Chapter Fourteen Sherman welcomed the Kentucky assignment. The Bluegrass State lay in the great strategic-logistic center of the war. Whichever power “controls the Ohio and the Mississippi will ultimately control this continent,” Sherman wrote in a letter to Secretary of the Treasury Chase, on October 14, 1861. He had expressed the same conviction, in nearly identical words, to his brother John, as mentioned earlier. In fact, he stated this viewpoint many times, to various people. Any realistic military assessment of the war in the western theater would inevitably involve “the physical geography of the country.” The Mississippi River, he declared, was “too grand an element to be divided, and all its extent [including the major tributaries] must of necessity be under one government.” Sherman even apologized to his Louisianan friend Professor David Boyd for again stating the foregoing, “which we have said . . . a thousand times.” Because he expected that the Mississippi River would become “the grand field” of Union offensive operations, Sherman realized that Kentucky and Tennessee, united by rivers and railroads, as well as centrally located, were crucial to mounting a victorious campaign against the heart of the Confederacy. Above all, Kentucky was the key to Federal success in the western theater.1
Abraham Lincoln, soon after the conflict began, wrote, “I think to lose Kentucky is nearly the same as to lose the whole game.” Sherman would have agreed. Elaborating on the issue, Lincoln said, “Kentucky gone, we can not hold Missouri, nor, as I think, Maryland. These all against us, and the job on our hands is too large for us. We would as well consent to separation at once, including the surrender of [Washington, D.C.].” Lincoln probably was right about the decisive impact if those three slave states had joined the Confederacy. One historian has calculated that Kentucky, Missouri and Maryland “would have added 45 percent to the white population and military manpower of the Confederacy, 80 percent to its manufacturing capacity, and nearly 40 percent to its supply of horses and mules.” Those three states would also have contributed 120,360 more square miles to the Confederacy. Already the eleven states that seceded from the Union constituted some 726,721 square miles, an immense area considerably larger than all sixteen of the eastern and midwestern free states, which totaled 541,305 square miles. The sheer size of the Confederacy, when one thought about trying to subdue the region, had to give any sensible person pause—all the more if every slave state joined the new nation.2
Back in December 1860, Sherman advised his brother John, “twould be folly to coerce” in the event that all fifteen slave states seceded. “The only feasible plan,” he wrote, “would be to make a compact confederacy of states that have common binding self interests to hold them together.” Fortunately for the preservation of the Union, Kentucky, Missouri and Maryland remained loyal to the United States. So too did tiny Delaware; but composed of only three counties—two at high tide, according to the witticism—and consisting of less than 2,000 square miles, while located on the eastern periphery of the nation, that state was neither large enough nor in a position to be of much consequence. What a dramatic contrast was Kentucky—the most crucial of the border slave states for both the Union and the Confederacy.3
This was not because of the Bluegrass State’s sizable population and territory, its numerous resources or its many ancestral ties with Virginia, which fostered “Southern” attachments and sympathies. While all of the above contributed to Kentucky’s significance, the crux of the matter was the state’s strategic location. One need only study a map and examine the course of the rivers and railroads, to understand the importance of Kentucky in the Civil War. Unlike any other war in American history, the Civil War was going to be fought along the rivers and the railroads. If the United States controlled Kentucky, it possessed the principal avenues, both waterways and railways, for invading and waging war against the heart of the vast western Confederacy. To lose Kentucky might not have been “to lose the whole game,” but it would have made winning “the game” much more difficult.
For nearly five hundred miles, the Ohio River meanders along the northern border of Kentucky, winding westward toward its confluence with the Mississippi. Shortly before meeting the Mississippi, the Ohio is joined by two of its major tributaries from the south, the Cumberland and the Tennessee. The Cumberland River, in the hands of the Union, provided a route into the center of Tennessee at Nashville; the Tennessee River, broad and deep, penetrated across the Volunteer State to northern Alabama; while the great Mississippi, of course, pierced the Confederacy all the way to the vital port of New Orleans and on to the Gulf.
Nor was the steam-powered, smoke-belching Iron Horse a matter of small import when analyzing Kentucky’s significance. From the major marshaling point of Louisville on the Ohio, the Louisville & Nashville Railroad was an obvious line of advance straight into the Confederacy at Tennessee’s capital city. From Nashville, rail connections continued south to northern Alabama at Decatur, and southeast to Stevenson, Alabama, and on to Chattanooga, Tennessee, with all three towns located on the strategic, east–west running, Memphis & Charleston line—in other words, directly into the central South. Also, from Columbus, Kentucky, on the Mississippi River, the Mobile & Ohio rails extended south through Jackson, Tennessee, to a junction with the Memphis & Charleston at Corinth, Mississippi, and from thence ran most of the length of the Magnolia State before reaching a terminus at Mobile, Alabama. Not to be overlooked was the Memphis, Clarksville & Louisville Railroad, providing a link from Bowling Green, Kentucky, through west Tennessee to the Mississippi River at Memphis.
From a Confederate perspective, Kentucky was equally significant. If the Rebels could control the Bluegrass State, they would possess an innate defensive barrier at the Ohio River. The advantages of such a position can scarcely be overstated. “A Confederate Kentucky,” wrote historian James Rawley, “would have thrown the southern frontier to the Ohio [River], fronting on the southern portions of Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois—where 2,600,000 persons had a sentimental attachment to the South. . . . Kentucky’s northern river boundary could afford a natural military frontier for the southern armies.” The Confederates could then effectively blockade the Ohio River and, even more important, deny to the United States—whose military forces had to take the offensive, had to invade and conquer the Confederacy if they hoped to save the Union—any adequate military base, or feasible avenue of invasion. From the Appalachian Mountains in the east to the Mississippi in the west, the Federal armies would be stymied. For all these reasons the United States badly needed to possess Kentucky. The Rebels, then, conversely, would have no good way of saving the long and narrow state of Tennessee or the Mississippi River, or of stopping an invasion of the Deep South.4
Kentucky’s situation, with both the United States and the Confederacy desiring control, was highly precarious and volatile. No border state was more deeply divided and ambivalent in her sympathies. Kentucky was supportive of slavery and enjoyed close ties with the South, yet she was strongly devoted to the Union and nourished a proud tradition of compromise—both of the latter personified by the late, legendary Henry Clay. Obviously, too, Kentuckians did not relish the prospect of their state’s becoming a battleground.
Consequently, Kentucky tried to stay out of the war, and on May 20 issued a proclamation of neutrality. “In the long run,” observed Bruce Catton, “this policy was bound to fail.” Another writer termed the neutrality stand “preposterous.” Perhaps neutrality was absurd, but from Kentucky’s perspective it was also understandable; and initially the United States, as well as the Confederacy, respected her stand. Neither side wanted to commit any act that might push the state into the camp of the enemy. In the meantime, both sides prepared for, as they believed, the inevitable day when Kentucky’s neutrality would come to an end.5
Kentucky recruits for the Union were gathered north of the Ohio River near Cincinnati, while Kentuckians favoring the Confederacy were being marshaled at a camp south of the Kentucky–Tennessee state line, near the Cumberland River. Within the state, the Kentucky State Guard (militia) was known to be pro-Confederate. Thus Kentucky Unionists soon formed their own militia, calling it the Home Guard. Men favoring the United States were greatly encouraged when the summer elections placed a clear majority of Unionists in both the U.S. Congress and the Kentucky state legislature. All the while the situation in western Kentucky, because of the vital rivers, grew more tense. If the Kentucky legislature declared for the Union, military force appeared to be essential to back up the decision.6
BY SEPTEMBER 1, Robert Anderson, George Thomas and Sherman had arrived in Cincinnati, where Sherman said “several prominent gentlemen of Kentucky [among them Joshua Speed, one of Lincoln’s longtime, closest friends] met us to discuss the situation.” The Kentucky state legislature was in session at Frankfort, and expected to take action in favor of the Union as soon as Anderson, a native Kentuckian, commanded a military force strong enough to ensure success against any Rebel challenges—which were widely anticipated. Anderson knew that somehow he had to get more troops. Before he and Thomas headed on to Louisville, where department headquarters would be established, Anderson sent Sherman to Indianapolis, Indiana, and Springfield, Illinois, in quest of soldiers. Conferring with Governor Oliver P. Morton of Indiana, Sherman found him “willing in a general way to help Kentucky,” but all the new regiments, “as fast as they were mustered in,” were being dispatched either to McClellan’s army at Washington or Frémont’s command in Missouri. At the next meeting, with Governor Richard Yates at Springfield, “I found the same general activity and zeal [as in Indiana],” remembered Sherman, but the new Illinois regiments were promised to Frémont. Thus Sherman pushed on to St. Louis, hoping for assistance from the nationally famous Pathfinder of the West.7
Sherman found the 1856 Republican presidential nominee “surrounded by sentinels,” conducting himself as “a great potentate,” but “very communicative.” Sherman’s negative opinion of Frémont, formed when they met in California, grew stronger. He wrote Ellen that Frémont “has called about him men who will swindle the Government and bring disgrace on us all.” Sherman had known several of these people in California. He said they were “the very men” who were instigators of the Vigilance Committee in San Francisco. They were guilty of “open corruption” while in the Golden State, and Sherman declared they are “now the advisors of Frémont.”8
Returning to the Planters’ House, Sherman spied another California adventurer, “old Baron Steinberger,” whom he purposely avoided. His presence, Sherman wrote, “recalled the maxim, ‘where the vultures are, there is a carcass close by.’” Also, at the Planters’ House, Sherman learned of “another Californian, a Mormon, who had the contract for a line of redoubts which Frémont had ordered to be constructed around the city.” Profitable military contracts had drawn to St. Louis and Frémont, sarcastically commented Sherman, “some of the most enterprising men of California.” Later reflecting that “in a very short time, Frémont fell from his high estate in Missouri,” Sherman said he “suspected” the corruption of the Californians “can account for the fact.” He might also have noted Frémont’s Emancipation Proclamation in Missouri, which the President was forced to disavow when the Pathfinder arrogantly refused to retract his high-handed action. As for troops for Kentucky, Frémont was then totally focused on his own plans and problems. Eventually, he did order five regiments to Sherman.9
Sherman headed back east to Louisville, disappointed and displeased. “The great trouble,” he wrote Ellen, “is that secessionists know they must fight, [while] the Union People look to the United States as some mythical power with unlimited quantities of men and money.” If the nation could not, or would not, provide the essential men and armaments to fight for the vital state of Kentucky, he feared there was scant hope of saving the Union.
Nonetheless, major news was coming in from western Kentucky, and it was decidedly in favor of the United States. The Confederacy had brazenly violated Kentucky’s neutrality. General Leonidas Polk took it upon himself to seize the town of Columbus, strategically located on high bluffs above the Mississippi River. Confederate President Jefferson Davis, who apparently possessed more political sense and concern than Polk, at least in this instance, ordered Polk to withdraw the troops from Columbus. But the Episcopal bishop turned general boldly refused. The predictable result was that Kentucky’s aroused, Union-dominated legislature denounced the Rebel incursion and invited the United States to drive out the Confederates.10
Probably a Kentucky declaration for the Union would have occurred eventually anyway, but Polk’s unauthorized and politically unwise movement was not even of military value. He had advanced into Columbus because he knew those bluffs, if strongly fortified, could prevent any Federal gunboats or transports from descending the river. Fearing that the Union forces might take Columbus, Polk determined to strike first. Columbus, however, was worthless to the Rebels unless they seized Paducah as well. The Tennessee River flows into the Ohio at Paducah, and was an obvious waterway into the heart of the Confederacy.
If the Confederates possessed both Paducah and Columbus, they could block a Union advance on either the Mississippi or Tennessee. The mouth of the Tennessee at Paducah actually was the key for both sides. If U.S. forces controlled it, the military value of Columbus to the Confederacy was negated, because as soon as the Federals moved south on the Tennessee, Columbus would be outflanked. Advancing on the Tennessee, as events in coming months demonstrated, was just as good as going down the Mississippi. Polk had intended to take Paducah as well as Columbus, but he allowed the Union forces at Cairo, Illinois, under the then unknown U. S. Grant, to steal a march on him and occupy Paducah. Polk should never have seized Columbus unless he simultaneously moved into Paducah.11
“On the day I reached Louisville,” remembered Sherman, “the excitement ran high” due to the Confederate incursion and the Federal response. As a result, Sherman said Louisville “was full of all sorts of rumors.” Most disturbing were reports that Simon Bolivar Buckner, a native Kentuckian from Munfordville on the Green River, was advancing on Louisville from Bowling Green, leading a formidable Confederate army. Although actually only 5,000 strong, Buckner’s command was magnified by rumor to three times that many. The president of the Louisville & Nashville Railroad, former Secretary of the Treasury James Guthrie, received an alarming telegraph that one of his railroad bridges, only thirty miles south of Louisville, had been burned by the Rebels. General Anderson and Sherman listened as Guthrie informed them of the railroad’s general vulnerability. “Several high and important trestles,” spanned a great ravine just south of Salt Creek. If those were destroyed, Guthrie said months would be required to replace them. Also, at Muldraugh’s Hill, just a little south of the vital trestles, reportedly lay a natural rampart covering Louisville. Sherman said “we all supposed that General Buckner, who was familiar with the ground, was aiming for [that strong position] from which to operate against Louisville.” General Anderson ordered Sherman to secure possession of Muldraugh’s Hill at once, before the Confederates could reach it.12
Collecting a mixed force of Home Guards and volunteers, numbering about 3,000 in all, Sherman boarded a train at midnight, and steamed south toward Muldraugh’s Hill. Near daybreak, he reached the burned-out bridge over the Salt Creek, which forced the train to halt. Railroad hands went to work rebuilding the bridge, while Sherman sent a contingent of troops marching farther south to investigate the Louisville & Nashville’s high trestles. Fortunately, they were all securely in place, and Sherman then pushed his entire command on to Muldraugh’s Hill. He also learned that General Buckner had not even crossed the Green River. Nevertheless, he believed Confederate General Albert Sidney Johnston, who had recently assumed overall command of the Rebel forces in the west, was fortifying Bowling Green, “and preparing for a systematic advance into Kentucky.” Sherman gave the Rebels far too much credit. “All the secessionists,” he claimed, “are armed and flocking to Buckner’s Command.” In reality, Buckner was overestimating Sherman’s forces almost as badly as Sherman had exaggerated Buckner’s, while Johnston complained that Southerners “were not up to the revolutionary point.” Lacking men, munitions and supplies, Johnston could not possibly launch an offensive.13
By October 1, Sherman’s forces at Muldraugh’s Hill were bolstered by fresh troops sent out from Louisville, and numbered between 4,000 and 5,000. Regardless, Sherman was ensconced in gloom. His command, organized in a two-brigade division, had little training and inadequate arms. About the lack of arms he constantly complained. He also believed that spies were in his midst, and newspapermen were a constant worry. The perennial discipline problem continued to aggravate. “The volunteers,” he wrote his father-in-law, “are killing hogs, cattle, burning fence rails, and taking hay and wheat, all calculated to turn the People against us.” The Kentuckians and Tennesseans “are all imbued with a bitterness that you can not comprehend and will jump at the chance to destroy us whom they now regard as northern hordes of Invaders.” Expounding upon the perceived Southern superiority, he told Ellen that the enemy “swarm at Every point from Washington to Leavenworth . . . Superior to us in numbers and equipment.”14
Little wonder that Sherman feared he would be cut off at Muldraugh’s Hill, with the Confederates getting between him and Louisville and destroying the railroad trestles. He would then have to try to fight his way back to the Ohio River, through both enemy forces and a hostile populace. Exaggerating the Rebel numbers and the danger, while frustrated and obsessing about what he considered the woefully inadequate measures of the United States to counter the secessionists, Sherman wrote Ellen that he usually “was up all night.” Not only was he suffering from sleep deprivation, but the weather in early October was “cold and wet,” which likely would bring on asthma. Then things got worse. General Anderson resigned his position as head of the Department of the Cumberland, and Sherman had to take command. He was very upset, for unexpectedly he had the responsibility for all of Kentucky—and he was not up to the job.15
Anderson had resigned because he could not deal with the Kentucky situation. Like Sherman, he overestimated Confederate strength, while the inadequacies of the Home Guards and the Federal volunteers, in numbers, training and armaments, weighed heavily on his mind. Anderson’s health was not good and growing worse. “The daily correspondence between General Anderson and myself,” recalled Sherman, “satisfied me that the worry and harassment at Louisville were exhausting his strength and health.” When Sherman relieved him, Anderson said that “he could not stand the mental torture of his command any longer, and that he must go away, or it would kill him.” He had recommended Sherman to Washington as his successor, and the War Department so ordered.16
Once Sherman was suddenly elevated to command of the Department of the Cumberland, against his will and despite the President’s promise that he could remain in a subordinate capacity, his dark mood turned yet more gloomy, his forecasts of doom more frequent. Knowing Lincoln, Sherman decided to write him directly. He said the Confederates “will make a more desperate effort [to control Kentucky] than they have . . . Missouri.” The Union force to counter them, both those present and those expected, Sherman declared “entirely inadequate.” He told John Sherman that “the South . . . must have Kentucky . . . [and had] already invaded the state with five times my forces.” He even claimed, in that same letter to his brother, that “I am to be sacrificed.” Addressing the governor of Ohio, Sherman stated that “never before was such [an inadequate] body of men thrust headlong into such danger.”17
If Sherman were aware of the legendary meaning of the name Kentucky—“dark and bloody ground”—he probably would have thought the designation appropriate. “Some terrible [and no doubt bloody] disaster is inevitable,” he told John, in still another prophecy of impending, decisive defeat in Kentucky. Just as the “dark and bloody ground” is apparently without foundation as the meaning of “Kentucky,” so too Sherman’s forecasts of a massive Southern advance would prove to be without substance. The Sherman of Kentucky was far from the confident, conquering general of the later war, a commander who could successfully lead 100,000 men against the enemy. Confederate Albert Johnston, if he could somehow have known Sherman’s thinking in the fall of 1861, would have breathed easier.18
Johnston faced an awesome, perhaps ultimately impossible assignment. He commanded the vast Confederate Department Number Two, which extended across hundreds of miles, from the Appalachian Mountains westward across the Mississippi River, and through Arkansas to the Indian territory. The early run of Southern volunteers had dwindled away by the fall, while Kentuckians never rose to the Confederacy in the strength that many secessionists anticipated. Defending such a long line, with inadequate numbers for the task, and those poorly armed (if armed at all), called for extraordinary measures. Johnston’s plan was simple and effective. He feared that a Union advance would quickly uncover the inferiority of his forces, so he put up a big bluff and hoped the Federals bought it. Sherman, and Anderson before him, as well as some other Union officers, proved ideal subjects for the Confederate ruse.19
General Johnston had stationed most of the Southern regiments that were east of the Mississippi River in one of three places: on the river bluffs at Columbus; in front of Cumberland Gap, several hundred miles east of the great river; and in the center, more or less, at Bowling Green. The idea was for the Confederates to demonstrate aggressively in all three areas. General Buckner, commanding the Rebels at Bowling Green, astride the Louisville & Nashville Railroad, was quite active, mounting seemingly menacing thrusts which, although bogus, convinced Sherman that a strong Confederate army was about to descend upon Louisville. He was sure that the enemy numbers were much greater than his. Writing Salmon P. Chase to justify his requests for more supplies and troops, Sherman admitted that he had no reliable information about the plans of the enemy; nevertheless, he told the secretary of the treasury that he expected the Rebels would first clear Kentucky of Federal forces, and then threaten Cincinnati, before turning to approach St. Louis from the east.20
Then in mid-October, only a few days after Sherman had replaced General Anderson as commander of the Department of the Cumberland, he engaged in a fateful encounter with Secretary of War Simon Cameron and Lorenzo Thomas, adjutant general of the army. Cameron and Thomas arrived in Louisville after a trip to St. Louis investigating John C. Frémont’s extravagant contracts and expenses. The idea of the incompetent Cameron, whose administration as secretary of war was blighted by waste and corruption, investigating anyone, even Frémont, is at once amusing and disturbing—a reminder of that long line of politicians who are primed to cast the first stones at others accused of faults similar to their own. Cameron and Thomas had intended to hurry on toward Washington, but Sherman insisted that they spend the night in Louisville, because he wanted to discuss military conditions in Kentucky, hoping to impress upon them the dire situation—“as bad as bad could be.” Agreeing to stay the night, they headed to Sherman’s room on the first floor of the Galt House, where the “excellent landlord,” according to Sherman’s appraisal, “sent us a good lunch and something to drink.”21
Secretary Cameron, as Sherman remembered, “was not well, and lay on my bed” throughout their conversation. After some discussion about Frémont’s situation in Missouri, as well as a touch of general conversation, Cameron was ready to hear about Kentucky. “Now General Sherman, tell us of your troubles,” he instructed. Sherman said that he preferred to discuss their business in private. Cameron assured him, however, that all present are “friends”—even using the term “family,” as Sherman recalled—and that “you may speak your mind freely and without restraint.” Among those present was Brigadier General Thomas J. Wood of Kentucky, who later said that Cameron’s response to Sherman’s privacy request was “with some little testiness of manner.” Also, the secretary did not mention that one “friend” was a newspaper reporter from the New York Tribune. His name was Samuel Wilkerson, an accomplished sycophant, whose ingratiating skills had succeeded in making him a favorite of Cameron.22
Sherman should have been skeptical about the unknown faces, and probably was. Nevertheless, he felt compelled to present Cameron with a full picture of the military state of affairs in Kentucky as he saw it. Apparently, he did not restrain himself in the least and proceeded to develop his gloomy analysis in considerable detail. He deplored the lack of suitable weapons. Most of the arms available were outdated and defective European muskets. He said that he had to have more and better equipment. Also, he argued that troop strength was far from adequate. He was defending a front of more than three hundred miles, but his forces were appallingly weak in comparison with those of McClellan and Frémont, whose fronts were only a third as long. When Cameron inquired how many soldiers he needed, Sherman gave the number that he and Anderson, when they came west, had agreed would be necessary to defend the Bluegrass State: 60,000. In order to take the offensive, however, Sherman said he would need 200,000 men.23
Cameron was shocked. “You astonish me!” he exclaimed. From where would such numbers possibly come? Sherman assured Cameron that Northerners would flock to the Union cause in great numbers if the War Department would stop discouraging their service by claiming that they were not needed. He thought too that some of the troops being sent to McClellan and Frémont should be reassigned to the Kentucky front. He declared that Kentucky’s youth were hastening to join the Confederacy—the same story Cameron and Thomas would hear when they reached Frankfort and Lexington. That Kentucky’s men were choosing the South was nothing more than a general impression. No one had assembled any data on the subject. Whatever Kentucky’s potential Federal manpower base may have been, however, the numbers Sherman wanted most likely would require augmentation from outside the Bluegrass State.24
Sherman said that, before leaving Louisville, Secretary Cameron ordered all unassigned troops available in the region to Kentucky, told Lorenzo Thomas to make notes of their conversation and promised that he would further consider Sherman’s requests when they got back to Washington. Cameron thought that Sherman, in large degree, had overestimated his needs. Worse—if New York Tribune reporter Samuel Wilkerson is to be believed—Wilkerson confided to correspondent Henry Villard that Cameron had concluded Sherman was “unbalanced and that it would not do to leave him in command.” Only two weeks later the New York Tribune published the adjutant general’s official report of Cameron’s trip, with noticeable attention to the meeting with Sherman. Rival newspapermen believed the wily Wilkerson actually wrote the report, which Thomas signed, or at the least, composed portions of the document. Henry Villard thought the “broad insinuations that Sherman’s mind was upset” bore the stamp of Wilkerson’s hand. Sherman’s estimate of 200,000 troops for offensive operations was cast in an absurd vein, while there was no mention of the 60,000 men he said would be sufficient for Kentucky’s defense. In contrast to the portrayal of Sherman’s nervous apprehensions and exaggerations, Cameron’s supposed wisdom and calm demeanor were impressively presented.25
When Sherman read the report in the New York paper he was quite upset. He was yet more aroused upon learning that some of the men at his meeting with Cameron were newspaper people, particularly Samuel Wilkerson, the favorite of the war secretary. Visions of the California reporters who had plagued him during the banking years now resurfaced, reinforcing his view that the press could never be trusted. Indeed, Sherman believed newspapers not only were making a bad situation worse but actually constituted a threat to the preservation of the Union. He had a point. During the Civil War, newspapers frequently published information that was useful to the enemy—information sometimes acquired in deceptive and underhanded ways.
Sherman wrote Adjutant General Thomas on November 4, noting his awareness that “my estimate of the number of troops needed for this line, viz, 200,000, has been construed to my prejudice.” He declared that “the country never has and probably never will comprehend” the force and numbers of the enemy and the strength required to defeat the Rebels. “Do not conclude, as before,” he told Thomas in another letter two days later, “that I exaggerate the facts. They are as stated and the future looks as dark as possible.” He also initiated the possibility of being relieved from command, if the War Department so desired.26
In months to come, Sherman’s 200,000 troops for offensive operations would not seem much, if any, exaggeration. At the time, however, the figure was shocking to a lot of people. Furthermore, his calls for additional men and arms, and prophecies of impending doom if the quotas were not met, grew increasingly frequent, blunt and demanding, almost desperate. The more he obsessed about the situation, the worse it seemed, and the more unguarded became his dark pronouncements. Simultaneously, his rather eccentric behavior did not help his image. He seemed to talk, pace and smoke cigars incessantly. Long gone were the confident assurances to Ellen, when first traveling to California, that he had stopped smoking, never to resume. Typically he stayed up until 3:00 a.m., which was when the telegraph office closed, ready to pounce on any dispatches that might come in. Returning to the Galt House, he often continued to pace and smoke, before going to bed shortly before sunrise. His dress, never impressive, grew more slovenly. Sometimes he donned a stovepipe hat, calling yet more attention to his slender frame and unconventional ways. He might interrupt others when they talked, yet grew irritated if he himself were interrupted. The general impression he conveyed was that of an excitable yet distant personality, plagued by strange behavior and noticeable quirks.27
Sherman was taking himself and his command too seriously, and the mounting stress was destroying him. Ellen had once implored him, gently and tactfully: “Do write me a cheerful letter that I may have it to refer to when the gloomy ones come.” Sherman retaliated: “How anybody could be cheerful now I can’t tell.” He probably reached his nadir in early to mid-November. He spoke to his brother John as if the Confederates were a species of supermen. “I have no doubt,” he declared, that the Rebels are planning “a simultaneous attack on St. Louis, Louisville and Cincinnati. . . . They have the force necessary for success, and . . . the men capable of designing and executing it.” This is an incredible statement, particularly coming from a man who, only two and one half years later, would prove himself a master of logistics in planning and leading the decisive Atlanta campaign. Why he, of all people, did not see the absurdity of such a pronouncement about Confederate offensive prowess is baffling. Continuing his morose and sullen epistle to John, Sherman expressed a “conviction . . . that our Government is destroyed, and . . . no human power can restore it.”28
Then he told John of the green troops from Wisconsin and Minnesota who had just arrived in Kentucky without arms. “I can not but look upon it as absolutely sacrificing them,” he declared. He saw “no hope [of their survival]. In their present raw and undisciplined condition,” he considered them “helpless.” Such striking concern for the untrained and unarmed is more understandable when assessed in the context of the recent bridge-burning mission Sherman had sanctioned in east Tennessee. In an effort to destroy Rebel rail transportation, Tennessee Unionists burned nine bridges, and heavily damaged five others. Sherman decided not to send Federal troops to their support, as originally intended, having concluded, because of perceived Rebel pressure along the Green River, that the risk to Kentucky’s security was too great.29
The bridge burners were quickly apprehended by Confederate authorities and charged with treason, and several were hanged. Sherman felt responsible for their deaths. In a letter to John several weeks later, he wrote, “That the men . . . suffered death has been the chief source of my despondency.” He believed that “I may be chiefly responsible for it.” The execution of those men “weighed on me so that I felt unequal to the burden [of command in Kentucky], and gave it up. This horrid war,” he proclaimed, “has turned human nature wrong side out.”30
Those who know only the Sherman of hardhanded war—the Sherman of Memphis and of the destructive march through Georgia and the Carolinas, the man who could instruct a subordinate during the Atlanta campaign, “should you, under the impulse of natural anger, . . . hang the wretch, I approve the act before-hand”—miss the essential character of this complex soldier. He was indeed a sensitive man, naturally tenderhearted, who required time to accept and adjust to the mass bloodshed and inherent cruelty of war, particularly when he served as a leader. This was a significant, perhaps determining part of his difficulties in Kentucky.
Sherman was greatly relieved when Don Carlos Buell arrived in Louisville on November 15 to assume command of the Department of the Cumberland. As noted earlier, Sherman himself, in a despondent mood, had suggested the possibility of someone else’s taking command in Kentucky; it was a responsibility he never wanted, as he reflected on Lincoln’s promise that he could remain in a subordinate position. When George B. McClellan replaced the aged General Scott as overall U.S. Army commander on November 1, Sherman’s pessimistic messages led McClellan to send Colonel Thomas M. Key to report firsthand on the Kentucky situation. When Key concluded that the stress of command had overwhelmed Sherman, General Buell was sent to replace him. Sherman was ordered to St. Louis, where he would be under the command of Henry Halleck, his friend from California days, who had recently replaced Frémont.31
Sherman’s deteriorating mental and physical state had already prompted an aide, Captain Frederick Prime, to send an urgent message to the Ewing home in Lancaster: “Send Mrs. Sherman and the youngest boy down to relieve General Sherman’s mind from the pressure of business.” Prime added the phrase “no cause for alarm,” but obviously his words were inherently disturbing—all the more so in view of Sherman’s recent depressing letters to his wife. Ellen went at once, along with sons Willy and Tommy, as well as her brother Philemon. She found her husband had eaten and slept very little for some time. Officers at headquarters clearly were worried about him, and Ellen concluded that he needed a long rest from his duties.
She sent a letter to John Sherman, telling him about Cump’s situation. John responded with a strong message, written “with the freedom of a brother” he said, telling Cump in candid terms that his gloomy view of affairs was greatly overstated. Not only was he “in error,” but also under the spell of “some strange delusions,” and his mind was casting “a sombre shadow on everything.” He had become “abrupt,” and worse, “almost repulsive” in his dealings with others. It was as if John were trying to shake his brother back to reality—as John saw reality. When Sherman replied, he said, concerning the possibility he might be wrong, “I hope to God tis so,” but immediately launched into a defense of his oft stated negative views.32
Ellen felt a little better about her husband’s situation when General Buell relieved him. She still believed, however, that he needed several weeks of rest. Realizing that such a break was not about to happen—not immediately anyway—she and the boys headed back to Lancaster, while Sherman prepared to report for duty in the Department of the Missouri at St. Louis. Arriving in late November, he and Halleck exchanged greetings, probably genuinely pleased to see each other once more. Not surprisingly, the rumors of Sherman’s Kentucky problems and vexations had preceded him.
Nevertheless, Halleck sent Sherman west to inspect the troops. He found the Union forces widely separated, located at Sedalia, Tipton and Jefferson City. The camp at Sedalia was nearly thirty miles from the troops at Tipton, for example—too far distant to render assistance in case of an attack. As in Kentucky, Sherman worried that the Rebels might strike at any moment. He ordered the men concentrated in a more defensible position, which was sound advice, and a step that Halleck eventually sanctioned. At the time, however, Halleck wired Sherman to make no movement without orders from him. Sherman complied, countermanding his own orders, and returned to St. Louis, as Halleck had instructed. There Ellen, having again become extremely worried about his health, awaited him. Halleck may have been motivated by the report of the departmental doctor, who claimed Sherman was unfit for command. “Perhaps also, even more so,” as Basil Liddell Hart perceptively observed decades ago, Halleck “was nettled at the implication that his forces were left open to surprise.” Halleck was a touchy fellow who, when crossed, could be vindictive. Whatever the motivations of “Old Brains,” he wrote General McClellan, picking up on camp rumors and claiming Sherman had been “stampeded” by fear of the enemy, and that his presence was having a detrimental effect on the troops.33
When Sherman got back to St. Louis, a distressed Ellen implored him to take a break and rest. Halleck also recommended rest. Unknown to Sherman, he informed McClellan that Sherman’s “physical and mental system” was broken, rendering him “for the present entirely unfit for duty.” Reluctantly, Sherman requested a leave for three weeks and accompanied Ellen to Lancaster, and the rented house near her parents. Without question he needed rest, but the manner in which the leave developed, with his wife insisting on taking him home—the Ohio home located close to his father-in-law—was humiliating. Perhaps even the army could not provide the independence for which he yearned.34
As if recent events were not bad enough, the Cincinnati Commercial struck like a tsunami on December 11. GENERAL WILLIAM T. SHERMAN INSANE screamed the headline. “The painful intelligence reaches us, in such form that we are not at liberty to disclose it,” declared the Commercial, “that General William T. Sherman, late commander of the Department of the Cumberland, is insane. It appears that he was, at the time while commanding in Kentucky, stark mad.” The paper stated that Sherman once telegraphed the War Department three times in one day, requesting permission to retreat from Kentucky into Indiana, and claimed he frightened leading Union men of Louisville “almost out of their wits,” with assertions that Louisville could not be held against “the overwhelming” Confederate forces. Also, the paper said, “The retreat from Cumberland Gap was one of his mad freaks.” He was sent to Missouri, where “the shocking fact that he was a madman was developed by orders that his subordinates knew to be preposterous and refused to obey.” It was “providential that the country has not to mourn the loss of an army, through the loss of mind of a general into whose hands was committed such vast responsibility,” who now “has . . . been relieved altogether from command.”35
That Sherman was embarrassed and distressed by the offending article is an understatement. “Among the keenest feelings of my life,” he wrote the “Honorable Thomas Ewing” the day after the painful piece appeared, “is that arising from a consciousness that you will be mortified beyond measure at the disgrace which has befallen me—by the pronouncement in the Cincinnati Commercial that I am insane.” Sherman felt certain that the accusation “will be widely circulated, and will impair my personal influence for much time to come, if not always.” He was correct in assuming that the press attacks would spread around the nation.36
For a man like Sherman, long and justly proud of an excellent education at the U.S. Military Academy, the realization that his honor, one of the most cherished values of the West Point creed, had been soiled, embarrassing both him and his family, and whether deservedly or not, was deeply disturbing. One observes in Sherman’s many letters the plethora of emotions that swept over him in the days and weeks following the publication of the stunning article, emotions that seem to have run the gauntlet from humiliation, regret, disappointment and despair to resentment, disgust, anger and hatred.
Perhaps there was some comfort in the knowledge that most of the allegations in the Commercial article were not true or were exaggerations. False was the charge that he telegraphed the War Department three times in one day requesting permission to withdraw across the Ohio River into Indiana. Never did he suggest retreating from Kentucky. That he frightened Louisville Unionists “almost out of their wits” is an exaggeration. Nor did any subordinate in Kentucky or Missouri ever refuse to obey one of Sherman’s orders. As for his “mad freak” of retreating from Cumberland Gap, Sherman sensibly explained that “the retreat . . . was not designed as a retreat, but to shift the position to another point to meet an expected contingency which did not happen.” But the damage to Sherman’s reputation had been done.
Of that fact he was distressingly aware. He told Ellen that “the idea of having brought disgrace on all associated with me is So horrible to contemplate that I cannot really endure it.” He was especially concerned about “our Dear Children,” and wrote brother John, “I am so sensible now of my disgrace . . . that I do think I should have committed suicide were it not for my children.” Thomas Ewing thought that Sherman should bring suit against the Cincinnati Commercial for libel. Ewing, in fact, was prepared to personally handle the case. John Sherman initially advised against legal action. He knew that his brother had made mistakes: overrating enemy forces, voicing unreasonable demands—even imprisoning a Commercial reporter for visiting troops after being denied permission to do so. However, after John actually read the Commercial’s accusations, he concurred with Thomas Ewing in advocating a lawsuit.
But Sherman shrank from the additional publicity that was sure to be associated with such a step. He preferred to keep quiet and ride out the “insanity” storm. He realized he had overstated the threat posed to Kentucky by the Rebels, although his judgment about the untrained, inadequately armed and poorly clad Union regiments was accurate. He never forgave the newspaper reporters for what he considered an attempt not only to embarrass him but actually to ruin his army career. Throughout the war he would keep reporters away as much as possible. He believed that many of the reporters, because they printed news useful to the enemy, were an insufferable obstacle to successful military operations.37
SHERMAN’S “INSANITY” in the fall of 1861 has been explained in various ways: manic depression, clinical depression, temporary insanity, recurring insanity and narcissistic personality disorder. Clearly, a number of stressful factors, combined with an unhealthy lifestyle, plagued him over a period of several months, finally culminating in mental and physical exhaustion. Sherman himself, looking back and analyzing his Kentucky difficulties, identified most of them.38
Sherman’s problems began several months before the war, even prior to secession. He had been upset over the thought of fighting Southerners. On New Year’s Day 1862, he wrote Ellen that “my former associations with the South have rendered me almost crazy, as one by one all links of hope were parted.” Sherman required a long time to cope with his distress over breaking with the South.39
In another letter he told Ellen: “I certainly have not the same character I would have had, had I not lived so much in the South.” Again he reaffirmed, as he made clear several times, that he had “wanted to Keep out of this war.” He also told Ellen that “it does seem hard,” while stationed in St. Louis, not to see close friends like James Lucas and Henry Turner, both of whom sympathized with the South. On January 8, he wrote John Sherman, “I have lived so much in the South, and have made my personal friends among [Southerners], that I no doubt have overrated not only the intensity of their feeling, but their strength, at the same time doubting that of the North.”40
While Sherman knew that the Union possessed a huge potential advantage over the Confederacy in both manpower and all manner of war equipment—a fact he had expressed numerous times—he became convinced that U.S. leaders, as well as the American populace, did not grasp the magnitude of the secessionist challenge. The Bull Run defeat and, in Sherman’s mind, the inadequate Federal response that followed were irrefutable evidence that the nation had not yet awakened to the crisis. Because Union war fervor was not up to the standard he deemed essential, Sherman grew increasingly discontent, testy and outspoken. He claimed that he did not want to lead, yet a major portion of his frustration arose from, as he later told his brother, “matters which seemed to me beyond my control.” When he arrived in Kentucky, the problems were the same as in Washington, except that they seemed of greater degree—too few troops, and those men insufficiently trained and deficient in arms and equipment. Not to mention the threat of Rebel attack. He was also finding it hard to accept the carnage and cruelty of war, as his experience with the fate of the Tennessee bridge burners attested. The more he obsessed about the difficulties he faced, the more distressed he became, and the more eccentric were his actions.41
All the while, Sherman’s health deteriorated. Night after night, week after week, as earlier referenced, he seldom retired until three or four o’clock in the morning; he then rose again within a short time. His diet was insufficient in quantity and quality. Smoking far too many cigars, he also “drank somewhat,” as he admitted to his brother. He spent many hours hunched over a desk writing letters, while getting virtually no exercise, unless one counts his impatient pacing. Sleep deprivation, inadequate diet, heavy smoking, excessive alcohol, overwork, lack of exercise and constant worry constitute a formula for disaster, impacting both body and mind.42
Finally, another significant factor contributed to Sherman’s collapse—and quite possibly it was the worst of all. He was convinced that he had failed at his chosen career: the army. The impact was devastating. “I am fully conscious,” he told his brother early in 1862, “that in surrendering that [Kentucky] command I confessed my inability to manage it.” He declared that the realization of that fact was “mortifying but true. . . . These thoughts so bore on me that they broke me down and I am not yet recovered.”43
Sherman had experienced serious setbacks and major disappointments in the past, but nothing to compare with the military failure, and the nationwide public humiliation that followed. The California banking endeavor never brought the success initially envisioned, despite Sherman’s hard work and business sense. The Wall Street project came to an end almost as soon as it got started, but through no fault of Sherman’s. These really had been peripheral undertakings anyway, not his chosen profession. He had still sounded cocksure about the military when he earlier declared to Ellen that he “was fit for the Army but nothing else.” And then he failed—abjectly failed, as he candidly admitted, where he had long expected to flourish. He had failed in the army “in the service of my country.” Never before, and never again, would he experience a crisis that laid him so low.
DURING THE TIME that Sherman spent with Ellen and the children in December 1861, he ate better, slept more, rested from responsibility and experienced a measure of solace. Nevertheless he remained troubled. Ellen again broached the possibility of overseeing her father’s saltworks. Sherman was not about to accept that alternative. Better to face his humiliation serving with the army, even in an embarrassingly reduced position. Departing for St. Louis shortly before Christmas to resume his military duties, he took note, perhaps with bitter amusement, of editor George Prentice’s absurd praise in the Louisville Journal. Obviously attempting to atone for the insanity article being copied in his paper (while he was out of state, he claimed), Prentice declared that Sherman’s “mind is probably unsurpassed in power and comprehensiveness, by . . . any military man of our country.” Sherman’s “heroism [was] the equal of Richard the Lion-heart,” and his actions at Bull Run had been “worthy of the greatest hero of any age.”44
On December 23, General Halleck assigned Sherman to the command of Benton Barracks, a large base near St. Louis. He was to “organize, equip and prepare regiments” for an offensive campaign—a campaign that Sherman knew, of course, someone else would lead. The duty was important, but in Sherman’s view demeaning after the command he had held in Kentucky. He remained gloomy, utterly displeased with himself, with thoughts of suicide crossing his mind. He also feared that the powerful congressional Committee on the Conduct of the War “will fix on me more than my share [of blame] in the Bull Run disaster,” particularly after his failure in Kentucky and the newspaper claims that he was crazy. He continued to be plagued by thoughts of the embarrassment he had brought upon the family as well as himself. He felt “as though I should cast myself into the Mississippi,” and cried out to Ellen, “Oh, that I could remove the last few months.”45
Gradually, however, as Sherman worked effectively at Benton Barracks, he recovered his emotional stability and overall his health and attitude continued to improve. Sometimes he and Halleck discussed military affairs, conversations that were excellent therapy for Sherman. Halleck, whose Department of the Missouri would soon be expanded into the Department of the Mississippi, realized that Sherman’s health was better and began to think about using him in a greater capacity. Also, without question, the shrewd Halleck was mindful of recent letters from Senator John Sherman and Thomas Ewing in strong support of General Sherman. Considering their influence in Washington, Halleck’s own best interests appeared to coincide with Sherman’s well-being. And Halleck well knew that a whole Sherman was too great a talent to remain sidelined. All the while, Ellen performed a nurturing role: “You could not disgrace anyone, for you could not do a dishonorable action,” she wrote Sherman on January 8, 1862. Three days later, he promised her that he would “make an effort to get into the Field [again],” although he remained skeptical about being awarded a second chance.46
For Ellen and her family, as well as for John Sherman, Cump’s Kentucky fate had been tragic. They still believed that he was capable of outstanding army service—truly significant achievements of far greater import than managing recruits at Benton Barracks, even if the St. Louis base was a huge marshaling center. Ellen now determined that she must do more than comfort and encourage her husband.
She would spearhead a campaign to vindicate Sherman’s good name and restore him to a position worthy of his abilities. Ellen and he had experienced serious disagreements during their marriage, not the least of which concerned his army career. But if her husband was determined still to serve after all the trials he had been through, then Ellen decided that her duty, as a loyal wife, was henceforward to support him in every way possible. If Sherman believed that the Union should be preserved, and had determined to fight and likely sacrifice his life for it, then the Union would be her cause, too, with one important difference. For Ellen, whose devotion to her Catholic faith permeated all her views, the Union cause became a righteous cause, the Confederacy a manifestation of evil, Jefferson Davis “his Satanic majesty.”
In early January, Ellen decided to go to the top on behalf of her husband. She penned a striking letter to the President. Describing Sherman’s difficulties in Kentucky, she attributed the slanderous newspaper accounts to a conspiracy of army officers and reporters. Particularly, she implied that Lorenzo Thomas contributed significantly to Sherman’s downfall. She hoped that Lincoln would somehow intervene “in my husband’s favor and in vindication of his slandered name.” When a number of days passed without any response, Ellen’s patience grew thin.47
She determined to take her case to Lincoln in person. Thomas Ewing was about to travel to Washington on legal matters, providing an opportunity for Ellen to make the trip in company with him, and he was fully sympathetic with his daughter’s mission. On January 29, Ellen and Thomas Ewing met with Lincoln, who received them warmly, and with praise for Sherman. Naturally, the President knew of the newspaper allegations but said that he had never thought Sherman, whom he remembered well, was insane. Lincoln “seemed very anxious,” according to Ellen’s letter to Cump that evening, “that we should believe that he felt kindly towards you.” Ellen and her father left the meeting pleased with the President’s attitude, even though he had not actually promised them anything. She assured her husband that he had powerful men working for him in the nation’s capital, especially her father, her brother Tom and John Sherman. Furthermore, Edwin M. Stanton, who was a friend of Thomas Ewing, had just replaced the tainted Simon Cameron as secretary of war. Ellen prophesied that time would wear away the slander against her husband, after which “you will stand higher than ever.” For Ellen’s love and concern, Sherman was truly grateful, although he remained pessimistic about his future. Soon Sherman would get a second chance to prove himself, and as Ellen predicted, he would rise to “stand higher than ever.”48