Page:Great Men and Famous Women Volume 2.djvu/201

WILLIAM TECUMSEH SHERMAN 355 quarters at Louisville, Ky. From thenceforth all his fighting and all his fame was associated with the armies of the West. At once he saw the desperate condition of affairs in Kentucky a border State, only to be held for the Union by prompt and decisive measures. He called for reinforcements frequently and emphatically, and when the Secretary of War visited- him on a tour of inspection, and asked his views on the situation, Sherman paralyzed him by asserting that for the defence of Kentucky, 60,000 men were needed at once, and that 200,000 would be necessary there before the war in that State could be ended. This was so out of proportion to the Secre- tary's estimate that Sherman was declared crazy ; he was deprived of his com- mand at the front and relegated to a camp of instruction near St. Louis. But so shrewd and correct an observer, so energetic a leader, and so deter- mined a fighter, could not long be left in retirement, and in February, 1862, General Sherman was ordered to assume command of the forces at Paducah, Ky. Desperate fighting soon followed. The battle of Shiloh (sometimes called Pitts- burg Landing) showed of what stuff the " crazy Sherman," as the newspapers had called him, was made, and from Shiloh's bloody field in 1862, to Johnston's surrender at Raleigh in 1865, Sherman's fame rose steadily, until it left him one of the three greatest generals of the Civil War, and one of the famous command- ers of the century. From Shiloh to Raleigh, Sherman stood, m a measure, as Grant's right hand, for, even when Grant was "hammering away" in Virginia, Sherman, by his strategy, shrewdness, and daring in the West was giving him material support and help. In the three years of fighting, from 1862 to 1865, these events stand prominently out in Sherman's military record the tenacity with which he held the right of the line at Shiloh, the faithful service he rendered as commander of the left before Vicksburg, his rapid relief of Knoxville, his brilliant capture of Atlanta, his daring and famous march to the sea and the capture of Savannah, his equally daring march through the Carolinas to the help of Grant, and his final capture of Johnston's army, which was the real close of the war. In all these events the peculiar traits of character that made Sherman so con- spicuous a success stood out in bold relief his coolness in danger, his bravery in action, his daring in devices, his readiness of invention, his electric surprises, his scientific strategy, his ruthlessness in destruction, his courtesy to the conquered, his devotion to his soldiers, his loyalty to his superior in command, his restlessness, his energy, his determination to succeed. These all contributed to the result that made " Sherman's army " famous the world over, and stamped him as the hero of a campaign that, according to military critics, " stands alone in the history of modem warfare." His scientific fencing with General Joseph E. Johnston, the Confederate leader, was as masterly as it was effective. He forced his rival from the stand he had taken as warder of the gateways to the South's supply land, fighting him step by step from Dalton backward to Atlanta, and capturing that stronghold of the Confederacy by persistent and desperate fighting. Then, when Atlanta was