This edition includes a modern introduction and a list of suggested further reading.
General William Tecumseh Sherman stands out as a master of maneuver warfare. In a bloody Civil War chiefly remembered for battles in which each side tried too often to simply pummel the other into submission by sheer weight of numbers and volume of fire, Sherman tried to keep casualties low, both among his own troops and, perhaps equally significant, among those of his Confederate enemy. Sherman, known for his quote, ‘War is hell, ‘ explains in this account of his life how a man of compassion came to embrace a brutal and inhumane approach to war, one that has been the mark of every major conflict since his time.
About the author
William Tecumseh Sherman was born on May 8, 1820, in Lancaster, Ohio, the son of one of the state’s Supreme Court justices. Sherman was later adopted and raised by a wealthy friend of his father’s, Thomas Ewing, Sr., a U.S. senator. Sherman entered West Point Military Academy, where he had a reputation as an honorable individual with a forceful and high-spirited personality who took his studies seriously. He emerged from the Civil War as one of its greatest heroes, if you were a Union supporter, and perhaps its greatest villain to those who had fought and sacrificed for the South.