Sherman's Meridian Campaign: A Practice Run for the March to the Sea. Convinced that a strike at Meridian could stymie these forces, at every opportunity he pressed his request to take the town. A Sent to Kentucky, he succeeded Brigadier General Robert Anderson as commander of the Department of the Cumberland. By Kevin Dougherty. Grant believed that destroying enemy supplies “tended to the same result as the destruction of armies.” Sherman had already tried a variation of this tactic when he had punished the Confederate citizens for aiding the guerrillas and destroyed their supplies, thereby denying such goods to the irregulars. Only a few days later, on May 17, this band of Kiowas perpetrated the Warren Wagontrain Raid near the spot where it had observed but failed to attack Sherman's entourage. Sherman had witnessed Grant’s army practically perform this maneuver during the Vicksburg Campaign of 1863. Consulting with Lieutenant General Ulysses S. Grant, the two men agreed that it would be necessary to destroy the South's economic and psychological will to resist if the war was to be won.To accomplish this, Sherman intended to … Sherman did not like the idea put forth by General Orders 107 and 108. What they did wasn’t by mistake or necessity. However, this trip to Jackson proved different from any other prior attack on a city during the war. His younger brother John served in the U.S. Senate. He hoped to move across Mississippi as soon as his men were rested and the cool fall weather had arrived. By the end of the war, however, most Southerners saw Sherman as a brute for his harsh treatment of Southern civilians and his destruction of property across the Confederate states. A Northern newspaper declared that Sherman’s policy had “produced a marked change in favor of the Union cause.”. Sherman and his longtime adversary, Joe Johnston, met to discuss terms. William Tecumseh Sherman went by his middle name for the first part of his life. . Then, he had attacked the settlements near the points of these assaults, destroying property and insisting that the local populace either was the guilty party or, at the least, was aiding the attackers. 6:16. In addition to the theatre/ballroom, Casino Hall also offered members the use of a bowling alley, gaming tables and a bar. Section 107 related to Copyright and “Fair Use” for Non-Profit educational institutions, which permits the Texas State Historical Association (TSHA), to utilize copyrighted materials to further scholarship, education, and inform the public. Bruce Catton, This Hallowed Ground (New York: Pocket Books, 1956). He also caused Johnston to retreat. Sherman had been pleased with the state's climate, finding it much more pleasant than he had been led to believe, and pronounced that white settlement would in time take care of the Indian problem and that Texas would "become a prosperous and rich state.". Grant sent letters to President Abraham Lincoln’s general in chief, Henry W. Halleck, on several occasions in July and August, suggesting an attack on Mobile. On the ride from Fort Belknap to Fort Richardson, however, Sherman and his party barely missed falling victim to the war party of Satanta, Satank, and Big Tree. … He summed up his new attitude in one line when he wrote to his brother near the end of December 1863: “The Army of the Confederacy is the South.” This time, however, he meant all Southern residents, not just those living close to guerrilla activity. Knowing that he had the confidence of his brother, he wrote freely. Fears on China on the battlefield were rampant during the Vietnam War. Jomini contended that the violence between two enemy armies on the battlefield had few limitations but that civilians away from the fighting should not be included. (Rodney Bryant and Daniel Woolfolk/Military Times)... Homepage Featured Top Stories, Homepage Hero, Vietnam, Vietnam Magazine, Vietnam War. In April 1863, the Federal government would set forth a distinction between civilians and combatants inhabiting the Confederacy in its General Order 100, “Instructions for the Government of Armies of the United States in the Field.” Article 22 read in part that there is a “distinction between the private individual belonging to a hostile country and the hostile country itself, with its men in arms. Sherman married Eleanor Boyle in 1850, with a ceremony held in Washington and with President Taylor in attendance. The War of the Rebellion: A Compilation of the Official Records of the Union and Confederate Armies (Washington: GPO, 1880–1901). On December 21, 1864, his troops took Savannah from the Confederates, and he dispatched a message to Lincoln that later became famous; he offered the city as a Christmas present to the president. Show them no mercy and if the people don’t suppress guerrillas, tell them your orders are to treat the community as enemies.”, In January, while on a trip down the Mississippi to investigate another river attack, he heatedly wrote: “For every bullet shot at a steamboat, I would shoot a thousand [cannons into every] hapless town on Red, Ouachita, Yazoo [Rivers], or wherever a boat can float or soldiers march.” Four days later he ordered Brigadier General A.J. Believing that liberal foraging would lead the men down the path toward outright pillaging, he issued an order that the “demoralizing and disgraceful practice of pillaging must cease else the country will rise on us and justly shoot us down like dogs and wild beasts.” He insisted that while his command was on the move in enemy territory, the cavalry must capture and punish any stragglers engaged in destructive activity. The campaign was to be the model for Sherman’s own March to the Sea through Georgia and then into South Carolina, and for Phil Sheridan’s Shenandoah Valley foray. William Tecumseh Sherman, (born February 8, 1820, Lancaster, Ohio, U.S.—died February 14, 1891, New York, New York), American Civil War general and a major architect of modern warfare. He handed out harsh punishment to soldiers who did as little as steal fence rails for their campfires or take liberally from the countryside. Were they justified? His older brother Charles became a federal judge. Grant, Sherman’s superior, had bigger plans than Meridian, but an attack on the Mississippi town would fit nicely into his larger strategy. After exhausting all conventional methods for dealing with these threats, he began to strike at the local Southern towns, which he considered the supply bases for the Confederates. In general, he thought that “every member of the nation is bound by natural and constitutional law to ‘maintain and defend the Government against all its opposers whomsoever.’ If they fail to do it they are derelict,” he maintained, “and can be punished or deprived of all advantages arising from the labors of those who do.”, He contended that the United States and its representatives had the right to “remove and destroy every obstacle—if need be, take every life, every acre of land, every particle of property, everything that to us seems proper…[and] that all who do not aid are enemies, and we will not account to them for our acts.” This last line was reminiscent of his statement in August 1862, when he had warned that those who resided in the areas near partisan troop action were “accessories by their presence and inactivity to prevent murders and destruction of property.”. Roughly seven months after the fall of Vicksburg, Major General William Tecumseh Sherman took his army across central Mississippi, intent on undermining that region’s ability to wage war. However the overwhelming evidence supports it and as by Design. A Since Sherman is now best known for his destructive … var NetMarketingAdvisers_goal = { id: "1275" }; Civil War Times Editor Dana Shoaf shares the story of how Battery H of the 3rd Pennsylvania Heavy Artillery found itself in the middle of the Battle of Gettysburg. He argued, therefore, that since the Southern population’s “provisions, forage, horses, mules, [and] wagons” went to the enemy’s army, “it [was] clearly our duty and right to take them, because otherwise they might be used against us.”. He planned to travel across the state, punishing the population for aiding the bushwhackers, tearing up railroads, confiscating and destroying corn and other supplies, and crippling the enemy’s ability and will to fight. Two days after writing his letter to Senator Sherman, the general ordered Colonel Charles C. Walcutt of the 46th Ohio Volunteers to the town of Randolph, Tennessee. His father was a justice of the Ohio Supreme Court. “On that point I am not only insane, but mad.”. He believed that they were a band of local citizens from the nearby settlement of La Grange, Tennessee, so he ordered the capture of twenty-five of the “most prominent” men from La Grange, then sent them to Columbus, Tennessee, as prisoners. He steadily forced Johnston back into the heart of Georgia and on September 2, 1864, successfully captured the vital city of Atlanta, an act that certainly helped Abraham Lincoln win reelection and may have been a key factor in the election of 1864. With the death of the elder Sherman in 1829, William became the ward of Senator Thomas Ewing, secretary of the treasury in the William Henry Harrison and John Tyler administrations and secretary of the interior in the Zachary Taylor administration. Sherman’s March, more accurately known as the Georgia and Carolinas Campaigns, cut a swath across three states in 1864–1865. Sherman therefore chose the destruction of Meridian as his main objective for the winter of 1863-1864. Mobile could provide the southernmost anchor for another split of the Confederacy. Many historians have credited Sherman with creating the policy of “total war,” of modern warfare. The Meridian Campaign was hardly the brutish, purposeless destruction described in Lost Cause mythology. In September 1863, Sherman laid out his emerging philosophy in a long letter to Halleck. When Grant was promoted to command all Union armies in the field and left for the Eastern Theater, he put Sherman in charge of the Military Division of Mississippi in the Western Theater. The Meridian Campaign was crucial to how Sherman’s style of fighting evolved. The legislature was busy as well, holding numerous regular and special sessions in order to deal with arming the state and paying for the war. This bustling community contained warehouses, storehouses, depots, an armory, a hospital, and other noteworthy military targets. Although he attended West Point, Sherman did not derive his principles from his education there. Senator John Sherman, in frustration: “It is about time the North understood the truth; that the entire South, man, woman, and child are against us, armed and determined.”. Income was generated from the rental of the theatre to other groups. This was typical of armies marching through enemy territory in the Civil War. In all of these actions except one, Sherman took great care not to disturb nonmilitarily significant private property of those not directly involved in the war. His father died while William was still a boy and after his father’s death, he was raised by a family friend, attorney Thomas Ewing. All copyrighted materials included within the Handbook of Texas Online are in accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Texas State Historical Association (TSHA), http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.shtml. Next ,he increased the area of his retaliation to encompass not only the immediate vicinity of the harassment but some miles around the place, still searching for partisans and their supporters. The Meridian Campaign, some six months later, was his preliminary attempt to subjugate an entire region of the state and served as his proving ground for later campaigns into Georgia and the Carolinas. Guerrilla raids on Union supplies and firings upon boats along the Mississippi River continued to anger Sherman when his troops garrisoned Memphis in 1862. With this promotion he assumed command of all troops in the western theater of operations. In the fall of 1864, the Union General William Tecumseh ("Cump") Sherman took 60,000 men and pillaged his way through Georgia's civilian farmsteads. This scorched-earth policy had begun in Mississippi, where his men repeatedly burned the city of Jackson until it became known as “Chimneyville,” because only chimneys remained. Sherman also worried that Richmond had designs on wrestling control of the Mississippi River away from the Union army and reuniting the severed pieces of the Confederacy, undoing all that the Union army had accomplished in the previous months. Jomini held that there was a definite wall between warring armies and the common population. He still respected the rights of private citizens and destroyed only public property. These were not hollow threats. He is best known for his actions in the Civil War, where his performance was mixed. Our line of historical magazines includes America's Civil War, American History, Aviation History, Civil War Times, Military History, MHQ: The Quarterly Journal of Military History, Vietnam, Wild West and World War II. “[Federal Major General Don Carlos] Buell had to move at a snail’s pace with his vast wagon trains, [while Confederate General Braxton] Bragg moved rapidly, living on the country,” he noted. Furthermore, he made good on his promise to expel Memphis citizens. Although Grant’s army had only done this for two weeks, Sherman (and Grant) thought that his army could carry all necessities except food in wagons during his march to Meridian and live off the Mississippi countryside for the entire campaign. Fighting took place both far north and far south of Jackson … If successful in Mississippi, Sherman would intensify his activities, saving lives while simultaneously obtaining effective results. When the smoke cleared, the southerners who had survived the onslaught came out of hiding. Sherman was commissioned as a colonel and first saw action in the Battle Of Bull Run, where his actions got the attention of Abraham Lincoln, who promoted him to brigadier general. At one point, when asked a question about “good Indians,” he responded that, “The only good Indians I ever saw were dead,” which became, “The only good Indian is a dead Indian” in popular vernacular. The following, adapted from the Chicago Manual of Style, 15th edition, is the preferred citation for this entry. . It served as a hub for Confederate traffic between Mississippi and the rest of the eastern Confederacy. Sherman loathed the irregular troops’ actions, and because the civilian population aided their cause, he grew upset with them as well. For more information go to: http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.shtml. Halleck thought Texas was a more important target, so he did not provide Grant with the approval he wished. reset. He turned his army north through the Carolinas, and if anything the destruction they wrought topped that in Georgia. There, Sherman impatiently ordered a frontal assault that cost him 3,000 men, while the Confederates lost only 1,000. William Tecumseh Sherman, United States Army officer, was born in Lancaster, Ohio, on February 8, 1820, the son of Charles Robert and Mary (Hoyt) Sherman. Confederate cavalry leader Major General Earl Van Dorn striking at his supply and communication lines at Holly Springs and Brigadier General Nathan Bedford Forrest hitting at other locations in northern Mississippi isolated the Union force from its base. Although he experienced limited success with this tactic, Sherman believed that the key to protecting the Mississippi, a major key to Union victory, was to strike at Confederate resources in the Magnolia State. To a friend, Sherman later described his own transformation in 1862: “[Early in the war,] I would not let our men burn [a] fence rail for fire or gather fruits or vegetables though hungry. After President Grant was inaugurated, Sherman was elevated to general, on March 4, 1869, and named commanding general of the army four days later, a rank that he held until November 1, 1883. Extensive Comanche and Kiowa raids along the West Texas frontier brought Sherman on a personal tour of inspection in May 1871. He penned an order to his men that, if fired upon, the troops should land and “attack the property and stores [and take any supplies] useful to the United States.” They should burn “the neighboring houses, barns &c.” and dispose of any enemy personnel in the area. What Sherman learned about the limitations of the Confederacy and the Southern people during his first large-scale use of hard war provided him with the insight he needed to use his style of warfare on an even larger scale later, marching through Georgia and South Carolina. The 360-mile march extended from Atlanta in central Georgia to Savannah on the Atlantic coast and lasted from November 12 to December 22, 1864. His goals was apparently to break the Confederate will without serious loss of life to either side. Built in 1852 to protect the nearby settlers, this fort is now a state historic site. Sherman retired from active duty on February 8, 1884. (After Civil War, named General of the Army of the United States), First Battle of Bull Run Satanta's boastful confession of his responsibility for the raid led Sherman to order his detention and that of his colleagues at Fort Sill, Indian Territory, and thereafter the United States Army's attitude toward the defense of the Texas frontier became much more aggressive. His comments about guerrillas implied condemnation of their style of warfare. While many historians contend that Jomini’s works had little influence on these officers because his The Art of War was not translated into English until late in 1854, most military tacticians and strategists of the period drew upon this work for their own writings. The TSHA makes every effort to conform to the principles of fair use and to comply with copyright law. Background . The Union army had allowed this type of action before 1862. In the first three years of the war, Sherman went from rigorously protecting Southern civilians and their property to believing that these citizens were ultimately responsible for the war and had to be convinced to stop supporting it. At the time, Sherman decided that because of the hot summer weather and the exhaustion of his men, he should postpone any movement on Meridian. / His entire war experience, particularly as Ulysses S. Grant’s subordinate, provided him with battlefield savvy and tactics to do just that. Sherman had undergone a complete change of attitude toward the Southern populace and about the army’s independence from secure supply and communication lines. He served in a variety of positions throughout the South and garnered no special notice. General Sherman on the "March to the Sea," 1865 | In the fall of 1864, Gen. James H. Wilson took command of Gen. William T. Sherman’s cavalry. 1871. 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