“Fierce Patriot: The Tangled Lives of William Tecumseh Sherman”, by Robert L. O’Connell

 

432 pages, Random House, ISBN-13: 978-0812982121

Way back in the long long ago (that would be September 28^th, 2016), I reviewed American General: The Life and Times of William Tecumseh Sherman by John S. D. Eisenhower and found it lacking, which prompted me to seek out a better biography of my favorite Civil War general and, lads, I was successful. Fierce Patriot: The Tangled Lives of William Tecumseh Sherman by Robert L. O’Connell is a conversational work that argues that the best way to understand old Cump is to follow him as he traverses three different paths. The First path is that of Sherman the grand strategist of Manifest Destiny and of the generation that saw the United States expand from Atlantic to Pacific. The Second path focuses on Sherman the general and the army he built and used in the west to bring an end to the Civil War. The Third path focuses on Sherman the (very flawed) man and examines his personal life, from his family upbringing and the impact it had on him and his relationships with his wife (and mistresses) and his children through his post-war years and ultimate retirement.

As to why Sherman is my favorite general in Blue, perhaps it is because he has never received a fraction of the attention the Big Three of the Civil War have warranted (y’know, Grant, Lee and Lincoln). While it is hard to get angry at the attention these Belles of the Ball have received – they were the men in charge, after all – they didn’t do everything by themselves. Perhaps it is because he was not as flamboyant as his Southern counterparts? Perhaps it is because for most of the war he operated in lesser-known theaters than the legendary Army of the Potomac and the Army of Northern Virginia? Perhaps it is because that is just how he wanted it: after all, war is hell. But as O’Connell so ably describes, Sherman was the ideal wingman to the more volatile Grant; not that there was no lack of volatility in Sherman; he just did a better job of keeping it in check, and was more than willing to play second fiddle in Lincoln’s orchestra.

But it’s still is a shame, for Sherman was a highly complex, fascinating figure and, it is safe to say, this most brutal of all of America’s wars would have dragged on substantially longer without Sherman’s unglamorous and uncompromising generalship. When given free reign with his own command, Sherman instituted a number of tactical and strategic reforms, unique to his time, that are still studied in military academies. His men loved their “Uncle Billy” as he preferred to maneuver and outflank his opponents to suicidal frontal assaults (starting with the horrors of Shiloh, Sherman had witnessed enough carnage and futility to form his own distinctive command techniques that did not involve useless sacrifice).

But it is in the area of grand strategy that Sherman made the greatest impact. A civil war is just that, a war of one population against another and, in order to win such a war, one population must have war made against it so that their army in the field can be at last defeated. This is what Sherman knew in his very bones, and it is the way in which war has been waged ever since. Fierce Patriot shows Sherman for what he was, warts and all, which is all one can ask of a biography.