Shermans March to the Sea essays

Sherman's March to the Sea essays William Tecumseh Sherman made the famous and very true statement, War is all hell! He said this surprisingly before the Civil War. At this time he was retired from the armed forces and thought by many to be insane. Later however came the time in his life that would be taught in high school U.S. History classes. The time when Gen. William Tecumseh Sherman would be reinstated into the army to crush over half of the Confederate States with his destructive marches that shocked the civilized world. I Guess he wasnt so crazy after all. In some ways Sherman was the first true modern. He was at least the first in American History to understand that civilians are the backbone of a war. In other words, in order to break the backbone of the Confederacy, he made war on the civilians directly. Tecumseh Sherman, named by his father in honor of a great Indian chief, was born in Lancaster, Ohio, on February 8, 1820. Shermans family was originally from New England and came to America from England in the Seventeenth century. Two hundred years later his mother and his father, who was a lawyer and in his later years a Justice of the Ohio Supreme Court, migrated them to what was then the unsettled west and eventually migrated to Ohio. When Sherman, who was called Cump by his family and close friends, was only nine his father died leaving his mother and a large family without adequate financial support. Sherman and his younger brother John were farmed out to a family friend, Thomas Ewing, who would one day be a U.S. Senator and serve in the cabinets of three presidents. When the Ewings learned that Cump had not been baptized he was given the name William T.C. perhaps because the Catholic priest objected to an Indian name without a Christian first name preceding it. At the Ewings home the boys were surrounded by talkative and energetic farmers, lawyers, and politicians. While John would...