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3 lthough Sherman was unknown to the general public at the beginning of the war, the template for his future reputation began to emerge early on in the mind of the Southern public. ulysses S. Grant, in his personal memoirs, described marching his regiment through a deserted missouri town at the beginning of the war. People “had evidently been led to believe that the national troops carried death and devastation with them wherever they went,” he recalled.1 Before union and Confederate troops met at the first battle of Bull run, Confederate president Jefferson davis in a speech to the Confederate Congress predicted how abraham lincoln and the republicans would prosecute the war. according to davis, “mankind will shudder at the outrages committed on defenseless females.”2 Sherman was only an unknown colonel when davis made this speech and was as far away from shaping national policy as was possible. a future generation of southerners and historians, however, will blame william t. Sherman for a brutality they implied did not exist in earlier wars or in other parts of the american Civil war. neither Jefferson davis nor the people fleeing in the face of Grant and his single regiment had to look too far in the past to find examples of the kind of brutality they feared and that Sherman was credited with inventing in 1864. General Santa anna ravaged a rebellious texas, and both the British and the americans would institute “hard war” in the american revolution and the war of 1812. The most famous example, of course, was the burning of washington, dC, during a British raid. living off the land was the major strategy of napoleon, who was studied intently by generals on both sides. The “on to richmond” press and those sightseers who escorted the union army to the battlefield at Bull run may have believed that the war would be fought in one glorious battle, but the rest of the country knew that this would be the ChaPter 1 the Prewar years and the early War A 4 DEMON OF THE LOST CAUSE type of bloody war that had been going on between kansas and missouri for the previous five years. There was nothing in Sherman’s early life that would have led one to believe he was destined for greatness or controversy. with only a few exceptions, in his childhood and early life he was not that different from others of that era. on february 8, 1820, Charles Sherman, a prominent judge in lancaster, ohio, and his wife, mary, had their sixth child, a boy they named tecumseh. he was named after the Shawnee chief who had waged war against the united States prior to and during the war of 1812, and who had been killed during the Battle of Thames less than seven years prior to the birth of tecumseh Sherman.3 Giving a white child an indian name was an oddity in the nineteenth century, as it was, but naming him after as dangerous and successful an enemy as the great tecumseh was truly odd. This was obviously the first of many controversies in Sherman’s life, and the fact that it occurred before he was born was very fitting. when tecumseh Sherman was nine years old, his father died while riding the judicial circuit. The obituaries printed by ohio newspapers gave cholera as the cause of death, but typhoid fever was a more likely culprit. mary elizabeth Sherman was now a widow with eleven children. as was the tradition of the time, the children were taken in by family and friends. tecumseh Sherman was taken in by Thomas ewing, a prominent attorney and close friend of his father. his new home was in view of his old one, and he often visited his mother; it was not a traumatic move for the boy. he was taken in as part of the family, and he loved and was loved by the ewings. Throughout his life he would view the ewing sons as his brothers and would marry Thomas ewing’s daughter, ellen.4 Throughout his adult life, Sherman will be preoccupied with supporting his growing family , and this will affect all of his professional decisions. Perhaps the position his mother found herself in as a widow greatly affected his outlook on life. in 1836, Sherman received an appointment to the uS military academy. ewing was then a senator from ohio, so Sherman’s appointment was all but guaranteed. according to his Memoirs...

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