Introduction

Abstract This introductory chapter provides an overview of William Tecumseh Sherman, one of the architects of the northern victory in the American Civil War in 1865. Sherman is often depicted as a ruthless, utterly heartless, and unprincipled destroyer. During his Marches across Georgia and the Carolinas in 1864–65, the Confederate press likened his armies to the pillaging hordes of barbarians that despoiled the Western Roman Empire during its death throes. Sherman’s campaigns appeared prophetic—but he seemed a prophet of doom. However, this diabolical image veers drastically from the reality of the historical Sherman. Sherman’s military career should be assessed within the context of his own time. Viewed in the longer stream of Western military history, Sherman was not prophetic and did not anticipate the methods used during the two World Wars of the twentieth century. He simply recognized with great clarity that warfare is cruel and pitiless—a veritable scourge—and does not provide ready-made protection for the weaker side. Historians have often considered the relationship between military thought and execution, the difference between theory and practice, as puzzling, even intractable or enigmatic. In reappraising Sherman’s military conduct, and the thinking that lay behind it, the main aim of this book is to show how these two sides of one of the most admired but also most condemned of American commanders, the thinker and the doer, intermesh.