The Personal Website of Mark W. Dawson

General William Tecumseh Sherman

In the book The Soul of Battle: From Ancient Times to the Present Day, How Three Great Liberators Vanquished Tyranny by Victor Davis Hanson, he defines great military leadership as the ability to lead and inspire the troops under them to a noble cause for the wars they fought. Most often, this noble cause is for the freedom of oppressed persons under the enemy’s control. A great military leader also fights with the concern of their soldier’s safety and minimization of casualties while attempting to expeditiously end the war and achieve their noble cause.

William Tecumseh Sherman was one of those generals.

Some would argue that General Robert E. Lee was the greatest general of the Civil War, but General Lee had a great flaw that disfavors him from consideration. This flaw was the cause for which he fought. Southern apologists often respond that he led for a ‘Great and Lost Cause’ and the ‘Way of Life’ of the southern people. But this ‘Great and Lost Cause’ and ‘Way of Life’ were built on a foundation of evil and oligarchic rule - the evil of slavery and the oligarchic rule of plantation owners, which negates him from consideration of greatness. The Lost Cause of the Confederacy (or simply Lost Cause) is an American pseudohistorical negationist mythology that claims the cause of the Confederate States during the American Civil War was just, heroic, and not centered on slavery. It has continued to influence racism, gender roles, and religious attitudes in the South to the present day. And it is just as wrong today as when it was first advanced around the turn of the 20th century.

Others would argue that General Ulysses S. Grant was the greatest general of the Civil War. However, General Grant had two distinct periods of his generalship in the Civil War, when he commanded the Union Armies of the West and when he commanded the Union Armies of the East. His greatness was when he commanded the Union Armies of the West. Regrettably, due to the circumstances of politics, bureaucratic and administrative interference, other subordinate commanders’ adherence to conventional military strategy and techniques, along with the caliber and fighting spirit of the troops under his command, and resistance to Grant’s manner of leadership, he was less great when he commanded the Union Armies of the East. His greatness when he commanded the Union Armies of the East was his tenacity in pursuing, fighting, and defeating General Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia, the Confederacy's most powerful army.

General Sherman, however, was great from the time of the First Battle of Bull Run on July 21, 186, until the surrender of the Confederacy on April 9, 1865, and the disbandment of the Army of the West several weeks later.