William Tecumseh Sherman
From Philosopedia
Sherman, William Tecumseh [Union General] (8 February 1820 - 14 February 1891)
Sherman was a Union general in the American Civil War.
A banker in San Francisco and New York and a lawyer in Leavenworth, Kansas, he became superintendent of what today is Louisiana State University at Baton Rouge. When Louisiana seceded, he resigned the university post, rejoined the U. S. Army as a colonel, and commanded a brigade in the first battle of Bull Run. He distinguished himself in the Vicksburg and Chattanooga campaigns and took Atlanta in 1864, burning the city. After capturing Savannah, he wreaked havoc through South Carolina and received the surrender of General J. E. Johnston in 1865.
Sherman’s statement that “war is hell” expressed his belief in the need for ruthlessness in modern warfare. He “did not believe that God was molding events in response to human petition, conduct, or spiritual state,” stated Charles Royster in The Destructive War: W. T. Sherman, Stonewall Jackson, and the Americans (1991). He cites David F. Boyd as recalling that Sherman’s
- only peculiarity about religion was that he was such an advocate for individual religious freedom, that he thought it wrong ever to attempt to influence any one’s religious convictions. I have often heard him about this: if I could I would not change the religion of a Hottentot or Feejee Islander, etc. etc.
Sherman was married for almost forty years to a devout Roman Catholic, and, although their children were reared as Catholics, Sherman joined no church. “He regarded organized religion as a human invention and dismissed the doctrines of the Trinity and of transubstantiation as ‘mathematical impossibilities.’ He prefaced mention of the immortality of the soul with the word ‘if.’ Sherman,” Boyd continued, “did not oppose belief or the practice of Christianity. Chaplains accompanied his army, and revival meetings among soldiers went on during the George and Carolina campaigns.” When religious ministers sought permission to ride the railroad to the front lines, Sherman responded, “Certainly not; crackers and oats are more necessary to my army than any moral or religious agency.”
According to Royster,
- To Sherman war was a natural phenomenon, guided by nature’s laws, which God had created but which operated with the consistency of mathematics, not by God’s ‘mere fiat.’ As for an afterlife, Sherman remained an agnostic. Royster added that Sherman “mistrusted metaphysics, philosophy, and religious or ethical systems that tried to change what he took to be human nature.
Stanley P. Hirshorn, in The White Tecumseh: A Biography of General William T. Sherman (1997), claimed that - although Sherman reportedly had been baptized once by a Catholic priest and also by a Presbyterian minister - Sherman did not adhere to any religion [pp. 387-388]. Thomas C. Fletcher, in Life and Reminiscences of General Wm. T. Sherman by Distinguished Men of His Time (1891) reports that Sherman's son Thomas, a Catholic priest, claimed, ""My father was baptized in the Catholic Church, married in the Catholic Church, and attended the Catholic Church until the outbreak of the civil war. Since that time he has not been a communicant of any church . . . ."
Sherman died in New York City, where at his home a funeral service was held, followed by a military procession. His body was transported to St. Louis, where his son Thomas Ewing Sherman, a Jesuit priest, presided over his father's funeral mass.
The New York Times obituary mentioned that Sherman died while surrounded by all the members of his family except his eldest son, Tom. The general had been ill and his death was not unexpected.
