“The Civil War in Kentucky” is a 10-part series recently published in my Journey Log entitled “Surrounding Fort Knox, including Southern Indiana.” It deals primarily with the Central Kentucky Theater. I present it here as a series of individual blogs for my readers. Links to the previously published chapters will be provided at the end of each blog. Look for them on each Saturday morning! (A link to the book and its Table of Contents is found here.)
Chapter 3: William Tecumseh Sherman in Kentucky
Sherman did not come up through the ranks of American warriors demonstrating leadership capabilities and savage courage in the Mexican War. Yet, many of his West Point colleagues would become Generals fighting each other in the later Civil War, having been well trained in killing during that earlier Mexican one. But even though Sherman graduated high in his class, he didn’t serve down there. Why not? Politics, I think.
Sherman’s route to military fame began without note in California, where he worked with General Stephen Kearney and dabbled in the Gold Rush business. He got to know Kit Carson, who was born in Kentucky outside of Richmond. And when Sherman reached Louisville at the beginning of the Civil War, his anxieties would result in him being relieved of command in Kentucky. How did that happen?
In the late months of 1861, Sherman suffered what we today might call a “nervous breakdown.” Yet he would be brought back to fight with Ulysses S. Grant at Shiloh, take Atlanta, and crush the South in his “March to the Sea.”
There is a daguerreotype photograph, often printed to describe Sherman. It is not flattering. Even if he was not as tall and handsome as Kentucky’s Union General Lovell Rousseau, or as dashing in the saddle as Confederate Cavalryman John Hunt Morgan, photographer Matthew Brady could have done better when he took the image in 1865. Photographic malpractice, I think.
Sherman entered into American Military History through political access and ability. His 1836 appointment to the United States Military Academy in West Point was facilitated by his foster father, Whig Senator Thomas Ewing, Sr. of Ohio. Sherman was only 16 years of age.
He would later marry Ewing’s daughter, Eleanor, in an 1850 ceremony attended by President Zachary Taylor, his Cabinet, Henry Clay, Daniel Webster, and Justices of the Supreme Court. Sherman was 30 years of age, and his wife, 25. His brother, John Sherman, would become a Republican Senator from Ohio, sent to Congress from 1861 through 1897 [he authored the Sherman Anti-trust Act]. So, what happened to Sherman when he was in Kentucky in 1861 was nationally newsworthy. And the press exploited those interests beyond what the difficulties of a single individual might have otherwise required.
Here is the story.
In April 1861, the Civil War began when South Carolina bombarded Union forces on the Charleston Harbor island of Fort Sumter. Major Robert Anderson commanded the Fort’s Union Defenders, achieving immortality as a symbol of Union resistance. He was a Veteran of the Mexican Wars, having also served in the earlier Indian Wars in Florida. That’s where he first met Sherman after he graduated from West Point.
Anderson was promoted to Brigadier General in May of 1861 and was immediately assigned to the defense of Kentucky as Commander of the Union Department of the Cumberland. Having been born in Louisville, it was an additional reward for his service to return this native son to the defense of his home community.
William Tecumseh Sherman had left the Union Army in 1853. After bouncing around in poorly performing business ventures, the beginning of the Civil War found him in the South, having become the first Superintendent of the “Louisiana State Seminary of Learning & Military Academy” [the predecessor of Louisiana State University]. Sherman was generally ambivalent about the issue of slavery, but he was ardently opposed to national “disunion.” When, in 1861, Louisiana seceded, Sherman resigned and returned to Ohio.
By July 1861, Sherman had been recalled, promoted to Colonel, and was in command of a regiment of volunteers fighting in the first Battle of Bull Run in Virginia [the Battle of First Manassas]. Sherman distinguished himself [even as he worried about his own judgement and leadership in retreat] and impressed President Lincoln, who, after a July 23, 1861 visit, promoted Sherman to Brigadier General. He was immediately transferred to the Department of the Cumberland as General Anderson’s Second in Command. It would become an inauspicious start for the man whom the great 20th Century military historian H. Liddell Hart called, “the first modern General,” and “the most original genius of the American Civil War.”
Sherman arrived in Louisville on September 17, 1861. He was dressed in civilian attire, including a stovepipe hat. He was immediately called into action. Confederates had just burned down the L & N Railroad Bridge over the Rolling Fork River just south of Lebanon Junction in Bullitt County. The war was riding up the road and rail right into Louisville!
The Courier Journal described Sherman as “being seen everywhere, and seeing everything.” “A tall, spare man … with a commanding appearance … rather gruff in his manners and answers. … His mind is visibly absorbed in his duties.” Maybe Matthew Brady’s photograph was accurate after all! Here is artist Nathan Milliner’s rendering of the man.
About three weeks later, on October 8, 1861, General Anderson gave up his position, citing the pressure and stress affecting his health. Sherman was suddenly elevated to Commander of the Department of the Cumberland. It was a position that he didn’t want, maybe even feared. In fact, when first appointed, Lincoln [remember his family’s political connections] promised him that he would remain “Second in Command.” Sherman did not want the “first chair.” He was not ready to assume complete control. Too much responsibility. He would later find his first chair leader in General Ulysses S. Grant!
All of this change happened, from Superintendent in Louisiana, to the first Battle of Bull Run, to Generalship, and now in Command of all of Kentucky, within one year. And Sherman was facing what the South thought was its most able General, Albert Sidney Johnston, whose Army had now invaded Southern Kentucky!
Sherman, in his memoirs, stated that General Anderson told him, “he could not stand the mental torture of his command any longer, and that he must go away, or it would kill him.” Shades of things to come for Sherman himself!
As was his nature, Sherman became completely engaged. He immediately crossed the Ohio River to Clarksville, where soon-to-be Union General Lovell Rousseau was training Union troops at Camp Joe Holt [named for Union General Joseph Holt of Breckinridge County]. These were the troops he led down to Lebanon Junction. Sherman then set up blockhouses to protect railroad bridges and trestles on Muldraugh Hill.
Then Sherman sent Union General Rousseau farther forward to establish Camp Nevin adjacent to the L & N Railroad Bridge over the Nolin River south of Elizabethtown. The Nolin River would be a line of defense. Establishing a base of operations at West Point, Sherman would establish Fort Duffield on a knob overlooking the mouth of the Salt River at its junction with the Ohio River. More importantly, this Fort commanded the route of the Louisville and Nashville Turnpike, and access to Louisville.
Sherman became obsessed with his lack of sufficient forces to protect Kentucky from what he imagined was gathering to oppose him. Confederate General Albert Sidney Johnston was fully ensconced behind newly erected fortifications in Bowling Green. And Confederate General Simon Bolivar Buckner was in Munfordville on the Green River controlling both the Turnpike and L & N Railroad Bridge crossing there. He was in position to quickly bring a Southern Army up to attack Louisville.
Sherman began protesting his lack of men and resources to his superiors. He said he immediately needed 60,000 troops, eventually articulating a force of 200,000 men necessary to defend Kentucky. He was convinced that Buckner could, and would, soon storm over Muldraugh Hill, overpower his meager troops, and take Louisville. His anxious complaints culminated in a Council of War at the Galt House in Louisville held on October 16, 1861.
In attendance was Lincoln’s first Secretary of War, Simon Cameron, and Kentucky politician and President of the Louisville and Nashville Railroad, James Guthrie [Lincoln had once offered the position of Secretary of War to Guthrie]. In addition, a reporter from the New York Tribune Newspaper was present. Thus began the airing out of Sherman’s anxieties in the press.
As Sherman put it in his memoirs, “… my attention was drawn to the publication in all of the eastern papers, which of course was copied at the west that I was ‘crazy, insane, and mad.’” It is worthy to note that the brother of Secretary of War Cameron died in the first Battle of Bull Run. His Commanding Officer? William Tecumseh Sherman. The meeting did not go well.
Sherman asked to be relieved of command. In the middle of November 1861, he was replaced by General Don Carlos Buell. Sherman was ordered to report to Major General Halleck, commanding the Department of the Missouri based in St. Louis. Halleck would also relieve Sherman from command using these words, “I am satisfied that General Sherman’s physical and mental system is so completely broken by labor and care as to render him, for the present, unfit for duty; perhaps a few weeks rest will restore him.”
Sherman’s wife was aware of a history of mental illness in his family. And his commanding officers and detractors often described him as “insane” during this time. Yet Sherman would return, and Halleck, perhaps in consideration of Sherman’s supporters in high political positions, advanced him further.
Sherman was assigned to Paducah in logistic support of Grant’s attack on Fort Donelson on the Cumberland River. In March of 1862, he was made Commander of the 5th Division of the Union Army of West Tennessee. He was with Grant deep in Southern territory, when they were surprised by Confederate General Albert Sidney Johnston on the first day of the Battle of Shiloh. On Grant’s right flank, Sherman’s men fought hard, maintaining order in retreat. The next day, Grant, fresh with reinforcements, drove the Confederates back.
The nation had never seen such carnage. Facing criticism that Grant was not properly prepared, Halleck assumed command and demoted Grant to Second in Command. Grant decided not to resign, perhaps convinced to remain after a meeting with Sherman. His opponents argued to President Lincoln to dismiss Grant in the face of such loss of life. Lincoln’s response? “No, I cannot do it. I cannot lose this man. He fights.” Both Lincoln and Sherman had found their Commander!
I need not delve here into the sometimes-perceived romance of war, because war is so terrible and the Civil War so much so. But that does not mean that we should not understand the history of the men and women on both sides of the conflict. Many gave everything they had, including their lives and reputations.
Here in Kentucky began the relationship between two men who arguably ended that great American Civil War. The early Civil War story of Brig. Gen. William Tecumseh Sherman and Major Gen. Ulysses S. Grant, which began in Kentucky, is often ignored or forgotten. Who they were, how they acted, and how they responded to challenges presented, reflects on the nature of these two men and the tragic opportunities presented by war.
In July of 1862, three months after the Battle of Shiloh, Lincoln made Halleck General-In-Charge of all of the Union Armies and brought him back to Washington. Grant took charge of two of the Western Armies and Sherman was made a Major General. Together they then marched into history!
Previous Chapters
Chapter 1: The History of the Civil War in Kentucky
Chapter 2: Surrounding Sherman and Grant
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