William T. Sherman
William Tecumseh Sherman commanded the march through Georgia and is a founding practitioner of modern total war. Born in Ohio in 1820, he was raised after his father's death by a family friend who became a senator, graduated sixth from West Point, and left the army for banking in California, where he failed, and then for a military academy in Louisiana, which he ran until secession. He was one of the very few who said publicly in 1861 that the war would be long and enormous, and estimated the forces required so far above the accepted figure that newspapers reported he was insane. He was relieved of command and had what appears to have been a breakdown. Grant restored him, and the partnership between them was the Union's most effective. He fought at Shiloh, Vicksburg and Chattanooga, and took over the western theatre when Grant went east in 1864. He captured Atlanta in September 1864, which secured Lincoln's re-election, and then cut loose from his supply lines and marched three hundred kilometres to Savannah with sixty thousand men, living off the country and destroying railways, mills, cotton and livestock across a corridor sixty miles wide. He continued north through South Carolina, where the destruction was worse. The reasoning was explicit: the Confederacy's capacity and will to fight lay in its civilian economy, and demonstrating that its government could not protect it would end the war faster than battles. He wrote that war is cruelty and cannot be refined. He later commanded the army during the Indian wars, refused to run for president, and died in 1891.
- Lived: 1820 CE – 1891 CE
- Nationality: American
- Roles: general
