William Tecumseh Sherman

William Tecumseh Sherman was born in Lancaster, Ohio, in 1820. His father, a justice of the Ohio Supreme Court, died when William was nine, leaving eleven children, and the boy was raised by a neighbour, the lawyer and politician Thomas Ewing. Sherman graduated from the United States Military Academy at West Point in 1840 and in 1850 married Ewing's daughter Ellen. After leaving the army for business in 1853, in 1859 he became superintendent of the military academy that is now Louisiana State University, resigning when Louisiana left the Union. In the Civil War he fought at the First Battle of Bull Run and then formed a close partnership with Ulysses S. Grant, serving with him at Shiloh, Vicksburg and Chattanooga. In 1864 he captured Atlanta, a victory that helped re-elect President Abraham Lincoln, and then led the March to the Sea through Georgia and the Carolinas, destroying railways, supplies and property to weaken the Confederacy. When Grant became president in 1869, Sherman succeeded him as Commanding General of the Army, serving until 1883. He wrote his Memoirs and died in New York City in 1891.

William Tecumseh Sherman is also an author in the library: author page and works.

Faith: Baptized Catholic; historians variously describe him as a deist or an agnostic. Source: Wikipedia