year. At his own request, Sherman was removed from field command due to personal problems, including drinking. He was placed in charge of a military department in Kentucky but returned to combat in April 1862 as a division commander under General Ulysses S. Grant at the Battle of Shiloh. The following month Sherman was promoted to major general, and, in July, his troops occupied Memphis, Tennessee. In the spring and summer of 1863, Sherman participated in Grant's Vicksburg campaign, which cut the Confederacy in two and helped hasten the defeat of Southern forces in the west. He led the U.S. 15th Corps in the Union assault on Vicksburg in July 1863.

In October 1863, Grant was named supreme commander in the west, and Sherman succeeded him as commander of the Army of Tennessee. Between November 1863 and February 1864, Sherman's troops conducted a successful campaign against Confederate forces in the Deep South, destroying vital Southern transportation and supply links. When Grant was appointed to command the Army of the Potomac in March 1864, Sherman was named supreme commander in the west.

Over the next five months, Sherman laid down a fierce siege against Atlanta that culminated in the city's surrender on September 2, 1864. On November 15, Sherman burned most of the city a day before setting out on his historic March to the Sea. With some 60,000 troops and little opposition, he used a scorched earth strategy to decimate the Southern infrastructure. Sherman's strategy was to demoralize enemy combatants and noncombatants alike by destroying everything in his path. Houses, farms, factories, railroads, harbors, food supplies—nothing was spared from looting, burning, or spoilage.

Sherman's tactics represented a radical departure from the way wars had been fought in the previous century. Retreating armies had used scorched earth tactics to deny food and other supplies to invaders, but advancing forces had never adopted it as a conscious strategy. Attackers routinely pillaged territories they invaded and tried to live off the land when possible, and the destruction of property to spread terror among the populace is as old as war itself. However, Sherman's deliberate and systematic destruction of every functional part of Southern society was something entirely new in warfare.

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