Sherman’s Acadiana Connection
Tecumseh Sherman was born February 8, 1820, in Lancaster, Ohio. His father Charles Robert Sherman, a successful lawyer who sat on the Ohio Supreme Court, named him after a famous Shawnee leader Tecumseh. Judge Sherman died unexpectedly in 1829, and left his widow, Mary Hoyt Sherman, with eleven children and no inheritance. Subsequently, a Lancaster family friend and neighbor Thomas Ewing who was a lawyer and a senator from Ohio raised nine-year old Sherman.
The Sherman family was Episcopalian, but the young Sherman was never baptized. His foster parents were devout Catholics and Mrs. Ewing insisted that a Catholic priest baptize Tecumseh. A Dominican friar picked the baptismal name William because the event took place on June 25th, the feast day of Saint William.
Sherman was never a churchgoer and he never used the name William in private life, his friends and family called him “Cump.”
Senator Ewing secured an appointment for the sixteen-year-old Sherman as a Cadet in the U.S. Military Academy at West Point. Sherman did not consider himself, as being a good soldier, for at no time was he selected as an officer, but remained as a private throughout the entire four years.
Upon graduating in 1840, Sherman entered the Army as a second Lieutenant. Many of Sherman’s colleagues saw action in the Mexican-American War, Sherman performed administrative duties in the newly captured territory of California. In 1850 Sherman was promoted to the rank of Captain but the lack of a combat assignment discouraged Sherman and he later resigned his commission.
Sherman married Senator Thomas Ewing’s daughter, Eleanor Boyle Ewing. Together they had eight children. Sherman’s great and lasting displeasure, was when his fourth child and second son, Thomas Ewing Sherman, became a Jesuit priest in 1879, and an ordain priest in 1889.
In 1859, Sherman accepted a job as the first superintendent of Louisiana State Seminary of Learning & Military Academy in Pineville, Louisiana; later it became Louisiana State University (LSU.) After hearing of South Carolina’s secession from the United States, Sherman nearly perfectly described the four years of war to come.
In January 1861 just before the outbreak of the Civil War, Sherman resigned his position and returned to the north. Washington, D.C. called and offered Sherman a commission as a colonel in the 13th U.S. Infantry regiment.
He distinguished himself at the first Battle of Bull Run; and he was one of a few high-ranking officers in the Civil War who had not fought in Mexico during the Mexican-American War.
Sherman was wounded twice, in the hand and shoulder; and had three horses shot out from under him. One of Sherman’s greatest contributions to the Union cause came on September 2, 1864, with the capture of Atlanta. Sherman ordered all civilians to leave the city; and then he ordered all military and government buildings burned.
Sherman marched to the sea burning and destroying property; and by his own estimation, caused over $100 million in property damages. Sherman’s scorched earth strategy of total warfare, endorsed by General Grant and President Lincoln, has been the subject of much controversy. Sherman did obtain his goal of undermining morale and paralyzing the will of the enemy to fight.
When Grant became president in 1869, Sherman was appointed Commanding General of the United States Army. In his campaigns to protect the construction and operation of the railroads from attack by Indians, Sherman repeated his Civil War strategy by not only seeking to defeat the enemy, but also to destroy the resources including the decimation of the buffalo, which were their primary source of food.
On February 8, 1884, Sherman retired from the army and lived in New York City. Sherman was proposed as a Republican candidate for the presidency, but he declined emphatically saying, “If drafted, I will not run; if nominated, I will not accept; if elected, I will not serve.”
Sherman died in New York City on February 19,1891, he was seventy-one years old. His body was transported to St. Louis where his son, Thomas Ewing Sherman, a Jesuit priest, presided over his father’s funeral mass.
Sherman’s son, Father Thomas, the Jesuit priest, later served as an army chaplain during the Spanish American War of 1898; and later died on April 29, 1933, he was seventy-six years old. He is buried next to the Confederate Vice President Alexander Stephens’ nephew, Father John Salter, in the Jesuit cemetery at Grand Coteau, Louisiana. And now you know Sherman’s Acadiana connection.
Non-fiction
William J. Thibodeaux
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