"Cump" Sherman

SHERMAN: FIGHTING PROPHET--Lloyd Lewis--Harcourt, Brace ($3.50).

Sherman never said, "War is hell." What he did say and what he always thought was: "War is cruelty and you cannot refine it." Hard-headed soldier, he defined military fame: "To be killed on the field of battle and have our names spelled wrong in the newspapers." Like his good friend Ulysses Simpson Grant a failure in civil life. William Tecumseh Sherman thrived on civil war. Like the old soldier in the song, he "simply faded away" (it took him 25 years) into the most sought-after speaker and diner-out of his generation.

Redheaded, nervous, sloppy "Cump" Sherman was a West-Pointer but not a promising one. An officer during the Mexican War, he saw no action in it. When the Civil War began he had left the Army, failed as a banker, was living apart from his family as superintendent of Louisiana Military Academy. He liked the South, Southerners liked him. Though he was no abolitionist, and thought war between the States "all folly, madness, a crime against civilization," he refused a Southern command, went North to enlist. A colonel at the tragi-comedy of Bull Run, he chevied his men so relentlessly they cursed him but kept better discipline than most. His bad-tempered sternness got him the name of "Old Pills"; it was a long time before his men began calling him "Uncle Billy." In the Army of the Tennessee his organizing talents got results. But years of failure had so shaken his self-confidence that he avoided No. 1 jobs, made Lincoln promise never to give him an independent command. But when the victory at Chattanooga made Grant Lincoln's choice for generalissimo, Sherman was put in command in the West. He submitted pessimistically.

Believing that battles were too often a showy waste of time, Sherman avoided fighting whenever possible. He drove back his able Southern opponent, Joseph Johnston, by continually outflanking him, got almost to Atlanta without a battle. Sherman annoyed his enemy by going at war in a businesslike, persistent way. By products of his campaign, such as living off the country, crippling the enemy by destroying property, began to make him more hated than "Butcher" Grant. But he was successful. News of his capture of Atlanta came just in time to save Lincoln from defeat at the polls. Sherman's famed march "from Atlanta to the sea" was only a short segment of his whole campaign; from July 1863 to March 1865 Sherman led his army 2,500 miles through the heart of the South. At Raleigh, N. C. he finally got what he went after: Johnston's surrender, the war's end. Few weeks before, Lee had surrendered to Grant. The generous terms Sherman gave Johnston (at the conference they were soon "Cump" and "Joe") raised a howl in the North, changed Sherman overnight from a byword to a hissing. But by the time of the Grand Army review in Washington they were cheering him again. The review took two days: the Army of the Potomac first, then the Army of the West. Sherman was very anxious that his men should outmarch the Easterners; but he led the column, would not turn his head to look. Finally, unable to stand the suspense, he turned, saw them marching as they had never marched before. Said he: "I believe it was the happiest and most satisfactory moment of my life." Sherman "never clearly won a battle, nor ever failed to win a campaign."

Sherman knew he was a good soldier, but he thought Grant was better. He once said to a friend: "Wilson, I'm a damned sight smarter man than Grant; I know more about organization, supply and administration and about everything else than he does, but I'll tell you where he beats me and where he beats the world. He don't care a damn for what the enemy does out of his sight but it scares me like hell."

Sherman's last 25 years, says Biographer Lewis, were "one long chicken dinner." Though figure-head-hunting politicians were after him all the time Sherman steadily kept clear of politics. A smarter man than Grant, he saw what politicians had done to his old friend. He once & for all spiked talk of drafting him for the Presidency by saying: "I will not accept if nominated and will not serve if elected." When Death finally came for him in 1891 Sherman was 71. At his military funeral in Manhattan, on a raw February day, a bystander urged one of the aged pallbearers to put on his hat, warned him he might catch his death. The oldster refused, ten days later was dead of pneumonia. That was Joe Johnston.

The Author. As a small boy in the late 1890's Lloyd Lewis heard many a tall tale from Indiana veterans about "Uncle Billy" Sherman. Schoolroom texts, newspaper work, ad-writing failed to dampen his curiosity. Three and one-half years ago he set to in earnest: interviewed Sherman relatives, tracked Sherman's movements, read masses of unpublished letters. His readable, scholarly biography is the December choice of the Book-of-the-Month Club. Author Lewis, now dramatic critic of the Chicago Daily News, has also written Myths after Lincoln, Chicago: A History of Its Reputation (with Henry Justin Smith).

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