How fully General Grant appreciated the
services of both Sherman and McPherson can be seen from the following
letter:
HEADQUARTERS DEPARTMENT OF TENNESSEE,
VICKSBURG, Miss., July 22, 1863.
His Excellency A. Lincoln, President of
the United States, Washington, D. C.:
I would most respectfully but urgently recommend the promotion of
Maj.-Gen. W. T. Sherman, now commanding the 15th Army Corps, and
Maj.-Gen. J. B. McPherson, commanding the 17th Army Corps, to the
position of brigadier-general in the regular army. The first reason for
this is their great fitness for any command it may ever become necessary
to intrust to them. Second, their great purity of character and
disinterestedness in anything except the faithful performance of their
duty, and the success of every one engaged in the great battle for the
preservation of the Union. Third, they have honorably won this
distinction upon many well-fought battlefields. I will only mention some
of his services while serving under my command.
To General Sherman I was greatly indebted
for his promptness in forwarding to me, during the siege of Fort
Donelson, reinforcements and supplies from Paducah. At the battle of
Shiloh, on the first day, he held with raw troops the key points to the
landing. To his individual effort I am indebted for the success of that
battle. Twice hit, and (I think three) horses shot under him on that
day, he maintained his position with his raw troops. It is no
disparagement to any other officer to say that I do not believe there
was another division commander on the field who had the skill or
experience to have done it. His services as division commander in the
advance on Corinth, I will venture, were appreciated by the (now)
general - in - chief beyond those of any other division commander.
General Sherman's management, as commander of troops in the attack on
Chickasaw Bluff, last December, was admirable. Seeing the ground from
the opposite side of the attack, I see the impossibility of making it
successful. The conception of the attack on Arkansas Post was General
Sherman's. His part of the execution no one denies was as good as it
possibly could have been. His demonstration on Haines's Bluff, in April,
to hold the enemy at Vicksburg while the army was securing a foothold
east of the Mississippi; his rapid march to join the army afterwards;
his management at Jackson, Miss., in the first attack ; his almost
unequalled march from Jackson to Bridgeport, and passage of that stream;
his securing Walnut Hill, on May 18, and thus opening communication with
our supplies—all attest his great merits as a soldier.
The siege of Vicksburg, the last capture
of Jackson, and the dispersion of Johnston's army, entitle General
Sherman to more credit than it usually falls to the lot of one man to
earn.
General McPherson has been with me in
every battle since the commencement of the rebellion, except Belmont. At
Henry, Donelson, Shiloh, and the siege of Corinth, as a staff officer
and engineer, his services were conspicuous and highly meritorious. At
the second battle of Corinth his skill as a soldier was displayed in
successfully carrying reinforcements to the besieged garrison when the
enemy was between him and the point to be reached. In the advance
through central Mississippi, last November and December, General
McPherson commanded one wing of the army with all the ability possible
to show, he having the lead in advance and the rear in return. In the
campaign and siege, terminating in the fall of Vicksburg, General
McPherson has borne a conspicuous part. At the battle of Port Gibson, it
was under his immediate direction that the enemy was driven, late in the
afternoon from a position that they had succeeded in holding all day
against an obstinate attack. His corps—the advance always under his
immediate eye— were the pioneers in the advance from Port Gibson to
Hankerson's Ferry. From the North Fork of Bayou Pierre to the Black
River it was a constant skirmish, the whole skillfully managed. The
enemy was so closely pressed as to be unable to destroy their bridge of
boats after them. From Hankerson's Ferry to Jackson the 17th Army Corps
marched upon roads not traveled by other troops, fighting the battle of
Raymond alone; and the bulk of Johnston's army at Jackson also was
fought by this corps entirely under the management of General McPherson.
At Champion Hill, the 17th Army Corps and General McPherson were
conspicuous. All that could be termed a battle there was fought by two
divisions of General McPherson's Corps and Hovey's division of the 13th
Corps.
In the assault of May 22 on the
fortifications of Vicksburg, and during the entire siege, General
McPherson and his command won unfailing laurels. He is one of our ablest
engineers and most skilful generals.
Very respectfully,
Your obedient servant, U. S. GRANT,
Major-General.
Sherman commanded one of the three corps
in the siege of Vicksburg. After the fall of Vicksburg he operated
successfully against Gen. Joseph E. Johnston. In October, 1863, he was
made commander of the Department of the Tennessee, and joined Grant at
Chattanooga in the middle of November; was in the battle of Missionary
Ridge (Nov. 25) ; and then moved to the relief of Burnside in east
Tennessee. When he was called to Chattanooga, he left Gen. J. B.
McPherson in command at Vicksburg; but soon after Bragg was driven
southward from Chattanooga Sherman suddenly reappeared in Mississippi.
At the head of 20,000 troops he made a most destructive raid (February,
1864) from Jackson to the intersection of important railways at
Meridian, in that State.
His object was to inflict as much injury
on the Confederate cause and its physical strength as possible. He
believed in the righteousness and efficacy of making such a war
terrible, and the line of his march eastward presented a black path of
desolation. No public property of the Confederates was spared. The
station-houses and rolling-stock of the railways were burned. The track
was torn up, and the rails, heated by the burning ties cast into heaps,
were twisted and ruined. Sherman intended to push on to Montgomery,
Ala., and then, if circumstances appeared favorable, to go southward and
attack Mobile. He waited at Meridian for Gen. W. S. Smith to join him
with a considerable force of cavalry, but that officer was held back by
the Confederate forces under Forrest and others. After waiting in vain
for a week, Sherman laid Meridian in ashes, and returned to Vicksburg
with 500 prisoners and 5,000 liberated slaves. This raid created great
consternation, for General Polk, with his 15,000 men, made but a feeble
resistance. Sherman's loss was 171 men.
Sherman was perhaps most famous for his
March to the Sea, in which he destroyed all confederate property in
a wide swatch across the South.
General Sherman was promoted
major general, United States army, in August, 1864, and lieutenant -
general in July, 1866. On March 4, 1869, he succeeded
General Grant as
general-in-chief of the armies of the United States. He was retired on
his own request, Feb. 8, 1884, on full pay. He died in New York City,
Feb. 14. 1891 in New York City, where he is memorialized by an
equestrian statue created by Augustus Saint-Gaudens and located at the
southeast entrance to Central Park. He is buried in Calvary Cemetery in
St. Louis, Missouri.
Confederate General Joseph E. Johnston,
who had commanded the resistance to Sherman's troops as they marched
through Georgia and South Carolina, served as a pallbearer at Sherman's
funeral. It was a very cold February day, and a friend of Johnston,
fearing that the general might become ill, asked him to put on his hat.
Johnston famously replied: "If I were in his place, and he were standing
in mine, he would not put on his hat."
Johnston did catch a serious cold, and
died soon afterwards.
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