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William T. Sherman and the SouthBrian Holden Reid aa Department of War Studies , King’s College London , London, UKPublished online: 30 Apr 2010.

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American Nineteenth Century HistoryVol. 11, No. 1, March 2010, 1–16

ISSN 1466-4658 print/ISSN 1743-7903 online© 2010 Taylor & FrancisDOI: 10.1080/14664651003616768http://www.informaworld.com

THE PETER J. PARISH MEMORIAL LECTURE

William T. Sherman and the South

Brian Holden Reid*

Department of War Studies, King’s College London, London, UKTaylor and Francis LtdFANC_A_462185.sgm10.1080/14664651003616768American Nineteenth Century History1466-4658 (print)/1743-7906 (online)Original Article2010Taylor & Francis1110000002010Brian HoldenReid

I should begin by thanking the Chairman and the Committee of the British AmericanNineteenth Century Historians (BrANCH) for doing me the honor of inviting me todeliver this lecture in memory of our founding father, Peter Parish. Only MarcusCunliffe, whom Parish admired so much, has had an equal impact on my developmentas a historian of the United States. But because we worked in the same university, espe-cially when Parish was the director of the Institute of United States Studies, Parish’simpact was more direct on my historical outlook. Parish presided over the institutewith the same charm, tact, and seemingly effortless affability, coupled with a genuineinterest in the young, that he demonstrated when setting up BrANCH. Yet, suchpleasantness did not lead to bland writing – far from it. I was not surprised to discoverlater that many of his most enduring friendships with American scholars of the CivilWar had resulted from letters of complaint that they had written about his criticalreviews of their books. Of course, once they had met, suspicion and bad temper meltedaway.

The theme of my lecture, “Sherman and the South,”1 has been selected for threeessential reasons. First, I discussed the topic with Peter Parish before his death, and heapproved of and encouraged my general approach. I hope my treatment of it reflectssome of his fine qualities as a historian. One of Parish’s most underrated qualities isas a military historian, and he was entirely self-taught. But as one would expect, healways wrote military history within the context established by his expert treatment ofthe political, social, and economic factors; he succeeded in showing not only howmilitary events were influenced by these factors but also how important militaryoperations were in shaping them. He was not the kind of historian who thought thatthe military component of any war was an infernal nuisance that kept getting in theway – a “massive inconvenience,” to use Richard Hofstadter’s phrase that Parishquoted frequently. Nor did he concern himself with military detail for its own sake,and he had little patience with “drum and trumpet” history.2 Second, Parish was soacute historiographically. My interpretation steers a course around the four recentbiographies of General Sherman that have appeared over a span of nearly 20 yearsafter a long period of neglect. Sir Basil Liddell Hart’s superb (but didactic) discussionof Sherman as a military commander, Sherman: Soldier, Realist, American (Liddell

*Email: brian.reid@kcl.ac.uk

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Hart 1929) and Lloyd Lewis’s very full, atmospheric and beautifully written Sherman:Fighting Prophet (1932) remained the standard authorities for 60 years. These bookscombine wonderful literary qualities, but ideas about the Civil War and its ultimatesignificance have long since moved on, though they both appear frequently on thelists of “favorite books” on the Civil War. The more recent biographies are by JohnMarszalek (1993), Michael Fellman (1995), Stanley Hirshson (1997), and Lee Kennett(2001). Some of the elements of my interpretation can be found in these four books.But in the best tradition of Peter Parish, I have tried to give these elements a differenttwist, combine them in novel ways, and attempt to reach new conclusions aboutSherman’s attitude to the South in the Civil War. My short survey will necessarilyconfine itself to the war years. Last, I hope to discuss themes that will interest generalscholars of the war and not just those preoccupied by the history of its militaryconduct.

My central theme is that we should be guarded in assuming that an automaticconnection exists between the personality, or even the psychology, of a victoriouscommander and the manner in which he treats the region or country through whichhis armies advance. Of course, there is always a link, but generalship, or thecommander’s direction or supervision of the administration of the occupied areas, isa compound of so many other important elements, too, and many of these are beyondhis control and he must react to them. In developing this argument, I shall considerSherman’s command of the military district of Memphis in the summer and autumnof 1862 – a crucial period both in his development as a soldier and in the evolution ofhis attitudes toward the South. During these months, he carried the onerous respon-sibilities of garrison command. Michael Fellman, in particular, exemplifies anapproach in which a general’s policies and his psychology are intermingled to a quiteremarkable degree; indeed, they are but indistinguishable. He argues that the violencevisited on the South by the forces under Sherman’s command was rooted in his “innerdirected rage” against the section. His argument appears to have Freudian overtones,at any rate, in the sense of Sherman’s unrequited love for the South. Sherman evincedno doubt that his intimate knowledge of the South and the insight that he had gainedby residence there afforded his military ideas a distinct authority. Sherman habituallyoffered these freely and with confidence. But their import was very different from thatsuggested by Fellman.

I will also argue that Sherman’s military actions are more mundane, moretechnical in the narrow military sense. That is to say, they have much more to do withthe solution of particular but immediate tactical and logistical problems and were lesselaborate and epoch-making than they have been frequently represented. It is impor-tant to recall that Sherman himself only advanced a modest view of his famousMarches. He regarded them only as a “change of base” – with troops moving from onefront to another, no more, no less. I first advanced this view in 1986 in an essay readand approved of by Parish in the third festschrift presented to A.J.P. Taylor, and I reit-erate it even more strongly on this occasion. There were no thoughts in Sherman’smind that his Marches personified the forces of modernism that could crush a cruder,less advanced society. Such an argument has featured in the Civil War historiographysince the 1960s and is badly in need of revision. Indeed, I shall go so far as to suggest

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that Sherman’s view of the Confederate military effort was exactly the opposite of whatthis interpretation contends.3

Sherman’s personality has certainly presented a problem in weighing his motiveshowever we might estimate its impact on his conduct of military operations. His corre-spondence and published writings often reveal a gap between his sweeping, often exco-riating, tone in presenting his ideas and the way he actually implements them. Shermanwas capable of the ruthlessness that is sometimes required of senior commanders infulfilling their objectives, but he was not a monster – far from it. His political attitudeswill be considered shortly, but even when these are given their due weight, I will arguethat the aspects of his thinking have far less ideological baggage than some scholars areprepared to concede. Many of his views, that may appear reactionary, unhelpful, andat best latitudinarian, are simply reflections of his frustration at the difficulties that hefaced in overcoming the military problems inherent in sustaining his forces – that is,in keeping a Civil War army in the field and on the move. An assumption is sometimesmade in the literature that this is an easy task and that Sherman succeeded at it effort-lessly – he did not. Developing the mobility of the Civil War armies presented atremendous challenge. It is because runaway slaves added to his difficulties in main-taining the pace and supply of the Marches that so color his opinion of them. This isnot to suggest that Sherman did not share very typical mid-Western opinions on blackinferiority but that Sherman was emphatically not a frothing racist. His personaldealings with blacks were always courteous, sometimes friendly, and his conversationswith them were always carried out in a gentlemanly fashion.4

Sherman’s bark, in short, was worse than his bite. His views should not always betaken literally at face value. Just to take one example, when in the autumn of 1862 hebecame angered by the Confederate guerrilla action in Tennessee, he burst out, “Theabsolute destruction of Memphis, New Orleans [and] every city town and hamlet inthe South would not be too severe a punishment to a people for attempting to interferewith the navigation of the Mississippi.” But in practice, Sherman’s most destructiveactions never once approached such a vengeful program.5

Sherman’s image of the South

There can be little doubt that Sherman accepted the notion of “the South” with all itsgeographical ambiguities and conundrums. He was well traveled in the antebellumSouth and knew it well. He had experienced kindness from individual Southerners,Braxton Bragg notably, a later opponent on the battlefield. He had first-hand knowl-edge of Georgia, Alabama, South Carolina, Florida, Mississippi, and Louisiana andhad lived in a border state, Missouri; he often traveled through other slave statesduring his trips.

After a succession of failures as a banker and as an attorney following his resigna-tion from the U.S. Army in 1854, Louisiana had offered him shelter and solace at theLouisiana State Seminary at Alexandria (later to grow into Louisiana State University).Sherman at last found a congenial profession that truly suited his personality. He wasa natural educator and found much to enjoy and, indeed, admire among the Southernplanter class. Sherman’s political views were not proto-fascist but Whiggish and elitist.

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Sherman had been brought up in the home of Senator Thomas Ewing, a leadingmember of the Whig Party and Secretary of the Treasury in 1841 under William H.Harrison and Secretary of the Interior under Zachary Taylor in 1849–1850. Shermanwas proud of his status as a gentleman who had married Ewing’s daughter, Ellen. As aself-conscious gentleman, he fitted very naturally into the oligarchic Southern societyand upheld most of its values.

In 1859–1860, he planned to build a house at Alexandria and eventually move allof his family there permanently. His earlier failures had resulted in the Sherman familybeing split up, with Ellen and one daughter continuing to live almost permanently inLancaster, Ohio, whereas other children moved between the various family outpostsat various times. Alexandria would thus become the permanent family home that hehad striven for over so many years to create and had previously failed to acquire. Menwho have moved to beleaguered parts of the world often desire to gain acceptance bya conversion to the mode of thought that dominates such societies. By 1860, Shermanrevealed himself well on the road to accepting the Southern case that slavery wasthe preferable, most humane, and most efficient system of race relations that couldprevail in the South – even though slavery only survived elsewhere in Brazil, Cuba,and Puerto Rico. The existence of slavery therefore defied the consensus of Westernliberal opinion that democracy and the ownership of human beings as chattels wereincompatible.6

Even as late as 4 April 1861, Sherman wrote to his employer, David Boyd, assuringhim that he was prepared to go further than offer token praise of slavery, for “I believethe practice of slavery in the South is the mildest and best regulated system of slaveryin the world now or heretofore.” The careful language employed here is more guardedthan it appears at first sight; Sherman (who after all was an attorney) does not say“system of labor,” which is the Southern case. Yet such qualifications detracted littlefrom Sherman’s pro-slavery attitudes. He had consistently criticized his brother John’sabolitionism and adherence to the Republican Party. “I think it would be folly,” helectured his brother sternly, “to liberate or materially modify the condition of theSlaves.” Such a strong commitment to Southern values was dramatically derailed bythe Secession Crisis.7

“Men have ceased to reason,” Sherman complained, “and war seems to be courtedby those who understand not its cost, and demoralizing results.”8 In analyzing theinexorable logic of secession, he identified the ambiguity implicit in the idea of “theSouth.” In November 1860, he observed that shortly thereafter, “The extreme Southwill look on Kentucky & Tennessee as the North, and in a few years the same confusionand disorder will arise, and a new dissolution, till each state, and maybe each countywill claim separate independence.”9 Secession was the essence of anarchy and this stateof affairs provoked revulsion in all Whigs.10 If the Southern states seceded, “they willdiscover that there are other interests not so easily reconciled – and then their troubleswill begin.” In other words, slavery was safer within the Union than without. Shermanwas content that a further compromise on the “slavery question” be reached, but wasadamant that coercion should be employed in the event of secession.11

Let us now examine Sherman’s view of the martial South on the brink of a majorwar. Sherman was scathing about “Southern mob rule” and the activities of vigilance

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committees during the Secession Crisis. These reminded him of similar turbulentbodies that wreaked havoc in California in the spring of 1856, an experience that didso much to shape his fear of unbounded popular passions. Nonetheless, he was veryimpressed by the manner in which the South emerged from the Secession Crisis. Hefound much to admire not only in the Southern achievements but also in the methodsadopted by the Confederates. First, the South appeared to lack the vices of the North.It was more single-minded and determined in the pursuit of its objectives. Second, itwas better organized and its citizens were keener to give their all for the cause. In thisregard, Sherman felt that the South avoided the worse excesses of democracy. He hadbecome convinced that the American political system that had evolved since the 1830swas just “too slow” to cope with the demands of preparing for a civil war. Indeed, hetook the argument a stage further, concluding that one of the revolutionary effects ofthe war would be a change in the character of the American governing structure. Heset down his conclusion in a brazen fashion in correspondence with his brother, “Mynotion is that this war will ruin all Politicians & that military Leaders will direct theevents.”12

Thus, in many important ways, the South had demonstrated greater endurancethan the North. After the Battle of Shiloh in April 1862, Sherman saluted “qualities ofcourage, bold daring” and manliness shown by Confederates on the field; he felt“personal respect for them as individuals.”13 In many respects, Sherman subscribed tothe idea, very prevalent in the South after 1860, that the Southern ruling class hadgreater nerve than that of the North, which lacked courage and pertinacity. Shermanalso deluded himself into thinking that the Southern press constituted an improve-ment on the Northern; it therefore lacked the overweening, and often absurd, tyrannyof the press that did so much to rot Northern morale. It distracted opinion by excur-sions into petty or irrelevant issues that undermined confidence in the Federal leadersand thus magnified their tasks. Even in November 1862, Sherman lamented that “thePeople of the North seem more intent in building up or pulling down personal repu-tations than in founding an empire.”14 In short, the South lacked the poisonous influ-ence of “politics.” Finally, by the summer of 1861, Sherman feared that the South hadexploited its advantages to seize the initiative while the North sat back complacentlyand allowed it to raise armies that were quantitatively and qualitatively superior to theforces raised loyal to the Union.15 Sherman had tried to warn Lincoln of the dangerspresented by this military advantage at their first meeting at the White House in May1861 when both had not made much of an impression on the other. On hearing thatSherman had just returned from Louisiana, Lincoln asked him, “Ah! How are theygetting along down there?” Sherman replied rather bluntly, “swimmingly – they arepreparing for war.” He had tried to impress on Lincoln a measure of the Southernpurpose, preparation, and single-mindedness, and the president had replied rathercasually, “Oh well! I guess we’ll manage to keep house.” Such smug indolence infuri-ated Sherman in face of the near-perfect dynamism that he attributed to the South.16

Sherman’s views are a series of half-truths and errors mixed up with realprescience. But the compound of the ideas that Sherman advanced only served tobuttress an alarming but simultaneously appealing notion of a superior, omniscient“martial South,” documented so interestingly by Michael C.C. Adams. In Adams’

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formulation, this assumption of Southern martial superiority rested more on theanxieties about the direction of Northern political culture and the corrupting effectsof industrialization and capitalism on its manhood than on any real insight intoSouthern society; Sherman’s formulation gained respect initially because of his knowl-edge of Southern preparations. But, not for the first or last time in his life, Shermanoverplayed his hand. While serving as Commander of the Department of the Cumber-land in the autumn of 1861, he pushed his ideas beyond their limits and took them toextremes that invited ridicule and doubt. He seemed to reveal a Northern “inferioritycomplex” of such intensity that it represented an obstacle to the war effort. The Rebelswere stronger, more imaginative and audacious, and appeared to be advancing inperfect order in all directions. Sherman was judged “mad” by a mischievous reporter,but this slur only confirmed the more general doubts about his judgment that werealready being expressed before the first malicious reports in the newspapers appeared.Sherman, who had thoroughly alarmed the then Secretary of War, Simon Cameron,was forced to resign, being taken back by Ellen to recover at his father-in-law’s homein Lancaster, Ohio.17

However, the essential point that requires emphasis is that though Sherman’scareer recovered after his notable success in serving under Ulysses S. Grant at theBattle of Shiloh on 6 and 7 April 1862, he did not renounce his basic ideas about theSouth, albeit he modified their tone. Far from despising the Southern measures in1861–1862, he continued to find much to admire in them; indeed, he saw them as amodel for the North. It was this admiration, not rage or contempt, that led him tocontemplate more unconventional methods to bring about the Confederate defeat;such methods were far less destructive than they have often been depicted.

But first Sherman’s conduct as a garrison commander in Memphis, Tennessee,should be considered. This reflects upon his changing views on slavery and thetreatment of recalcitrant Southerners.

The military district of Memphis

Sherman took up this command in preference to any other because of his appreciationof “the importance of the main stem of the Mississippi”; his departmentalcommander, Grant, had offered him any job that he wanted, but he took this garrisonduty: “I prefer it,” he confided to his closest brother-in-law, Phil Ewing, “to a largecommand at Corinth.” Here is a striking example of his affinity with the geographicallandscape of the South that transcended just recognition of the significance of certainfeatures. In the evolution of Sherman’s ideas about the South and the militarymeasures that needed to be taken against the Confederates, his tenure of the garrisoncommand at Memphis is one of the most formative in his career.18

Even before he took up this command, Sherman was all too aware of the fratricidalcharacter of this war, because he knew that at Shiloh he had been faced by his formercadets from the Louisiana Seminary who were now serving in the Confederate army.He seems to have exchanged messages with those being treated in Northern hospitals;“several were killed at Shiloh,” he notified Ellen, “ – they seem yet to regard me asfriendly to them.” The scale of this battle and the determination that the Southern

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soldiers had shown convinced Sherman that the war would consume “300,000 menper year for a long time” and he feared the consequences of the new Secretary of War’sdecision to close recruiting offices on 3 April 1862 in the expectation of the imminentvictory after George B. McClellan launched his “grand campaign” against Richmond.19

The intensity and duration of the conflict raised some difficult problems in dealingwith the Southern population, but Sherman was confident at this time that with acareful knack, these could be resolved. “We tell them we want nothing they have…butthey don’t believe us, and I fear that the universal bitter feeling will cause the veryresult they profess to dread.” To this extent, he cautioned Grant’s future chief of staff,John A. Rawlins, on 4 September 1862, against unduly severe measures, “or they willnaturally seek revenge.” Sherman’s private feelings were revealed in a letter to hisdaughter, Minnie, a month earlier, in which he observed that though war indeeddemands cruelty and “even your papa has to do such acts,” still despite all, “I cannotbut think of these People as my old friends.” Even after he had introduced some severemeasures to deal with Southern recalcitrance, on the eve of giving up his command atMemphis and setting out on the first campaign against Vicksburg in December 1862,he expressed to his wife the hope that he might still live in the South, preferring“Tennessee or Mississippi” to Ohio, as he thought the latter was “full of selfishness andconceit.”20

Sherman had refused to modify an order issued by his predecessor, BrigadierGeneral Alvin P. Hovey, that had required the departure of all men subject to theConfederate Conscription Act of April 1862. He aimed to ensure that Memphisremained “a safe place of operations for an army, and all the people who are unfriendlyshould forthwith prepare to depart in such direction as I may hereafter indicate.” Hecontinued to express optimism that a Southern Unionist party might yet developbased around the laborer and mechanical elements in the population, believing seces-sionism had been spawned by the planter class.21 So, although during these months hecontinued to mouth the platitudes of “reconciliation,” namely, that respect by theFederal military administration for Southern private property and individual rightswould increase amity and warm feelings for the Union, he appreciated that a departurefrom such a policy gave him power over the planter class. He initially deplored theprospect of emancipation with its revolutionary aftershocks – “those horrible convul-sions.” Yet he instantly grasped that, “Negro property and personal property are fairsubjects of conquest, as also the possession of Real Estate during the lives of presentowners.” In General Orders number 67, Sherman employed some 600 and then 800former slaves to work on the fortifications guarding Memphis at Fort Pickering. Heforbade “masters and mistresses” from entering Pickering “in search of their slaves”and announced that all of them “in open hostility to the Constitution … will lose theirslaves, the title to which only exists by … that very Constitution they seek to destroy.”By September 1862, out of a total of 5000 former slaves, Sherman had organized 1500not just as laborers but also as regimental teamsters and cooks. In the absence of thereceipt of any orders from Departmental Headquarters – and it took some time for theprovisions of the Confiscation Acts passed in the summer of 1862 to reach him – herelied on his father-in-law for help on legal points in the orders that he issued on hisown responsibility.22

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Sherman’s ambivalence is revealed in his admission to an old school friend, “Weare Enemies, still private friends.” But he was simultaneously beginning to anticipatethe provisions of the Confiscation Acts by arguing that “one of the modes of bringingPeople to reason is to touch their Interests pecuniary or property.” In making this sortof argument, Sherman contended that punitive warfare was not a unique phenome-non invented in the United States but followed a long tradition in the history of theWestern World. He thus denied (like Benjamin F. Butler before him) that plaintiffscould use the Fugitive Slave Act unless they swore allegiance to the United States.Sherman would not permit his personal feelings (“I feel strong friendship as ever”) toinfluence his professional judgment.23

By the late summer of 1862, Sherman had become convinced that the main meansof breaking the power of the planter class was by large-scale immigration from theNorth: “I believe in universal Confiscation and colonization.” His reception ofLincoln’s Preliminary Emancipation Proclamation of September 1862 was compara-bly mild and pragmatic, considering that he had championed the slavery system – “itcan do no good and but little harm.” What he did criticize, and these views wouldbecome more astringent over the next two years, was that Lincoln offered “no machin-ery by which such freedom is assured.”24

The other new point of departure for Sherman concerned “reconciliation.” Hefound that its bromides offered no solution to his immediate, most pressing militaryproblem, namely, how to cope with the expanding scope of Southern resistance, espe-cially the guerrillas and cavalry raiders. However benevolent the intentions of theoccupiers may have been, the activities of Confederates were a measure of theirreluctance in accepting the decision of the battlefield and military occupation. It tookSherman only a couple of months to realize that the irreconcilable could not be recon-ciled. Sherman’s admission to his daughter, Minnie, in October 1862, that he stillregarded the Southerners as “our own People” proved valueless when they did notregard themselves in this relation.25

In these circumstances, if Sherman ignored the Confederate guerrilla action ortreated it leniently, then his military position would eventually become untenable andthe safety of his troops would be compromised. In response to a petition made onbehalf of those suspected of guerrilla activity, Sherman stated hotly, “it would be weak-ness & foolish in me to appeal to feelings that are scorned by our Enemies.” He couldnot stand by idly. He considered that “Misplaced kindness to these Guerrillas, theirfamilies and adherents is cruelty to our people.”26 He immediately denied that theguerrillas – including Partisan Rangers, that is, irregular forces raised under theConfederate Partisan Rangers Act of 1862, and combatants with a very ambiguouscharacter, formal but irregular, and an ability to disperse quickly – could enjoybelligerents’ rights. In his opinion, the Confederate government carried “the fullresponsibility” for the acts of the Partisan Rangers. Sherman admitted that “we cannotreach the real victors, but cannot overlook these acts of outrage. Therefore, we punishthe neighbors for not preventing them.”27

He was especially annoyed by the attacks on the Mississippi river steamers thatcarried food and other supplies (some of which he intended to distribute amongMemphis citizens) and families of the Federal troops. Here was another example of the

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practical problem of maintaining his military position in Memphis and its source ofsupply on which all movement through the hostile country rested. Sherman believedthat the only course of action he could take lay in meting out draconian punishmentsthat he hoped would deter the guerrillas from repeating their outrages. He would burnthe homes of the miscreants who fired on Union troops or vessels or participated in oraided guerrilla action in any form. Sherman’s most dramatic punitive act was theburning of the small town of Randolph, Tennessee, in September 1862. This hasoften been taken by historians as the harbinger of things to come in Georgia and theCarolinas. His early measures have been presented as revealing an appetite for unlim-ited destruction, but they merely imitate the measures already taken by BrigadierGeneral John M. Schofield in Missouri. And although the burning of Randolphappeared to represent a shift in his attitudes away from “reconciliation” and a limitedapproach to the war, in reality, the destruction of Randolph was very specificallytargeted by one regiment, the 46th Ohio Volunteer Infantry, and he did not allow it tospread to other areas. Sherman’s prime motive appears to be to force the Confederatesto act according to the laws of war. Sherman had certainly not abandoned “allrestraint” by the burning of Randolph, though he had taken several important stepstoward the style of reasoning that underlay the March to the Sea and beyond.28

When in November 1862 he handed over the command at Memphis, Sherman hadreached some very robust conclusions on the methods to be used in the Southernguerrilla war. “But as to our attempting to convert the South,” he argued, “that seemsmore and more impossible.” Sherman pointed to the detestation of “Yankees, aboli-tionists, etc.” that could only be accurately gauged by those “who come in contact withtheir families.” As the war assumed an increased intensity, Sherman realized far morequickly than did George B. McClellan and his acolytes that “It is useless to talkabout Constitutional means for a condition of things never contemplated by anyConstitution.”29

The famous Marches

Many military operations intervened between Sherman’s first contact with theguerrillas in the summer of 1862 and the March through Georgia two years later. Ofthese, perhaps the February 1864 Meridian campaign in east-central Mississippi isthe most significant because this serves as a trial run for the Marches in targeting thedestruction of war materials and any element of the economy that contributed to theConfederate war effort. Such a claim enters controversial grounds, and manySoutherners are still reluctant to accept that their section was not scorched by unpar-alleled horrors.30

A 1994 monument to Sherman’s soldiers in Bentonville, North Carolina, wasopposed on the grounds that Sherman was “more evil than Ivan the Terrible orGenghis Khan”; another critic agreed, “Monuments should be erected to heroes. Thesewere no heroes. They were thieves, murderers, rapists, arsonists, trespassers.”31 For allthe steadfastness of such “Lost Cause” opinion, historians have been revising down-wards the levels of destructiveness inflicted by the Marches for over 30 years, and PeterParish marched in their vanguard. It is true that Parish’s account does not reflect in

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detail on the degree of damage levied on Georgia and the Carolinas. I would go furtherand suggest that laying waste to the South was not the prime motive of the extraordi-narily imaginative operation that Sherman conceived in his ever-fertile mind.

Sherman showed care in delineating the main features of his military style. TheMarches, to Sherman, proved that at long last the North had become what he judgeda “Military nation” – determined to achieve its objectives and not fall into the temp-tation of regarding the war as “a temporary thing” or even an aberrant one. After all,“the issues involved the loss of millions & the property of half a continent.” By 1864,the war had indeed assumed the revolutionary form that he had predicted two yearsago. He had then written, “It is a Revolution where the strongest must prevail. Theymust subdue us, or we them. There is no middle course. If love of money, property orother motive will make the Southern submit to Law, then they should enjoy propertyotherwise all should be taken away.” Indeed, there could be no “middle course” inemerging victorious – there could be no thought of any kind of compromise peace, butas we shall see, Sherman had no thought that the revolutionary storm should beunleashed in all directions without any predetermined course or without any measureof restraint at all.32

Peter Parish, in a book that at key points reveals the influence of the “Union inter-pretation” of the conduct of the Civil War military operations that gained sway in the1960s, which envisaged the Civil War as related to the World Wars of the first half ofthe twentieth century in method and form, does not apply crude parallels drawn fromthese later conflicts. He pays tribute to Sherman’s “tough-minded realism” andstresses the unorthodoxy of Sherman’s design in his “relentless pursuit of goals” hetook his place among the trinity, as Parish saw it, that included Lincoln and Grant,who personified Northern resolution. In this recasting of the motives behind theMarches, Parish revealed true wisdom, because he stressed the importance of thepsychological impact of the Marches. They visited upon the South utter humiliationas an enemy army promenaded with impunity through its territory taking destructivemeasures when it chose, but these were not very systematic either by later or, moresignificantly, by earlier standards.33 The stress on the destruction and havoc Shermancreated increases as a consciousness of “total war” sets in during the twentieth century,with a consequent demonizing of his reputation in the South; his image as a trulywicked man of untold crimes takes hold during the 1920s. In the 1880s, Shermantraveled constantly in the South promoting the “New South” and visited Atlanta in1881. During these years, he was regarded as a friend of the South. He befriended hisformer opponents on the battlefield, Joseph E. Johnston and John B. Hood, and triedto alleviate the latter’s desperate financial problems.34

David Blight and other scholars have illuminated the reasons behind postwar“reconciliation” with white Southerners.35 Curiously, as this process gained groundsbased on the ideas that Sherman sympathized with, his reputation among Southernerssimultaneously deteriorated. Southerners sought solace not just in the supposedbarbaric character of the Marches, which vindicated their supposedly more moralconduct of the war, but also because Sherman resorted to his brutal methods andmade war on innocent civilians as he had failed to defeat Confederate armies. Anotheraspect also appealed to Southerners: the idea that the American spirit could not be

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defeated by total war, unlike the Germans in 1918 and again in 1945 and the Japanesein 1945. Even when they lose, Americans still win. A stress on the “unvanquished”Southern and, by extension, American spirit (and this is the title of William Faulkner’s1938 Civil War novel) led to an overall exaggeration of the Marches’ destructive effecton the Southern countryside.36

What Sherman intended in his Marches was a good deal more mundane than itsdepictions by his Southern critics and, indeed, by his admirers. The stress on destruc-tiveness by both parties – one stressing that Sherman was a monster, the other that hewas a “prophet” of modern war – actually misses the fundamental point about theMarches through Georgia and the Carolinas. They were a graphic propaganda displayaimed at the Southern civil and military will. They exposed in the most clear-cut waythat a major shift had occurred in the correlation of forces arrayed in the Civil War.The temporary Southern superiority had been eroded to reveal a marked inferiority.Southerners therefore were forced to confront the reality of defeat. Sherman’s admi-ration for the earlier Southern efforts led him to the view that an extravagant gesturewas required. Truly, this was Sherman’s “special contribution,” as Parish saw it, toUnion grand strategy.37

But Sherman did not regard his conception as something new. He had read widelyin Napoleonic history, especially the Peninsular War of 1807–1814. He greatly admiredthe colorful style of Napier’s History and understood that the earlier great Europeanconflicts had revealed a distinction between armies that involved peoples. Shermanargued strongly “that we [Federal troops] are no better & no worse than People whohave gone before us, and that we are simply re-enacting History, and that one of themodes of bringing People to reason is to touch their Interests pecuniary or property.”38

Many historians of the Civil War persist in judging this a defining feature of the years1861–1865 but Sherman was more conscious of the earlier precedents. Needless to say,the unique democratic features of the American social and political system gave theMarches an added resonance. But in undertaking them, Sherman attempted to reducedeath and destruction by making the armies under his command more mobile, reduc-ing their size, and targeting the elements sustaining the Confederate war economy. Thislast feature was not in itself a novel departure. His orders from Grant before the open-ing of the Atlanta campaign had stressed not only that he should defeat Joseph E.Johnston’s army but also that he should “also get into the interior of the enemy’s coun-try as far as you can, inflicting all the damage you can against their war resources.”39

Sherman cut all contact with his lines of communication, took no general trainwith him but had an ammunition train, and most of the remainder of his 2500 wagonscarried provisions and forage; for all other baggage, each regiment received one wagonand one ambulance. It is easy from a retrospective vantage point to underrate theproblems he faced and the risks he took in living off the country, that is, relyingentirely on its resources. He took only 16,000 horses with him – a small number byCivil War standards. He deployed only 62,000 infantry, 65 guns, and only one divisionof cavalry of 5000 men that would report directly to him. The small size of his cavalryforce greatly restricted the reach of destruction. Sherman did issue orders on 8 and 9November 1864 that his force “will forage liberally on the country during the march”and that forage parties should bring in meat, vegetables, corn-meal, and all other

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necessities, and “drive in stock in sight of their camp.” He did not allow soldiers “toenter the dwellings of the inhabitants, or commit any trespass,” though such orderswere not vigorously enforced, as would be the case in many later wars. Sherman’sorders also drew a distinction that reveals the continuity of his thought. He allowedthe cavalry and the artillery to take horses and mules “belonging to the inhabitants”but ordered that they should discriminate “between the rich, who are usually hostile,and the poor or industrious, usually neutral or friendly” – an idea that had engagedhim since the war’s outbreak. His troops certainly obeyed the spirit of this order, andJoseph T. Glatthaar shows in his study of the Marches that the burning of the planta-tion houses received special attention. This order, however much its provisions enjoin-ing restraint and orderliness conducive to good military discipline may have beenignored, does not represent an attitude that condones the abandonment of all restraintor encourages looting and pillaging. On the contrary, Sherman appealed to hissoldiers’ previous “discipline, patience and courage” in order that they could “strike ablow at our enemy that will have a material effect in producing what we all so muchdesire – his complete overthrow.”40 In other words, Sherman did not seek the utterdefeat of the Confederacy by a complete abandonment of conventional military values.

These orders reveal another continuous feature in Sherman’s military outlook,namely, his anxiety over the effect of guerrilla action. He ordered that if the troopsremain “unmolested, no destruction of such property should be permitted,” but ifbridges were burned or roads were blocked, or in case of further evidence of “manifestlocal hostility,” then he ordered his corps commanders to “enforce a devastation moreor less relentless according to the measure of such hostility.” It is the concern with thiskind of low-level local resistance that prompted Sherman to enjoin his men “duringmarches and camp” to “keep their places and not scatter about as stragglers or forag-ers, to be picked up by a hostile people in detail.” A number of such parties were killedby Confederate cavalry during the Marches which led to the claims that they had beenmurdered. It is not my intention here to minimize acts of individual vandalism orlooting but simply to point out that it was not centrally directed or, indeed, coordi-nated. These orders did have a disproportionate effect on a part of the South that hadlargely escaped up to the end of 1864 the ravages of the war that had been sorely feltin, say, Missouri, Tennessee, and Virginia; they also had an undue impact because ofthe sanctity accorded to private property in America. However, Sherman’s later criticsoffered standards of judgment by which the conduct of his soldiers should be assessedthat took no account of comparative Southern indiscipline and “foraging,” especiallyin Pennsylvania in 1863, and, more particularly, failed to note that the standards theyexpected of Union soldiers were not maintained by any means by the British andAmerican infantry in the World War II.41

I would like to conclude with some reflections on the nature of Southern resis-tance. Jacqueline Glass Campbell’s book When Sherman Marched North from the Sea(2003) makes a persuasive case that Southern women formed the vanguard ofSouthern resistance and that this survived intact after the Marches. Her interpretationdoes support mine. Sherman had formed the opinion by August 1862 that “All thewomen were secesh. Of course they keep their tongues, but they look the Devil toeveryone of our cloth.”42 By 1864, the notion that the women “were more secesh than

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the men” had pervaded his army, although detailed research indicates that the viewsof the women varied, like those of the men, depending on the progress of the war andthe distress that it caused.43 But where women did voice defiance, Sherman did notattempt to break it by brute violence. He often voiced his frustration that women didnot act as moderating counsels, but frequently the opposite, “inflaming the minds oftheir husbands & brothers to lift their hands against the Government of their Birth andstain them in blood”; if they had exercised more forbearance they might “avoid‘horrid’ war the last remedy on earth.” The Marches witnessed little violence commit-ted against civilians. There were only two reported cases of rape against white women,probably many more against black women, but in comparative terms, the Marches donot represent the forerunner of a totalitarian, brutal occupation – there were noexecution squads – because Sherman intended to reduce violence against personsunless they had supported or been involved with the guerrillas.44

Sherman did not even resort to the sort of humiliating orders issued by MajorGeneral Benjamin F. Butler on 15 May 1862 in New Orleans. Butler had laid it downin General Orders number 28 that any woman who showed “contempt” for UnionArmy officers would be “treated as a woman of the town plying her avocation.”45

It is when Sherman attempted to cope with Southern resistance that thecontinuities of his thinking emerge again and reveal the Marches as a far less radicaldeparture from his previous military methods than they are sometimes depicted. Indeveloping his ideas about the techniques underlying them, Sherman relied on hisknowledge of Southerners. While still commanding at Memphis, he explained that “Iset a much higher measure of danger on the acts of unfriendly inhabitants than mostofficers do because I have lived in Missouri and the South” but what did he make ofthis experience? He had come away with the impression that en masse Southernerswere more aggressive “in their individual characters,” and had warned Major GeneralHenry W. Halleck, then commanding in St. Louis, that “they will do more acts ofhostility than Northern farmers or people could bring themselves to do.” But Shermanasserted that they were even more dangerous in guerrilla bands. He predicted thatSterling Price’s army in Missouri and Arkansas “in the aggregate is less to be feared thanwhen in scattered bands.” In short, Sherman feared the indiscipline of Southerntroops.46

It is the anxiety over the continuance of the war in a guerrilla form that motivateshis ill-fated surrender agreement negotiated with Joseph E. Johnston, returned to thecommand in North Carolina in 1865 by Lee, and John C. Breckinridge. In hisMemoirs, Sherman exaggerated Lincoln’s conciliatory tone in their meeting in March1865 for his own polemical purposes. But his decision to allow Johnston’s troops tokeep their arms and to store them in state arsenals is motivated by the fear of theConfederate die-hard guerrilla action and his weakness in cavalry, which would hand-icap his own efforts to pursue and round them up. Also, he sees Johnston and Breck-inridge as his natural allies – so his previous affection for Southerners resurfaced oncethey showed the willingness to embrace the Union again. But such an argument doesnot excuse his casual short-sightedness and naiveté in not realizing that such weaponscould also be used against Southern blacks and that his measures would have beenopposed by a Republican administration even if Lincoln had escaped assassination.

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In conclusion, it is important to understand that Sherman’s ideas about the Southlay at the heart of the intellectual process, whereby his perspective on the character ofthe Civil War altered. When formulating his strategic responses to the challengesposed by the war, Sherman was well aware that he had knowledge and experience ofthe South, which was denied to his peers. Sherman believed that his ideas were derivedfrom “inside” knowledge, whereas his contemporaries looked at the South from the“outside.” Four essential points emerge from the analysis. First, Sherman’s ideas werecomplex and not simplistic; they also revealed a good measure of continuity, and hisstrategy was just as much governed by an admiration for the South as by a furydirected against it. He did not experience on the road to Damascus or Atlanta, oranywhere else, a sudden conversion to views that foreshadow twentieth-century “totalwar.” Second, Sherman’s admiration for Southern martial achievements rested onan assumption that the North, for all its faults, would prove capable of finding aneffective way of defeating it. “I suppose you are now fully convinced of the stupendousenergy of the South, and their ability to prolong this war indefinitely,” he lectured hisbrother, John, in early 1863, “but I am further satisfied that if it last[s] thirty years wemust fight it out,” for he warned him that should the North “relax its energies,” theSouth would strike back and regain all that it had so far lost. Third, he held steadfastlyto the view that “War, and war alone, can inspire our enemy with respect, and they[the Confederates] will have their belly full of that very soon.”47 Last, in unravelingSherman’s attitudes, the tendentiousness that riddles discussions of his career must beshorn away.

Notes1. Delivered at Madingley Hall, University of Cambridge, October 16, 2009.2. Parish, “The Will to Fight and the Will to Write,” 295–305.3. Sherman, Memoirs, II, 218–19; for the broader theoretical context of later explications of

Sherman’s strategy, see Holden Reid, “British Military Intellectuals and the American CivilWar,” 48–51.

4. Here I follow Hirshson, White Tecumseh, x, 256.5. Sherman to Valerie Hurlbut, November 6, 1862, Sherman’s Civil War: Selected Correspon-

dence, 321.6. Holden Reid, Origins, 398.7. Sherman to David Boyd, April 4, 1861; Sherman to John Sherman, December 9, 1860,

Correspondence, 65, 16.8. Sherman to George Mason Graham, January 16, 1861, Ibid., 38.9. Sherman to Ellen Sherman, November 23, 1860, Ibid., 8.

10. Sherman to George Mason Graham, Christmas 1860, Ibid., 27.11. Sherman to John Sherman, December 9, 1860, Ibid., 16.12. Sherman to Thomas Ewing, Sr., December 1, 1860; Sherman to John Sherman, January 18,

1861, Ibid., 13, 43.13. Sherman to Ellen Sherman, April 14, 1862, Ibid., 203.14. Sherman to Philemon B. Ewing, November 2, 1862, Ibid., 320.15. There is a measure of truth in this calculation, see Holden Reid, Origins, 330.16. Sherman, Memoirs, I, 148.17. Adams, Our Masters the Rebels, 13–14; also see Grant, North Over South.18. Sherman to Philemon B. Ewing, November 2, 1862, Correspondence, 319.

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19. Sherman to Ellen Sherman, October 1, 1862, Ibid., 310; Sherman was absolutely right onthis latter point. On the consequences for the Federal war effort of having to “crank up” themilitary system anew, see Holden Reid, “How Were Civil War Armies Kept in the Field?”, 12.

20. O.R., Series 1, XVII, Part 1, 201; Sherman to Minnie Sherman, August 6, 1862; Sherman toEllen Sherman, December 14, 1862, Correspondence, 262, 349; Fellman, Citizen Sherman,136–40, emphasizes his kindness and forbearance to white Southerners.

21. Sherman to Ellen Sherman, July 31, 1862, Correspondence, 257–8, 260.22. Sherman to Ellen Sherman, July 31, 1862; Sherman to Thomas Ewing, Sr., August 10, 1862,

Ibid., 260, 263–4; General Orders No. 67 is in O.R., Series 1, XVII, Part 2, 158–60.23. Sherman to Thomas Hunton, August 24, 1862, Ibid., 285–6.24. Sherman to John Sherman, September 3, 1862, October 1, 1862, Ibid., 293, 309–10.25. Sherman to Minnie Sherman, October 4, 1862, Correspondence, 315.26. Sherman to Miss P.A. Fraser, October 22, 1862; Sherman to Valerie Hurlbut, November 6,

1862, Ibid., 321.27. Sherman to Valerie Hurlbut, November 6, 1862; Sherman to Ellen Sherman, September 25,

1862; Sherman to T.C. Hindman, September 28, 1862; Sherman to John A. Rawlins,September 26, 1862, Ibid., 319, 321, 305, 307–8, 306–7.

28. Grimsley, Hard Hand of War, 114–16.29. Sherman to Philemon B. Ewing, November 2, 1862, Correspondence, 319–20.30. Mark E. Neely, Jr., Civil War and Limits of Destruction, 2, 201, offers a revision of the idea

that 1861–1865 represented a “crescendo of violence” that “breached decisively” theprevious barriers that contributed to restraint in war.

31. Quoted in McPherson, This Mighty Scourge, 123.32. Sherman to Philemon B. Ewing, November 2, 1862, Correspondence, 320.33. Parish, American Civil War, 419, 581.34. Caudill and Ashdown, Sherman’s March in Myth and Memory, 32.35. See Blight, Race and Reunion.36. Caudill and Ashdown, Sherman’s March in Myth and Memory, 104, 170.37. Parish, American Civil War, 581.38. Sherman to Thomas Hunton, August 24, 1862, Correspondence, 286.39. Grant to Sherman, April 4, 1864, Grant Papers, X, 252.40. O.R., Series 1, XXXIX Part 2, 713; Glatthaar, Sherman’s March to the Sea and Beyond, 39,

41–2, 79–80; Glatthaar also stresses (151) the generally high levels of plundering bySouthern whites as the Confederacy collapsed.

41. On the comparison with 1939–1945, note Sir Michael Howard’s recollections of his failureto stop his soldiers in the Coldstream Guards in 1944 “systematically looting” the housesof departed Italian civilians. When he protested to his platoon sergeant, “He advised menot to take it too seriously: ‘The lads see it as a kind of perk.’” See Howard, CaptainProfessor, 98.

42. Sherman to Ellen Sherman, August 20, 1862, Correspondence, 281.43. Silberman and Clinton, Divided Houses.44. Sherman to Miss P.A. Fraer, October 22, 1862, Correspondence, 318–9.45. For the reaction to this order, see Trefousse, Ben Butler, 110–3.46. Sherman to Halleck, December 12, 1861, Correspondence, 165; this insight would eventually

prove correct, see Neely, Civil War and Limits of Destruction, 50–1.47. Sherman to John Sherman, January 6, 1863; Sherman to F.G. Pratt, November 17, 1862,

Correspondence, 352, 330.

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Blight, David W. Race and Reunion: The Civil War in American Memory. Cambridge, MA:Belknapp Press, 2001.

Campbell, Jacqueline Glass. When Sherman Marched North from the Sea: Resistance on theConfederate Home Front. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2003.

Caudill, Edward, and Paul Ashdown. Sherman’s March in Myth and Memory. Lanham, MD:Rowman & Littlefield, 2008.

Fellman, Michael. Citizen Sherman: A Life of William Tecumseh Sherman. New York: RandomHouse, 1995.

Glatthaar, Joseph T. The March to the Sea and Beyond: Sherman’s Troops in the Savannah andCarolinas Campaigns. New York: New York University Press, 1985.

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Holden Reid, Brian. “How Were Civil War Armies Kept in the Field?” In Raise, Train andSustain: Delivering Land Combat Power, ed. Peter Dennis and Jeffery Grey, 1–25. Loftus,NSW: Australian Military History Publications, 2010.

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Kennett, Lee. Sherman: A Soldier’s Life. New York: HarperCollins, 2001.Lewis, Lloyd. Sherman: Fighting Prophet. 1932. Reprint, New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1958.Liddell Hart, B.H. Sherman: Soldier, Realist, American. New York: Dodd Mead, 1929. (British

ed., Ernest Benn, London, 1930.)Marszalek, John F. Sherman: A Soldier’s Passion for Order. New York: Free Press, 1992.McPherson, James M. This Mighty Scourge: Perspectives on the Civil War. New York: Oxford

University Press, 2007.Neely, Mark E., Jr. The Civil War and the Limits of Destruction. Cambridge, MA: Harvard

University Press, 2007.Parish, Peter J. The American Civil War. London: Eyre Methuen, 1975.Parish, Peter J. “The Will to Fight and the Will to Write: Some Recent Books on the American

Civil War.” Journal of American Studies 32 (1998): 295–305.Sherman, William T. Memoirs. 2 vols. London: Henry S. King, 1875.Sherman, William T. Sherman’s Civil War: Selected Correspondence of William T. Sherman,

1860–1865, ed. Brooks D. Simpson and Jean V. Berlin. Chapel Hill, NC: University ofNorth Carolina Press, 1999.

Silberman, Nina, and Catherine Clinton, eds. Divided Houses: Gender and the Civil War. NewYork: Oxford University Press, 1992.

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