Grant to Ord after the battle of Corinth (3-4 Oct. 1862): "It is a great annoyance to gain rank and command enough to attract attention. I have found it so and would really prefer some little command where public attention would not be attracted toward me."

Ulysses Simpson Grant was born Hiram Ulysses Grant on 22 April 1822 of Jesse Root Grant and Hannah Simpson in Point Pleasant, Ohio. He grew up in Georgetown, Ohio. Detesting the work in the family tannery, Ulysses instead did chores on his father's farm and developed much skill in handling horses. In 1839 Jesse secured for Ulysses through Congressman Thomas Hamer an appointment to the United States Military Academy at West Point and pressured him to attend. Although he had no interest in military life, Ulysses accepted the appointment, realizing that the alternative was no further education. However, his congressional appointment was erroneously made in the name Ulysses S. Grant, the name he eventually accepted, maintaining that the middle initial stood for nothing. He came to be known as U.S. Grant, and his classmates called him Sam. Only a little over five feet tall when he entered the academy, he grew more than six inches in the next four years. Bored by the military curriculum, he took great interest in the required drawing courses and read classic novels in his spare time. Grant ranked 21st in a class of 39 when he graduated from West Point in 1843, but he had distinguished himself in horsemanship and showed such considerable ability in mathematics that he imagined himself as a teacher of the subject at the academy. Upon graduation Grant was assigned as a brevet second lieutenant to the 4th U.S. Infantry, stationed near St. Louis, Missouri, where he met his future wife Julia Boggs Dent, the sister of his roommate at West Point. During the Mexican War (1846-48) he was quartermaster for his regiment. However, he did see some action, although how much is debated.  At the battles of Molino del Rey under Zachary Taylor and Chapultepec under Winfield Scott, he earned brevet commissions as first lieutenant and captain, although his permanent rank was first lieutenant. Grant wrote years later: "I do not think there was ever a more wicked war....I thought so at the time...only I had not moral courage enough to resign."  Showing moral courage never was Grant's strong suit. On 5 July 1852, when the 4th Infantry sailed from New York for the Pacific coast, Grant left his growing family (two sons had been born) behind. Assigned to Fort Vancouver, Oregon Territory (later Washington state), he attempted unsuccesfully to supplement his army pay with business ventures and was unable to reunite his family. A promotion to captain in August 1853 brought an assignment to a dreary post in Fort Humboldt, California. On 11 April 1854 Grant resigned from the army under threat of expulsion. Whether this situation had anything to do with Grant's fondness for alcohol, which he reportedly drank often during his lonely years on the Pacific coast, or with irregularities in the accounting of his office, remains open to conjecture.  He returned home to his wife, settling at White Haven, the Dents' estate in Missouri, and began to farm the 80 acres given to Julia by her father. This farming venture was a failure, as was an attempt to sell firewood, and as was a real estate partnership in St. Louis in 1859. In 1860 Grant joined the leather goods business owned by his father and operated by his brothers in Galena, Illinois.

When Civil War broke out, Grant offered his services as a colonel to the state of Illinois but was first rebuffed. However, he helped recruit and drill troops in Galena, then accompanied them to the state capital, Springfield, where Governor Richard Yates made him an aide and assigned him to the state adjutant general's office. Yates appointed him colonel of an unruly regiment (later named the 21st Illinois Volunteers) in June 1861. Through the influence of Elihu B. Washburne, a U.S. congressman from Galena, Ill. who would promote Grant's fortunes throughout the war, Grant was appointed brigadier general before he had even engaged the enemy. On hearing the news and, in view of his son's previous failures, his father said, "Be careful, Ulyss, you are a general now--it's a good job, don't lose it!" Grant was soon appointed to command of the District of Southeast Missouri, headquartered at Cairo, Illinois. On 7 Nov. 1861 he led an improvised raid on the Confederate positions at Belmont, Missouri, opposite the strong Confederate force under Polk in Columbus, Ky. just across the river. The Union troops surprised the Confederates, but then began looting during Grant's absence from the field. After being reeinforced the Confederates rallied and drove Grant’s men back up the river, inflicting heavy casualties (25%). In January 1862  Grant received permission from General Henry Halleck to begin an offensive campaign, and he occupied Paducah at the juction of the Ohio and Tennessee rivers. This made possible another improvised raid (the men had no winter clothing and no food) against the Forts Henry and Donelson in Feb. 1862 which had been rendered untenable anyway by the earlier victory of Thomas at Mill Springs on 19 Jan. 1862. It was at Fort Donelson where Grant received the nickname “Unconditional Surrender” Grant. When Buckner asked Grant what his terms were, he first consulted one of his division commanders, the older Charles F. Smith who told him to offer no terms, whereupon Grant send the message since become famous.

After Forts Henry and Donelson Grant was put in charge of the movement against A. S. Johnston's forces in Corinth, Miss.  Grant repelled an unexpected Confederate attack on 6-7 April 1862 at Shiloh Church, near Pittsburg Landing, Tennessee. Grant was absent from the field the first morning, and his army was not prepared to defend itself. When Buell arrived with reincorcements that evening he encountered a disintegrating army with thousands of Union troops trying to flee the scene of the battle and get to the east side of the Tennessee river. The next day Buell's fresh troops drove the Confederates from the field, and Grant never forgave Buell for having been a witness of his embarassment. Coincidentally, Buell's difficulties with the War Department later increased to the point of his being hauled before a military court of  inquiry for mistakes which weren't nearly as grave as those of many another commander, including Grant. Shiloh was the first really costly battle of the Civil War, and the public outcry over heavy Union losses in the battle and poor pre-battle planning damaged Grant's reputation. Halleck therefore arrived toward the end of April in order to take personal command of the army.

About his state of preparedness at Shiloh, Grant wrote in his Memoirs that "the troops with me, officers and men, needed discipline and drill than they did experience with the pick, shovel and axe." He perhaps also wanted to spare his men the dibilitating horrors of advanced picket duty, because he did not establish at Shiloh the standard system of two lines of vedettes and pickets. He simply could not immagine that the Confederates, safe in their fortifications in Corinth, would not simply await his attack, so he and Sherman discounted the reports of increasing enemy activity in front of them. During Halleck's subsequent slow campaign to take Corinth (6 weeks to cover 25 miles), Grant was second in command but had no actual authority. Grant complained bitterly about this, even to the point of having to be dissuaded from resigning by Sherman. However, Halleck was certainly doing Grant a favor by keeping him out of the limelight in the wake of the controversy about the butchery at Shiloh. In any case, when Halleck was called to Washington as general-in-chief in July, Grant regained command. In fact, Thomas, who had temporarily assumed command of Grant's units, requested that they be returned to Grant, a magnanimous gesture which Grant apparently did not appreciate. See the article Slow Trot' and other Thomas nicknames by Don Plezia to see how Grant, together with Sherman, repayed Thomas by attempting to destroy his reputation.

In the summer of 1862 Grant was occupied in trying to mop up Confederate resistance in northern Mississippi. Smaller forces under Price and Van Dorn were causing him a lot of annoyance. However, when his subordinate, William S. Rosecrans, brought them to bay and defeated them in Sept. and Oct. at the battles of Iuka and Corinth, Grant contributed very little to and perhaps even interfered with these victories. Again, Grant was absent, and again he subsequently attacked the reputation of a subordinate who was too successful or could possibly ever become a rival for promotion.

In the late fall of 1862 and winter of 1863, Grant conducted various fruitless operations against Vicksburg, including having his men try to build a by-pass canal through a malarial Louisiana swamp, just to keep them busy. I quote from his Memoirs (p. 233):

"Then commenced a series of experiments to consume time, and to divert the attention of the enemy, of my troops, and of the public generally. I, myself, never felt great confidance that any of the experiments resorted to would prove successful. Nevertheless I was always prepared to take advantage of them in case they did."

Many of the men thus kept busy got sick and died, but they had been diverted while they lived. In May 1863 he crossed the Mississippi and marched south, recrossing back to the east side of the river and, in a series of battles at Jackson, Champion Hill, and Big Black River Bridge, defeated piecemeal the divided forces under the indecisive J. Johnston in Jackson, Miss. and the unimaginative Pemberton in Vicksburg itself. After three unsuccessful frontal attacks against the city, Grant laid siege. On the 4th of  July 1863, just one day after the defeat of the Lee at Gettysburg, Pemberton surrendered Vicksburg and his army to Grant. The surrender of Vicksburg, along with the Confederate surrender at Port Hudson, brought the entire Mississippi River under Union control and cut the Trans-Mississippi off from the rest of the Confederacy. After the surrender, Grant was promoted to Major General.

While in Vicksburg Grant, with the help of a Colonel John Eaton, administered camps for slaves who were put back to work harvesting cotton on the very plantations from which they had escaped. As Grant writes in his Memoirs (p. 221):

"At once the freedmen became self-sustaining. The money was not paid to them directly, but was expended judiciously and for their benefit. They gave me no trouble afterwards."

As a matter of fact, the sale of cotton to the North never stopped during the war, and the competition from civilians  trying to cash in on this lucrative trade may have had something to do with Grant's infamous General Order 11 of 17 Dec. 1862 mandating the expulsion of "the Jews, as a class" from northern Mississippi, Kentucky and western Tennessee.  In various tortured "man of his times" explanations the Grant apologists try to soften the blatant anti-semitism of this order. My suggestion that it was mostly about business as usual is perhaps some, albeit small comfort to them because, after all, the pogroms in Russia, Poland, and Germany were also mostly about business.

After Vicksburg, Grant was present more or less as an observer at the battle of Chattanooga (23-25 Nov. 1863) where he unsuccessfully tried to hand the victory to Sherman who failed utterly in the task assigned to him. Fortunately for the Union, George H. Thomas was there to keep things on an even keel. Afterward, Grant, Sherman, Halleck, and Dana rewrote the history of the battle so that it conformed to Grant's plan, and Grant was promoted in March 1864 to the newly reinstated rank of Lieutenant General and brought east in order to command the Army of the Potomac and direct the operations of all of the Union forces.

Before Lincoln allowed this to happen, he first inquired about any political ambitions Grant may have been harboring, because opposition to Lincoln's renomination was rising, and Grant was being touted as the next president in major newspapers. Lincoln consulted Elihu Washburn, the Illinois congressman who had been one of Grant's earliest promoters, and a J. Russell Jones, at the time Grant's "investment advisor".¹ Jones produced an artfully crafted letter from Grant (see below), categorically stating he had no intention of running for president. After Lincoln was renominated, there was even an attempt by some Republicans to organize a second nominating convention. When the rumors reached Lincoln that the conspirators were considering Grant, Lincoln put the question to the above mentioned Col. John Eaton of the freedmen labor camps. Eaton visited Grant and then reported to Lincoln who, reassured, exclaimed: "I told you, they could not get him to run until he had closed out the rebellion."²

As commander of the Army of the Potomac, Grant pursued a policy of constant attacks against Lee and the Army of Northern Virginia, but not without costs. Due to poor planning and occasionally indecisive management, he suffered severe casualties at the Wilderness, Spotsylvania, and espcecially Cold Harbor (3 June 1864) where he launched an attack against state-of-the art fortifications without having conducted any reconnaissance.  The result of this were 7000 Union casualties in less than a half hour, as opposed to 1,500 Confederate casualties. Grant waited 4 whole days before requesting a truce in order to bury the dead and pick up any wounded who happened to survive that long after the battle. In his Memoirs Grant wrote: "I have always regretted that the last assault at Cold Harbor was ever made." Surely the families of the killed and maimed soldiers were greatly comforted by this admission, partial as it was. You see, Grant did not mention in this context that he had been egregiously negligent (again), which somewhat reduces the effect of the admission.

Grant then laid siege to Lee in Petersburg from June 1864 to April 1865, more than 9 months, while Sherman laid waste to large areas in Georgia and South Carolina, and Thomas repelled Hood's invasion of Tennessee. In fact, Grant did not willingly grant Thomas 2 weeks to prepare for the battle of Nashville (15-16 Dec. 1864), but tried with every means possible, including the subversive activities of the political general Schofield who had been inserted into Thomas's command, to force Thomas into action, any old action, regardless of consequences and extreme winter conditions. Only the news of Thomas's stunning victory kept him from being replaced by Logan whom Grant had already sent to Nashville for this purpose. When Lee left the Petersburg trenches in April 1865 in an attempt to unite with Confederate forces in North Carolina (which Thomas blocked by sending Stoneman into the area), Grant followed, eventually surrounding Lee and the remnants of his army at Appomattox Court House, forcing Lee to surrender. Grant had finally eliminated an army on the open field. True, his army outnumbered the Confederate army by 20 to one.

In 1866 he was appointed to the newly established rank of 4-star general. In 1867 Johnson removed Secretary of War Stanton and thereby tested the constitutionality of the Tenure of Office Act, which dictated that removals from office be at the assent of Congress, and in August appointed Grant interim secretary of war. When Congress insisted upon Stanton's reinstatement, Grant resigned (January 1868), thus infuriating Johnson, who believed that Grant had agreed to remain in office to provoke a court decision. Johnson's angry charges strengthened Grant's long-standing and covert ties to the Republican Party, which nominated him for president in 1868. The last line of his letter of acceptance, "Let us have peace," became the Republican  slogan. Grant's Democratic opponent was Horatio Seymour, former governor of New York. The race was a close one, and Grant's narrow margin of victory in the popular vote (300,000 ballots) may have been attributable to some manipulation of newly enfranchised black voters. The vote of the electoral college was more one-sided, with Grant getting 214 votes, compared to 80 for Seymour.

Grant entered the White House on 4 March 1869 with no civilian political experience, although with lots of military political experience. At age 46 he was the youngest man elected president until then. His appointments to office were uneven in quality but sometimes refreshing. Grant did name Ely Parker, a Seneca Indian who had served with him as a staff officer, commissioner of Indian affairs, and Grant's wife persuaded him to appoint the noted financier Hamilton Fish secretary of state. Americans did not seem to mind that the Grants lived beyond their means. They redecorated the White House lavishly and entertained accordingly, with state dinners sometimes consisting of 29 courses irrigated by nine French wines. On 18 March 1869 Grant signed his first law, pledging to redeem in gold the greenback currency issued during the Civil War, thus placing himself with the financial conservatives of the day. He appointed the first Civil Service Commission, but after initially backing its recommendations, he abandoned his support for the reforms when faced with congressional opposition. Grant was more persistent but equally unsuccessful when the Senate rejected a treaty of annexation with the Dominican Republic which Grant had been persuaded would be of strategic importance. His negotiation of the Treaty of Washington provided for the settlement by international tribunal of American claims against Great Britain arising from the wartime activities of the British-built raider Alabama, whose sale to the Confederacy had violated Britain's declared neutrality. Grant won reelection in 1872, defeating Horace Greeley, the editor of the New York Tribune and the candidate for the coalition formed by Democrats and Liberal Republicans, by some 800,000 votes in the popular election and capturing 286 of 366 electoral votes. During the campaign, newspapers discovered that prominent Republican politicians were involved in the Crédit Mobilier of America, a paper entity designed to siphon profits of the Union Pacific Railroad. More scandal followed in 1875 when Secretary of the Treasury  Bristow exposed the operation of the "Whiskey Ring" which had the aid of high-placed officials in defrauding the government of tax revenues. When the investigation reached the president's private secretary, Orville E. Babcock, Grant regretted his earlier statement, "Let no guilty man escape." Grant accepted the resignation of Secretary of War William W. Belknap before he could be tried on charges of accepting bribes. Discouraged, Grant closed his second term by assuring Congress: "Failures have been errors of judgment, not of intent."  Grant supported both amnesty for Confederate leaders and civil rights for former slaves, although he was ineffective in enforcing the civil rights laws. His 1874 veto of a bill to increase the amount of legal tender diminished the currency crisis during the next quarter century, and he received praise two years later for his handling of the controversial election of 1876, when both Republican Rutherford B. Hayes and Democrat Samuel Jones Tilden claimed election to the presidency.

After leaving office, Ulysses and Julia Grant set forth on a round-the-world trip in May 1877. Grant's reputation as the man who had saved the Union having preceded him, he was greeted everywhere as a hero. In Great Britain he and his wife were feted by Queen Victoria at Windsor Castle. In Germany they were greeted by Bismarck, and in Japan they shook hands with the emperor. In 1879 Grant found that a faction of the Republican Party was determined to nominate him for a third term. Although he did little to openly encourage support, he received more than 300 votes in each of the 36 ballots of the 1880 convention, which finally nominated James A. Garfield. In 1881 Grant helped found the investment firm of Grant and Ward, in which his son Ulysses, Jr., was a partner. Grant put his capital and those of his friends at the disposal of the firm and encouraged others to follow, including many soldiers of his former command . In 1884 the firm collapsed, swindled by Ferdinand Ward. This impoverished the Grant family and further tarnished Grant's reputation. In 1884 Grant, with the help of an historian named Badeau, began to write reminiscences of his campaigns for the Century Magazine and found this work so profitable that he began his memoirs, despite excruciating throat pain, later diagnosed as cancer.  He signed a contract with Mark Twain to edit and publish the memoirs. In June 1885 the Grant family moved to a cottage in Mount McGregor, NY in the Adirondack Mountains, and a month later Grant died there, shortly after completing his memoirs. They enjoy high rank among military autobiographies, in spite of inaccuracies and even distortions of the historical record.

A funeral cortege seven miles long accompanied his coffin to a temporary vault in New York City's Riverside Park. In 1897, on the 75th anniversary of his birth, his remains were removed to a granite tomb at Riverside Drive in Manhattan. Grant's Tomb is one of the largest mausoleums in the world, 150 feet high, with a domed rotunda and allegorical relief figures representing episodes in Grant's life. Two figures representing victory and peace support a granite block containing Grant's epitaph, his own words, "Let us have peace." Julia Grant, who died in 1902, was interred beside her husband, as they had planned.

Grant to Ord after the battle of Corinth (3-4 Oct. 1862): "It is a great annoyance to gain rank and command enough to attract attention. I have found it so and would really prefer some little command where public attention would not be attracted toward me."

And to think there are legions of credulous Grant fanatics out there who take statements like this at face value, as proof even, that Grant was the modest man the history books make him out to be. Woodbury, Candace Scott, and Simpson come to mind. And then there are the scholars who know better, but pull their punches because they don't want to hurt the sales of their books. I guess we should be grateful to them for providing the quotes.

¹David Herbert Donald writes on pp. 490-91 of "Lincoln": Still he was not yet ready to bring Grant in from the West. One reason was that the general was beginning to be talked about as a possible presidential candidate in 1864. He was a favorite of the influential New York Herald, and, since his political views were unknown, he was wooed by both Democrats and Republicans. With General McClellan conspicuously courting the Democrats, Lincoln was not about to appoint another general-in-chief who had political aspirations, and he asked E.B. Wahburn, the representative from Grant's district, to report on the general's political ambitions. Washburne reffered him to J. Russel Jones, a close friend of Grant and his investment advisor [What was Grant, poor as a churchmouse in 1861, doing with an investment advisor in 1864? - ed.], who brought to the White House Grant's letter pledging that nothing could persuade him to be a candidate for the presidency, particularly since there was the possibility of reelecting Lincoln. "You will never know how gratifying that is to me," the President said after reading the letter. "No man knows, when that presidential grub gets to gnawing away at him, just how deep it will get until he has tried it; and I didn't know but what there was one gnawing at Grant."

Footnote no. 491 on p. 668: "gnawing at Grant": Ida M. Tarbell, The Life of Abraham Lincoln (New York: Doubelday, Page & Co., 1909, 2:187-189. For a thorough evaluation of Grant's position on the nomination, see John Y. Simon, ed., The Papers of Ulysses S. Grant (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1982), 9:541-544.

The letter which Grant wrote (only to a Democrat) to deny any presidential aspirations, is as follows:

To Barnabas Burns:
Chattanooga Tennessee
December 17th 1863
B. Burns, Esq., Chairman Dem. Cen. Comm.
     Your letter of the 7th inst. asking if you will be at liberty to use  my name before the convention of the "War Democracy", as candidate for the office of the Presidency is just received. -- This question astonishes me. I do not know of anything I have ever done or said  which would indicate that I could be a candidate for any office whatever within the gift of the people.
     I shall continue to do my duty, to the best of my ability, so long as permitted to remain in the Army, supporting whatever Administration  may be in power [italics mine - ed.], in their endeavor to suppress the rebellion and maintain National unity, and never desert it because of my vote, if I had one, might have been cast for different candidates.
     Nothing likely to happen [italics mine - ed. What does this mean?] would pain me so much as to see my name used in connection with a political office. I am not a candidate for any office nor for favors from any party. Let us succeed in crushing the rebellion, in the shortest possible time, and I will be content with whatever credit may then be given me, feeling assured that a just public will award all that is due.
     Your letter I take to be private. Mine is also private [actually not all that private - ed.]. I wish to avoid notoriety as far as possible, and above all things, desire to be spared the pain of seeing my name mixed with politics. Do not therefore publish this letter but wherever, and by whatever party, you hear my name mentioned in connection with the candidacy for any office, say that you know from me direct that I am not "in the field," and cannot allow my name to be used before any convention.
     I am, with great respect, your obt. svt.
U. S. Grant

² Herbert, "Lincoln", pp. 525-26: Inevitably reports of these plans reached Lincoln's ears. He was neither surprised nor worried by most of the schemes to replace him as the nominee of the Republican party, but he was alarmed when he heard that the dissidents were thinking of running Grant. He did not think the general had political aspirations but, concluding that he ought to sound him out again, he asked Colonel John Eaton, who had worked closely with Grant in caring for the freedmen in the Mississippi Valley, to go the Army of the Potomoac and ascertain his views. At City Pont, Eaton told Grant that many people thought he ought to run for president, not as a party man but as a citizens' candidate, in order to save the Union. Bringing his hand down on the arm of his chair, Grant replied: "They can't do it! They can't compel me to do it!" He went on to say that he considered it "as important for the cause that he [Lincoln] should be elected as that the army should be successful in the field." When Eaton reported the conversation to the President, his relief was obvious. "I told you," he said., "they could not get him to run until he had closed out the rebellion."

 Footnote no. 526 on p. 673: "Closed out the rebellion": John Eaton, Grant, Lincoln and the Freedman (New York: Longmans, Green & Co., 1907), pp. 186-191.

In a certain sense, Sherman did today's Georgia school children a favor. He turned them into history students because you can ask even first graders who he was, and they will tell you about the man who burned everything. From the beginning of hostilities in the Atlanta Campaign on 6 May 1864 and the march to the sea ending two days before Christmas 1864 with him capturing Savannah, Sherman did his best to punish the civilian population of Georgia. Afterward, in his march through South Carolina, Sherman really let himself go. As a result of this campaign, the Confederacy was split in two and deprived of much needed supplies, although the war could have been ended more quickly had Sherman shown more initiative in the Atlanta campaign or afterward attended to purely military goals, such as breaking the defense of Peterburg and Richmond, or even closing down the nearby prison camp in Andersonville.

Born on 8 May 1820 in Lancaster, Ohio, his father died when he was young. Widowed and unable to care for the entire family, his mother sent brother Thomas to be raised by an aunt, and William became a foster child to Thomas Ewing, his father's friend. Cump, as he was known, later married Mr. Ewing's daughter, Ellen. Educated at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, he graduated in 1840. During the Mexican War, Sherman was posted in San Francisco. He resigned his commission in 1853 to become a partner in a bank there. Prior to the outbreak of hostilities between the North and the South, Sherman was Superintendent of the Louisiana State Seminary and Military Academy at Alexandria, Louisiana. After the war, the school moved to Baton Rouge, Louisiana and became Louisiana State University (LSU). Talk of the secession from the Union was rampant, and on 18 January 1861, Sherman resigned his position stating that he preferred to maintain his allegiance to the Constitution as long as a fragment of it survived. On the 25th of February, Sherman left Louisiana and returned to Ohio. He remained in Lancaster for a month and then moved his family to St. Louis, Missouri where he was elected President of the Fifth Street Railroad.

On 8 May 1861, Sherman wrote to the Secretary of War, offering his services for three years. On 20 June 1861 he was appointed Colonel in the Thirteenth Regular Infantry. He assumed command of a brigade in the First Division of McDowell's army. His brigade, stationed at a stone bridge during the battle of First Manassas (Bull Run), was routed by devastating Confederate cannon fire. In August 1861, Sherman and George H. Thomas were promoted to Brigadier General and were assigned to the Department of the Cumberland under the command of Brigadier-General Robert Anderson, the "hero of Ft. Sumter. Sherman had previously served under Anderson, and it was Anderson that requested that Sherman (along with Thomas and Buell) be transferred to his command. In October 1861, Sherman relieved Anderson and commanded the dept. of Kentucky for only one month. Filling quotas for Kentucky volunteers was extremely difficult, and the allegiance of the State was split. Later that month, Sherman told Secretary of War Cameron that if he had 60,000 men, he would drive the enemy out of Kentucky, and if he had 200,000 men, he would finish the war in that section. He also grossly exagerated the strength of the Confederate forces facing him and predicted an imminent invasion of Kentucky and even Ohio. When Cameron returned to Washington, he reported that Sherman required 200,000 men. The report was given to newspapers and a cry of indignation arose from the public. A writer of one of these newspapers even went as far as saying that Sherman must be "crazy" in demanding such a large force. Writers have since often declared that he was insane, which is not accurate. Certain is, that he was subject to wild swings between enthusiasm and depression. During his brief month of command in Kentucky, he ordered Thomas to occupy East Tennessse, and preparations were made by Unionists there to help this project. However, at the last moment Sherman, in a moment of panic, recalled Thomas, and many Unionist partisans in East Tennesse were rounded up and hung. On 8 Nov. 1861 Shermen, under public pressure, requested to be relieved from command in Kentucky. The request was granted, and he turned his department over to Buell, and he was sent to St. Louis to the Department of the West under Halleck who, in a letter to Sherman's foster father, stated, "I have seen newspaper squibs charging him with being 'crazy', etc. This is the grossest injustice. I do not however, consider such attacks worthy of notice." Strictly speaking, manic-depressiveness is not insanity. On February 13, 1862, Sherman assumed the command of the post at Paducah, Kentucky, relieving U.S. Grant of that position. On March 11, 1862, Halleck was assigned to command the Department of the Mississippi and Major-General U.S. Grant to command the army in the field. The organization and the name given to this army was the Army of the Tennessee. Sherman was placed in command of the Fifth Division of this army.

The Army of the Tennessee saw its first battle at Shiloh. Due to poor preparation on the part of Grant, Sherman, and others,  the North nearly lost the first day's battle, but with reenforcements from Buell and the Army of the Cumberland, the Confederate troops were driven from the field on the second day. In July 1862, Sherman was assigned to command the District of Memphis. Later that year Sherman, in a frontal assault at Chickasaw Bluffs, failed to seize the Confederate stronghold of Vicksburg, but was with Grant in the campaign that finally ended in the capture of that city in July 1863. Sherman was given command of the Army of the Tennessee in the fall of 1863 and, in a remarkable display of military incompetence, fought in the Battle of Chattanooga with his troops unsuccessfully assaulting a much smaller force under Patrick Cleburne on Missionary Ridge. On that occasion, thanks to Thomas and Hooker, the Federals did capture the Ridge, and Bragg's troops retreated eastward. Afterward, Sherman was made overall commander of the armies in the West and was accorded the Thanks of Congress, perhaps as the result of the efforts of his brother John Sherman, U.S. senator at the time.

On 4 May 1864, with more than 100,000 troops, Sherman began the Atlanta Campaign. The entire staff work of the force was conducted by the center, Thomas and his Army of the Cumberland. The Confederate commander J. Johnston held off the troops of McPherson at Resaca, but then had to withdraw after the battle when federal troops were endangering his position by outflanking him. For a description of this kick-off, see the article Sherman and Grant vs. Thomas at Resaca by Don Plezia. The strength of the Union army and the ability to supply themselves were too much for Johnston, and his army was gradually forced closer and closer to Atlanta. Johnston defeated Sherman's armies at the battle of Kennesaw Mountain on 27 June 1864, another of Shermans's frontal assaults, but once again had to move his troops back southward to Smyrna due to the threat of being turned. Jefferson Davis, President of the Confederacy, lost faith in Johnston's ability to oppose Sherman and, on 17 July 1864, Davis relieved Johnston of his command and replaced him with the aggressive John B. Hood. Hood was just as unsuccessful in stopping the Union armies and fought four futile battles in the attempt. Finally on 2 September 1864, Sherman's troops entered the city of Atlanta. Sherman declared Atlanta to be a military encampment and ordered the civilians to leave the city. From September to November, Sherman pursued Hood, but to no avail. Hood then began marching northward, hoping to win back Tennessee and Kentucky. Sherman made the statement, "If he continues to march North, all the way to the Ohio, I will supply him with rations." Sherman began planning his March to the Sea. He kept most of the the seasoned veterans, 60,000 in all, and sent the sick and the about to be furloughed troops back to Nashville to be under the command of Major-General George Thomas who nevertheless crushed Hood in the battle of Nashville on 15-16 Dec. 1864.

In November 1864, Sherman began his infamous raid. Prior to leaving Atlanta, he set fire to munitions factories, railroad yards, clothing mills, and other targets. Predictably, the fire got out of hand and spread throughout the city. With his four Corps in two columns, Sherman cut a swath 60 miles wide marching towards Savannah, destroying anything that could be useful to the enemy, and meeting no military opposition. Much of the violence to civilians was carried out by criminal camp followers. They were called "bummers" and consisted of stragglers from both Union and Confederate armies. Sherman issues orders that they be kept under control, but as they were helping to make Georgia howl, he probably didn't really object to their activities.

On 23 December 1864, Sherman sent a telegram to Lincoln stating that he was presenting him the city of Savannah as a Christmas gift. Following the occupation of Savannah, Sherman's troops cut an even wider path of destruction through South Carolina and fought an inconclusive battle at Bentonville, North Carolina, against a much smaller force under Johnston. Lee surrendered to Grant on 9 April 1865, and Johnston surrendered to Sherman on 17 April 1865 at Raleigh, North Carolina. After the war, Sherman was promoted to Lieutenant General in the regular army commanded by Grant until his election to the presidency in 1868. Grant put Sherman in charge of the entire West, and they were thus both responsible for Sheridan's genocidal operations against the Cheyenne, Sioux, and other tribes. In the fall of 1868 Sheridan - future Full General and Commander of the Armies (1884-88) - wrote to Sherman:

"In taking the offensive I have to select that season when I can catch the fiends; and if a village is attacked and women and children killed, the responsibility is not with the soldiers, but with the people whose crimes necessitated the attack."

Sherman heartily approved and wrote back the following encouraging words:

"Go ahead in your own way and I will back you with my whole authority...I will say nothing and do nothing to restrain our troops from doing what they deem proper on the spot, and will allow no mere vague general charges of cruelty and inhumanity to tie their hands, but will use all the powers confided to me to the end that these Indians, the enemies of our race and of our civilization, shall not again be able to begin and carry out their barbarous warfare on any kind of pretext they may choose to allege."

Grant must not have objected very strenuously to this aspect of Sherman's character because he received Sherman's glowing reports of the "successes". Upon becoming president in 1869, Grant had him promoted to Full General on 4 March 1869. Four days later Sherman assumed command of the entire U. S Army. He retired in 1883 and died in New York City, 14 Feb. 1891.

Letter of 17 Sept. 1863 from Sherman to General-in-chief of the Armies Henry W. Halleck:
"The United States has the right, and ... the ... power, to penetrate to every part of the national domain…. We will remove and destroy every obstacle - if need be, take every life, every acre of land, every particle of property, everything that to us seems proper."

Letter of 21 June 1864 from Sherman to secretary of war Stanton:
"There is a class of people [in the South] … men, women, and children, who must be killed or banished before you can hope for peace and order."

Letter of 9 Oct. 1864 from Sherman to General-chief of the Armies Ulysses S. Grant:
"Until we can repopulate Georgia, it is useless to occupy it, but the utter destruction of its roads, houses, and people will cripple their military
resources…. I can make the march, and make Georgia howl."

Orders issued on 9 Nov. 1864 by Sherman before his march to the Sea:
The army will forage liberally on the country during the march. To this end, each brigade commander will organize a good and sufficient foraging party, under the command of one or more discreet officers, who will gather, near the route traveled, corn or forage of any kind, meat of any kind, vegetables, corn-meal, or whatever is needed by the command, aiming at all times to keep in the wagons at least ten days' provisions for his command, aiming at all times to keep in the wagons at least ten days' provisions for his command, and three days' forage. Soldiers must not enter the dwellings they may be permitted to gather turnips, potatoes, and other vegetables, and to drive in stock in sight of their camp.
To corps commanders alone is entrusted the power to destroy mills, houses, cotton-gins, etc.; and for them the general principle is laid down: In districts and neighborhoods where the army is unmolested, no destruction of such property should be permitted; but should guerrillas or bush-whackers molest our march, or should the inhabitants burn bridges, obstruct roads, or otherwise manifest local hostility, then army commanders should order and enforce a devastation more or less relentless, according to the measure of such hostility. As for horses, mules, wagons, etc., belonging to the inhabitants, the cavalry and artillery may appropriate freely and without limit; discriminating, however, between the rich, who are usually hostile, and the poor and industrious, usually neutral or friendly.

William Sherman wrote about the March to the Sea in his 1875 Memoirs:
The skill and success of the men in collecting forage was one of the features of this march. Each brigade commander had authority to detail a company of foragers, usually about fifty men, with one or two commissioned officers selected for their boldness and enterprise. This party would be dispatched before daylight with a knowledge of the intended day's march and camp; would proceed on foot five or six miles from the route traveled by their brigade, and then visit every plantation and farm within range. They would usually procure a wagon or family carriage, load it with bacon, corn-meal, turkeys, chickens, ducks, and every thing that could be used as food or forage, and would then regain the main road, usually in advance of their train. No doubt, many acts of pillage, robbery, and violence, were committed by these parties of foragers, for I have since heard of jewelry taken from women, and the plunder of articles that never reached the commissary; but these acts were exceptional and incidental. I never heard of any cases of murder or rape; and no army could have carried along sufficient food and forage for a march of three hundred miles; so that foraging in some shape was necessary.

4. John McCallister Schofield - Political general and backstabber.

5. Henry Wagner Halleck - the "gray emminence" of the Civil War