This volume presents the text of the corrected, expanded, and slightly revised version of the Memoirs of General William T. Sherman, published by D. Appleton and Company in 1886.
Sherman began to write his memoirs at least as early as 1873 but feared they would be too controversial for publication. He finally decided to go ahead with the project and on January 23, 1875, wrote his brother, Senator John Sherman, about his decision: “You will be surprised and maybe alarmed, that I have at last agreed to publish in book form my Memoirs of a period from 1846–65, in two volumes. . . . I have carefully eliminated everything calculated to raise controversy, except where sustained by documents embraced in the work itself, and then only with minor parties.” He was encouraged to do so, he said, by the reaction of the few people to whom he had earlier shown the manuscript, one of whom was “emphatic that it ought to be published in the interest of history.”
He had first discussed publication with Robert Clarke & Company but then made arrangements with William Appleton, who came to St. Louis to meet with him. The completed manuscript was in the publisher’s office in New York by March 1875, and the Memoirs of General William T. Sherman. By Himself was published in two volumes in May 1875 by D. Appleton and Company. According to what Sherman later told U. S. Grant, who passed it on to Samuel L. Clemens (Mark Twain), 25,000 sets were sold at $7 a set, for which Sherman was paid $25,000.
The Memoirs proved to be very controversial, and Sherman received numerous letters, ranging from praise to demands for extensive revisions. After consulting with friends and family, he decided that, though he would correct factual errors in future printings, he would not actually revise the work. Instead, he announced his intention to bring out a “second edition” that would include an appendix of letters in which other people would have the opportunity to give their own versions of the events he described. A few corrections were made in the cheaper one-volume version brought out by Appleton the next year. Sherman collected material for the “second edition” but did not work on it until after his retirement from the army in 1884. To the 1875 printing he added a second preface, two new chapters, one at the beginning and the other at the end, an appendix to volume I, two appendixes to volume II, and an index. Sherman corrected further factual errors and made a few revisions. Portraits were also added, as well as maps that had been unavailable at the time of the 1875 printing. By the spring of 1885 his work was completed, but he asked D. Appleton and Company to delay publication until after the Personal Memoirs of U. S. Grant was published in 1885–86. The expanded, corrected, and slightly revised version of the 1875 printing was published by D. Appleton and Company in New York as the Memoirs of General William T. Sherman, “Second edition, revised and corrected, in two volumes,” in 1886. Sherman made no further corrections or revisions, and though later versions were issued containing additional conclusions and tributes, and are described on the title pages as “third edition,” or “fourth edition,” all of them are printed from the same plates as the 1886 version, or from the original uncorrected 1875 printing, as in the case of the 1891 Appleton version, which appeared after Sherman had transferred the publication rights in 1890 to Clemens’s publishing firm, Charles L. Webster & Company.
Aside from the supplemental material, almost all of the fifty or so differences between the 1875 and 1886 versions of the Memoirs are corrections of fact, such as the change from “Louis Philippe of France” to “the King of Sicily,” at 39.36; or “1849” to “1850” at 88.2 (made in the 1876 printing); or “Taos, New Mexico” to “Santa Fé, New Mexico” at 111.38 (made in the 1876 printing). Some corrections were made in spelling, such as the change of “Quimby” to “Quinby” at 197.22 and elsewhere. Others supply omissions; for example, in 1875 Sherman spoke of “Marshall and his family” but was informed that the family really belonged to “Mr. Wimmer,” and so he revised the passage at 73.34–35 to read “Marshall and the family of Mr. Wimmer.” Other passages where “Mr. Wimmer” was added are at 74.35–36 and 77.31–32. Two omissions of General Force were corrected: at 547.30–31, “because General Leggett’s division had carried” was changed to “which Leggett’s and Force’s divisions had carried”; and at 736.32–33, “Nevertheless, a division (Mower’s) of the Seventeenth Corps was kept” became “Nevertheless, Force’s and Mower’s divisions of the Seventeenth Corps were kept” in the 1886 version. The omission of the command of Major-General Pope in 1875 at 239.38–240.8 and 241.9–10 was corrected in the first case by revision of the passage (see notes to this volume), and in the second case by adding a line to the page. Other changes involved correcting the names of persons involved in a particular event; for example, at 513.18, 529.14, and 529.37, “Ward” was changed to “Williams,” and at 629.20, “Corse” was changed to “Cox.” In a few instances, Sherman made his wording less abrasive: for example, at 73.23, “Sutter was very ‘tight,’ ” was changed to “Sutter was enthusiastic”; at 500.20, in a description of McPherson, the word “timid” was changed to “cautious”; and at 716.14, “assented to these false publications” was changed to “assented to these publications.” (For a few more extensive revisions of this kind see the notes to this volume at 232.38–41 and 560.9–17 and 23–24.) Because this version is the last one that Sherman himself prepared, the 1886 D. Appleton and Company text of the Memoirs of General William T. Sherman is printed here.
This volume presents the text of the 1886 printing but does not attempt to reproduce features of its typographic design. The text, including the index, is printed without alteration except for the correction of typographical errors and the change of page numbers to conform to this edition. Spelling, punctuation, and capitalization are often expressive features, and they are not altered, even when inconsistent or irregular. The following is a list of typographical errors corrected, cited by page and line number: 47.10, chile; 123.28, Francisco;; 127.12, house which,; 172.2, al/although; 181.12, 1860; 198.22, forward; 200.3, Quinby’s; 201.18–19, Quinby,s; 376.8, Resecrans’s; 886.1, shirmish-line; 886.5, breach-loading; 1079.26B, Johnson. Errors corrected third printing: 718.42, project (LOA); 719.19, Seveneenth (LOA). Errors corrected fifth printing: 846.7–8, accompanied General (LOA); 1072.7b, Tennessee.