Sherman, WILLIAM TECUMSEH, eighteenth general-in-chief of the United States army, was born in Lancaster, Ohio, February 8, 1820, the sixth son of Judge Sherman, who died when William was nine years old. He attended school in Lancaster until 1836, then was appointed to a cadetship at West Point, and graduated in July 1840 sixth in a class of forty-two. He was commissioned second-lieutenant in the Third Artillery and ordered to Florida, where there was some trouble with the Seminole Indians, and was afterwards stationed at Fort Morgan and Fort Moultrie, and from 1846 to 1850 in California. Seeing no prospect of promotion Sherman resigned from the army in 1853, having previously married Miss Ellen Boyle Ewing, daughter of Thomas Ewing, secretary of the Interior, and entered civil life. He was a banker in San Francisco for several years, and at the beginning of the civil war was superintendent of the Louisiana Military Academy at Alexandria, which position he immediately resigned. In May 1861 Sherman was commissioned colonel of the Thirteenth Infantry, and joined his regiment at Washington. In the battle of Bull Run he commanded a brigade, and for good conduct in that engagement was promoted to brigadier-general of volunteers. Sherman was one of the first to estimate properly the serious nature of the struggle before the country. In August he was sent to Kentucky, but when he asked for 200,000 men to put an end to the war in that section, the authorities at Washington looked on his demand as wildly extravagant, if not insane, and deprived him of his command. But soon after he was given a division in the Army of the Tennessee, and in April 1862 displayed both coolness and skill in the severe two days' battle of Shiloh, where he was wounded, but would not leave the field. Grant afterwards wrote: 'To his individual efforts I am indebted for the success of that battle.' In May he was made a major-general of volunteers, and stationed at Memphis.
In the various movements made by General Grant against Vicksburg Sherman was most active, commanding the famous Fifteenth Corps of the Army of the Tennessee, and being next in rank to Grant. Immediately after the surrender of that Confederate stronghold, July 4, 1863 (the date of his brigadiership in the regular army), he moved against General J. E. Johnston at Jackson, Mississippi, and drove him out of that city. In November Sherman joined Grant at Chattanooga, and rendered excellent service in the great victory won there on the 25th, withstanding a long series of attacks intended to crush his command; and a few days later he hurried to relieve Burnside, besieged at Knoxville by General Longstreet, whose forces fled at the approach of the Northern cavalry. On 12th March 1864, the same day that Grant became commander-in-chief, he appointed Sherman to the command of the south-west, with headquarters at Nashville. In April he commenced his campaign against Atlanta, his command consisting of the armies of the Cumberland, Ohio, and Tennessee, in all about 100,000 men, with 254 guns. Moving from Chattanooga Sherman first encountered General Johnston at Dalton, May 14, and, by repeatedly turning his position and constantly pursuing and pressing him, drove him to Cassville and beyond the
Etowah, thence to a strong position on Kennesaw Mountain (where the Union army was at first heavily repulsed), and finally to Atlanta, the direct attack on which began on July 17. Many bold sorties were made by General John B. Hood, who had superseded General Johnston, and fierce encounters occurred at Peach Tree Creek, Ezra Church, and elsewhere, all unfavourable to the Confederates, until on 1st September they evacuated the city, and Atlanta was won.
After giving his gallant army a rest Sherman moved out of Atlanta on his famous march to the sea, with about 65,000 men. Passing between Augusta and Macon, and meeting with little serious opposition, for Hood and his army had been disastrously defeated by General Thomas in the battle fought near Nashville, he reached the outskirts of Savannah on December 10—a march of 300 miles in twenty-four days, with a loss of 63 killed and 245 wounded. The works were soon carried, and on the 20th General Hardie evacuated the city, Sherman marching in on the 21st. To President Lincoln he wrote: 'I beg to present you as a Christmas gift the city of Savannah, with 150 guns, plenty of ammunition, and 25,000 bales of cotton.' For his great services he had already been made a major-general in the regular army, and now he received the thanks of congress for his 'triumphal march.'
Early in February Sherman and his army left Savannah for the north, and by the 17th, compelling, by another flanking movement, the evacuation of Charleston, he had reached Columbia, the capital of South Carolina. Thence he moved on Goldsboro' by way of Cheraw and Fayetteville, fighting by the way severe battles at Aversboro' and Bentonville in March, and aiming either to cut off Lee's retreat or to join Grant before Richmond. But on April 9 Lee surrendered, and word of this coming to General Johnston, he made terms with Sherman on the 17th, which, however, were disapproved as too lenient by Secretary Stanton and repudiated: Lincoln had been assassinated on the 14th. The surrender of Johnston's army was soon followed by all the other Confederate forces then in the field, and the four years' war was at an end.
Before the disbandment of Sherman's army and the Army of the Potomac, they passed in review at Washington before President Johnson and General Grant on May 23 and 24, 1865. Sherman took leave of his troops in a field order of May 30. For the four years following he was in command of the division of the Mississippi; and when Grant became president Sherman succeeded to the head of the army with the rank of general, having been previously promoted to lieutenant-general. In 1872 he visited Europe, everywhere receiving distinguished honours; and in 1874, at his own request, to make room for Sheridan, he was retired on full pay. His remaining years were spent in St Louis and in New York, where he died February 14, 1891. He received a public funeral in both these cities, and was buried by the side of his wife and favourite son William in the St Louis Cemetery. Many lives have been published of Sherman, but much the most valuable are his own Memoirs, first issued in two vols. in 1875, and of which revised editions were published in 1885 and 1891. A noble equestrian statue of Sherman adorns New York City.
JOHN SHERMAN, senator, a younger brother, was born at Lancaster, 10th May 1823, was for a time attached as rodman to a corps of engineers, and then studied law with his brother Charles, whose partner he became after his admission to the bar in 1844. From 1855 to 1861 he sat in congress, from 1859 as chairman of the committee of ways and means; and in the senate, of which he was a member from 1861 to 1877, he was for many years chairman of the committee on finance. As a congressman he had been eminent for the steady but statesmanlike opposition which he offered to slavery, and on the outbreak of the war he raised a brigade in Ohio largely at his own expense. Two bills for which he was largely responsible were that for the reconstruction of the seceded states and that providing for the resumption of specie payment (1879). A supporter of Mr Hayes, he was appointed by him in 1877 Secretary of the Treasury, and in 1878 had prepared such a redemption fund in gold as speedily raised the legal-tender notes to par value. In 1881 and 1887 he was again returned to the senate, was for a while its president, and afterwards chairman of the committee on foreign relations. In 1880-84-88 he was a popular Republican candidate for the presidency. The Sherman Act (1890), authorising large purchases of silver by the Treasury, was repealed in 1893. In 1897 he was made Secretary of State by Mr McKinley; but, becoming infirm, he retired from public life in April 1898. He died at Washington, 22d October 1900. See Life by Bronson (1880), his Selected Speeches on Finance and Taxation (1879), and the Sherman Letters (1894).