William Tecumseh Sherman Biography

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William Tecumseh Sherman was born February 8, 1820 in New Lancaster (present-day Lancaster), Ohio. He was the sixth child of attorney Charles Robert Sherman and Mary Hoyt Sherman. They had five more children after him. The name Tecumseh (Shooting Star) comes from the Shawnee Leader who had been killed in the Battle of Thames in 1813. In 1823, William’s father was elected to the legislature to the Supreme Court of Ohio. (Royster, page 1084) In 1829, at age 9, Sherman was baptized by a Roman Catholic priest, and William is added to his name. (Royster, page 1085) Sherman’s father died suddenly, of Typhoid Fever, when William was only nine years old. The death of his father left William’s family with few finances. A family friend, Thomas Ewing, a senator from Ohio and prominent member of the Whig Party, raised him. Thomas told William that he should prepare to enter …show more content…
(Foster. General William Tecumseh Sherman. July 11, 2007. April 8th, 2015. < http://www.historynet.com/general-william-tecumseh-sherman>.) For weeks, he and his army nearly vanished from the War Department’s outlook. Cutting loose from his supply lines, he had his men live off the land, capturing food and mounts from the local populations as they passed. He continued his plan of destroying all military facilities in his path, along with all commercial targets that could be used for military uses. Railroad ties were pulled out of the ground, heated over fires to make them flexible, and then twisted around tree trunks as "Sherman Neckties" to insure the tracks could not be fixed. On December 21, 1864, his troops took Savannah from the Confederates, and Sherman sent out a message offering the city of Savannah to Lincoln as a Christmas present. (Foster. General William Tecumseh Sherman. July 11, 2007. April 8th, 2015. <
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