Chapter Two I WAS NOTIFIED TO PREPARE FOR WEST POINT
When sixteen-year-old William Tecumseh Sherman set off for the United States Military Academy, forty miles above New York City on the west bank of the Hudson River, the chances are, except for two or three trips into Pennsylvania with Maria Ewing when she visited relatives, he had never been outside the state of Ohio. He had accompanied Mary Sherman once or twice a year—driving his mother by the time he became a teenager—on a journey to visit his paternal grandmother, Betsy Stoddard Sherman, in Mansfield (she had moved there to live with a daughter, Mrs. Betsy Parker, after Cump’s father died). But that seventy-five-mile trip to northern Ohio, obviously, did not take the young boy very far from Lancaster. It was an era when travel was difficult and most people never ventured far from home. Mostly he spent his time in Lancaster, where an endless round of work, play and schooling demanded attention and energy.1
As for his maternal grandmother, Mary Raymond Hoyt, Sherman apparently never mentioned her, and perhaps never saw her. Historian Stanley P. Hirshson discovered that she lived into her seventies, at which time young Sherman was well into his ninth year. Hirshson has built a convincing case that Mary Raymond Hoyt suffered from mental illness. This may explain why Sherman, who usually seemed abreast of family connections, chose not to speak of her. Quite likely her malady proved hereditary, notably in the later life of both her youngest son, Charles, a successful merchant in New York City, and also William Tecumseh’s younger brother John, who excelled for years as a lawyer and a powerful, well-known, national politician.2
Like all the Ewing children, Sherman had actively participated in such chores as cutting and stacking firewood, starting and tending fires, working in the garden, milking the cow and helping prepare the house for company upon special occasions. He liked baseball, fishing and swimming and, with some other youngsters in town, organized a society to put on plays—apparently the beginning of a lifelong passion for the theater. The young lad possessed a mischievous streak, too, and in his later years admitted that he enjoyed the company of “the worst young rascal in town,” a fellow named Bill King. He also confessed to pestering one of Lancaster’s preachers by stealing his kindling on Saturday nights, hoping thereby to make life tougher for the pastor on Sunday mornings. Several stories of Sherman’s boyish, errant ways have survived through the years. One can only speculate as to how many are true.3
One of the amusing tales, which might well have been more serious than it was, involved a number of friends with whom Cump played a primitive form of baseball, using homemade yarn balls. From time to time the balls were hit into a garden adjoining the playing field, whose owner became irate at his garden being trampled by young boys retrieving balls. When the man began confiscating the balls and throwing them into his stove, Sherman and his buddies sought revenge. They filled a ball with gunpowder. Soon the unsuspecting garden owner seized the devilishly prepared thing and cast it into the stove; a fiery explosion rocked the house, leaving the man suffering with burns and damage to his home. The boys, naturally, had waited close by to observe the result of their scheme. Suddenly the angry man burst forth from his house, intent upon chasing down the culprits. He managed to catch the slowest of the boys as they ran and, so the story goes, whipped him severely. Sherman and the others, being more fleet of foot, escaped unscathed.4
A highlight of the Lancaster summer months came when the Ewing children, including Sherman of course, visited the farm of Thomas Ewing’s sister, Sarah Clark, for several days. At least once, Sherman and Philemon Ewing, less than a year apart in age, and who had become good buddies, spent the entire summer at Aunt Sarah’s farm. There they enjoyed roaming the woods and hunting for rabbit and squirrel.
They also armed themselves, whenever venturing into the forest, with sturdy clubs for protection against the legendary hoop snake. Possibly the boys learned of that dreaded reptile from their aunt, although any number of relatives, or family friends, might have been the first to apprise them of the creature. Tales then circulated widely of how the terrifying snake would form itself into a big circle, like a hoop standing upright and, as if it were a wheel, come rolling after its prey, young boys being its most desirable victims.
Sherman and Philemon planned, if accosted by the horrifying reptile, to race toward a tree, then jump aside at the last instant, hoping that the striking snake would embed its horn-tail in the tree trunk, thereby trapping itself and eventually dying, because it would be unable to extricate its tail. Or, if they chose, the boys could readily bash the ensnared creature to death with their clubs. The tree would perish too, according to the conventional wisdom, its leaves falling off within minutes as a result of the snake’s incredibly potent venom.5
There is no evidence indicating that Cump, as a preteenager, ever gave any thought to a military career. No doubt he would have been aware of the local militia activities, for militias were always prominent on the frontier. Many years later, Sherman would observe in his memoirs that “nearly every man had to be somewhat of a soldier,” because the Indians still occupied extensive territory in the Old Northwest. However, this is not to say that the militia impressed him. Militia drill days often seemed occasions, basically, to party, featuring barbecue, watermelons and alcohol, mixed with foot races, wrestling matches and occasional fistfights.6
As to the serious business involved in soldiering, militia arms had not been standardized. Neither had uniforms, the variety of which sometimes appeared absurd. Officers seemed, at best, only minimally familiar with military drill, and the parade ground often looked comical. John Sherman, who was three years Cump’s junior, considered his older brother a somewhat nonaggressive, even passive figure. Later, John wrote that Cump “was a steady student, quiet in his manner and easily moved by sympathy or affection. I was regarded as a wild, reckless lad, eager in controversy and ready to fight.” John thought that no one could have anticipated that his brother “was to be a great warrior and I a plodding lawyer and politician.”7
William Tecumseh would become the man his father evidently envisioned when he christened the infant Tecumseh. As Senator Ewing stated in an 1835 letter to Secretary of War Lewis Cass, in which he sought an appointment for Sherman to West Point, the boy’s father “often expressed before his death” a wish that his son “should receive an education which would fit him for the public service in the army or navy.” According to Ewing, Sherman’s mother preferred West Point over Annapolis. The senator did not give Mrs. Sherman’s reasons. Ewing praised Cump to Secretary Cass as a strong athlete, and “a good Latin, Greek, and French scholar.” He further described him as “very good” in mathematics.8
As to his general education, Sherman praised his teachers, saying he went to “as good a school as any in Ohio.” His father, in tandem with Thomas Ewing, had been a driving force in creating the first school in Lancaster, which provided well for the boy’s earliest education. Then came Sam and John Howe, brothers who implemented the Lancaster Academy’s growing reputation, turning it into a first-rate institution. Sherman did excellent work in all subjects, becoming proficient in arithmetic, and learning Latin and French. Ewing probably stretched the truth a bit in applying the term “scholar” to Sherman’s knowledge of Greek.
While the youngster preferred to play rather than spend his time sitting at school, nevertheless he did not fail to master his subjects. Clearly he liked to read, and was blessed with a good memory. Then came a message from his foster father, notifying the boy “to prepare for West Point.” Learning that Senator Ewing probably would succeed in getting him appointed to the military academy, beginning in June 1836, Sherman said that through the fall of 1835 and the spring of 1836, “I devoted myself . . . to mathematics and French, . . . known to be the chief requirements for admission to West Point.”9
Some children go through a period of being disturbed by one or more of their physical characteristics: perhaps warts on their hands, moles on their face, large feet, etc. Sherman experienced a problem with his red hair, which for years he disliked. Occasionally taunted by a foster brother calling him a “red-haired woodpecker,” he even tried to dye it a different color, only to see it turn to a sickening green. Eventually he adjusted to the supposed malady and accepted the red hair, particularly after he came to believe that Native Americans sought especially to scalp redheads. He considered his hair a challenging symbol against Indians.10
As long as William Tecumseh remained a part of the Ewing household, religious observances claimed a regular and substantial quantity of his time. When visiting Thomas Ewing’s sister Sarah Clark, who was Protestant, Sherman or one of the Ewing boys was required on Sunday mornings to read a chapter from the Bible. This, however, must have seemed a minor irritant when compared with Catholic religious observances under the tutelage of Maria Ewing. One Sunday a month a priest came to Lancaster, which meant that mass must be attended, followed by religious indoctrination conducted by the priest at the Ewing house. Attendance by the children was mandatory. On all other Sunday mornings, Maria herself directed Christian rituals in her dining room. These sessions also were mandatory. There she read prayers, Bible verses and other religious literature, recited the rosary and queried the children from the catechism.
Probably worst of all for Sherman, entailing what otherwise might have been a pleasant, twenty-mile ride into the countryside, were the occasional Sunday trips to the Dominican monastery in the town of Somerset. Unfortunately, from the young lad’s perspective, the journey had to be made before dawn, even in summer when the sun rose earlier than during other seasons of the year, in order to arrive in time for mass. Following mass came visits with priests and nuns, resulting in an all-day religious affair; the family usually returned home to Lancaster only after dark. Never again, when Sherman left the Ewing home for West Point, would he spend entire Sundays in religious rituals.11
Not that Sundays at the Point provided the cadet with freedom of religious expression. Like most colleges throughout the country in those days, West Point required the student body to attend chapel on the first day of the week. This had not been the academy’s practice in the early days. But during the superintendency of Sylvanus Thayer, who significantly shaped the institution’s development in the 1820s, West Point began holding high-church Episcopalian services. That aristocratic faith, esteemed as the ideal religion for “an officer and a gentleman,” symbolized the dignity and patrician manners which Thayer hoped would characterize the West Point graduate. The Episcopalian services typically lasted about two hours and constituted a continuing plague on Sherman, who said that he found the minister “a great bore.”12
Sherman certainly was not alone in that judgment. Cadet George W. Cullum declared that before his West Point experience he looked forward to church, where he would visit with friends, especially “my female acquaintances.” But at the academy he was forced to “sit . . . on a backless bench,” squeezed among his “fellow sufferers,” all the while enduring “a dry discourse.” It should be noted that some West Point cadets were deeply moved by exposure to the faith, and became Episcopalian clergymen, fueling a degree of sarcastic criticism occasionally leveled at the military academy as “a great place to make preachers.” That charge was unfair. Relatively few pursued a ministerial career, while the majority of the young men seem not to have taken religion very seriously. For young Sherman, four years of exposure to the Episcopal faith would have no more impact than had nearly seven years of Roman Catholicism.13
If Sherman reflected upon the United States Constitution and its wisely mandated separation of church and state, he might have been a bit troubled that a school created and supported by the federal government demanded attendance at Episcopal church services. The religious practices of other colleges, institutions privately funded and without any relation to the U.S. government, obviously established no precedent for West Point. Only the naval academy and the Point operated at federal expense and with federal oversight. But since Sherman placed no meaningful significance in any organized religion—much like Thomas Ewing—the chances are that he viewed the matter as merely an unwelcome requirement of a program that he well knew, before arriving at the military academy, would be “very strict.”14
There were, not surprisingly, occasional disturbances during the chapel services. Some cadets made groaning noises, chewed tobacco and messed up the floor with tobacco juice. One would suppose, too, that the religious issue was among the subjects of nighttime discussions in the barracks. Whatever Sherman’s thoughts may have been on this matter, and if he ever expressed an opinion to anyone—other than his remark about the minister’s sermons being “boring”—the evidence thereof is yet to be discovered. Sherman probably realized that the required chapel attendance was not going to be changed anytime soon, if ever.15
Perhaps he had heard about the fate of the three officer-instructors who protested to Thayer in the late 1820s that compulsory chapel attendance violated their rights under the U.S. Constitution. Thayer sent their plea to Washington, and they got a response from the secretary of war, saying that the government had no desire “to interfere . . . with their conscientious scruples, and would, therefore, send them where attendance upon Divine service would not be necessary.” They were reassigned to the frontier. This solution undoubtedly served as a lesson to all who might become disgruntled with chapel services in the future.16
IN THE SPRING of 1836 Sherman received his official appointment to the United States Military Academy. He welcomed the opportunity, as he wrote Thomas Ewing, “with great satisfaction.” Having obtained his mother’s consent to accept the appointment “as a cadet in the service of the U. S.,” he embarked upon the longest trip of his first sixteen years—the first time, too, that he traveled alone. Thomas Ewing wanted him to spend a few days in the nation’s capital, to refresh the boy after the opening leg of the trek. Visits with relatives in Philadelphia and New York would also break up the tiring, sometimes monotonous journey to West Point.
Leaving Lancaster in a stagecoach for Zanesville, Sherman there transferred to the Great National Road, which was the best west-to-east route of the time. He said that the stages “generally traveled in gangs” of up to six coaches, “each drawn by four good horses, carrying nine passengers inside and three or four outside.” The trip to Washington entailed three days, traveling day and night, and the weather was often overcast, rainy and dreary. Arriving in Frederick, Maryland, the young man faced a decision. He could opt for the recently completed Baltimore & Ohio Railroad into Washington via Baltimore, or take, as he expressed it, “a two-horse hack ready to start for Washington direct.” He chose the hack, “not having full faith in the novel and dangerous railroad.” (Herein lies an irony, for a quarter of a century later, during history’s “first railroad war,” Sherman would demonstrate, to a degree unmatched by any commander on either side, the strategic value of the railroad in war.)17
The next morning Sherman contacted Senator Ewing, who boarded with a number of his peers at the corner of Third and C Streets, and trunk in tow, the boy moved in with the senator. Sherman spent a week in Washington, visiting with Ewing and seeing the sights of the nation’s capital. Years later Sherman declared: “I saw more of the place in that time than I ever have since in the many years of residence there.” The president of the United States was Andrew Jackson and “Old Hickory” then, as Cump said, “was at the zenith of his fame.” Young Sherman found the hero of the Battle of New Orleans a fascinating figure—despite the facts that Jackson was a Democrat and Sherman’s sympathies were aligned with the Whigs, and that even then his foster father was preparing to stand against Jackson’s banking policy.
“I recall looking at him a full hour one morning, through the wood railing on Pennsylvania Avenue,” Sherman reminisced, watching as the President “paced up and down the gravel walk on the north front of the White House.” He said that Jackson appeared “smaller than I had expected.” The President always had been a tall, slender figure, never burdened with excess weight; but his wounds from duels and war, plus the hardships of military campaigning—not to mention the ravages of time—had taken a heavy toll on his physique, and in later years Jackson became quite thin and gaunt. During the week Sherman spent in the capital, he saw a number of the nation’s political celebrities, notably Vice President Martin Van Buren, whom Jackson preferred as his successor. Among other memorable personages, he recalled seeing John C. Calhoun, Daniel Webster, Henry Clay and Lewis Cass.18
At the appointed time, Sherman departed on the next leg of his journey, accompanied by two other newly appointed cadets with whom he became acquainted in Washington. This time he decided to risk the Iron Horse, taking the railroad part of the way to Philadelphia. Did the influence of the two other cadets persuade him to make his initial trip on a train? Alternating between rail and water transport, Sherman journeyed first to Baltimore by train, then took a boat to Havre de Grace, followed by another train ride into Wilmington, Delaware, and finally a boat to Philadelphia. After a visit with his older sister, Mary Elizabeth, who had married the son of a successful Philadelphia merchant, he resumed the northward bound series of boat and rail rides, arriving at last for his first taste of New York City.
The experience proved positive—very much so. New York had surpassed Philadelphia as the largest city in the nation, and was certainly the most cosmopolitan. Sherman stayed a week there, visiting his mother’s relatives, particularly remembering her brother Charles Hoyt “at his beautiful place on Brooklyn Heights.” He also passed some time with his uncle James Hoyt, who, like Charles, was a well-heeled merchant.19
Probably, however, the highlight of his initial New York adventure was the theater. The New York stage made a deep impression, as the young man witnessed his first professional performance. Throughout his life, Sherman would remain a devotee of theatrical productions, seemingly enjoying the stage more than any other form of entertainment. (Somewhat fittingly, in this regard, the last few years of Sherman’s life would be spent in New York.)20
Then came the day of departure for the final leg of the young man’s trip to West Point, quite possibly the hour arriving sooner than he would have preferred. On the other hand, the rising anticipation of a new and challenging way of life undoubtedly generated excitement. From the deck of the Cornelius Vanderbilt, his eyes took in the river sights as the steamer plied the Hudson northward, transporting him to his home for the next four years. Compared with today’s expansive campus, the West Point of Sherman’s day was small and austere. Yet then, as now, the academy’s stunning geographical location could not fail to impress, whether in the fullness of summer’s foliage or the glistening magnificence of a winter snowfall.21
For visitors approaching from the river, the site of West Point looms majestically on the horizon. The high bluff of the stream’s west bank rises precipitously nearly 200 feet up from the water. At the top, the academy’s stone buildings rest upon a high shelf of land known as the Plain, which grandly overlooks the Hudson. This broad, generally level, forty-acre riverine setting is eloquently complemented by lofty, forested heights ascending to the west, creating an inspirational natural backdrop for the school. From locations on the Plain, like Trophy Point, and sites on the steep hills west of the Plain, there are sublime vistas in every direction.22
The magnificence of West Point’s setting is appropriately matched by the significance of its historic role during the American Revolution. The Point’s military importance stemmed from a combination of cannon placed high on the cliffs above the Hudson and the river’s abrupt changes of direction within a short distance. Streaming southward from its Adirondack headwaters, the Hudson River suddenly is forced by the granite barrier of “the West Point” into a 90 degree sweep to the east. Then, in a third of a mile, having flanked the Point, the river turns sharply to the south once more, resuming its generally direct flow to the ocean.
The Hudson’s two tight and difficult turns, first left and then right, forced warships and transports, in the days before steam power, to reduce speed dramatically while navigating the river’s two right angles. The task was especially difficult, of course, if a ship were approaching against the current. During the Revolutionary War, the Americans stretched a great iron chain across the river. This daunting obstacle was strung from the west bank to Constitution Island, placing the barrier in the middle of the Hudson’s abrupt turns. Thus any British ship attempting to run past the guns of the West Point fortress, which was the largest in America, faced a formidable challenge. West Point stymied the British strategic plan to control the Hudson River, and thereby sever New England from the rest of the colonies. George Washington described West Point as “the key to America.”23
After the war, when West Point and the surrounding land were purchased by the United States government in 1790, the site became an obvious possibility for a national military academy. Washington strongly favored the establishment of such an institution. He believed that the struggle against Great Britain had proven the necessity of training competent military leaders for the future. So too did Henry Knox, Washington’s chief of artillery during the Revolution and the first secretary of war. Knox was distressed that no American possessed the engineering skills required to build a fortress. Alexander Hamilton, always a staunch supporter of the military and the nation’s first secretary of the treasury, also thought that the army needed an academy. Other influential men endorsed it as well. Officially established in 1802 with the support of President Thomas Jefferson, who favored both a national university and an emphasis on the training of engineers to develop the nation’s infrastructure, the institution would endure a long period of struggle, with its very survival sometimes in doubt.
Those who feared a standing army, and they were numerous, claimed the academy nurtured an elitist military aristocracy, at national expense, which someday likely would threaten the freedom of the young country. Accordingly, they sought to destroy the school, arguing that a regular army was unnecessary for the nation’s defense anyway. The militias, they claimed, could do the job—this in the face of much evidence to the contrary, especially in the War of 1812, when the militias sometimes turned and ran when they confronted the enemy. The academy’s own shortcomings did not help its cause. For example, when Alden Partridge became superintendent of the school, his peculiar and perplexing mixture of competence and ineptness, combined with an alarming dash of quirkiness, kept the academy in almost constant turmoil. Fortunately, the man following Partridge, Sylvanus Thayer, who had been educated at Dartmouth and West Point, provided capable, enlightened leadership—so much so that he came to be known as the “Father of the Military Academy.”24
Serving as superintendent from 1817 to 1833, Major Thayer shaped the institution for years to come. Without him, or someone of equal stature, West Point probably would have perished. Thirty-two years old when President James Monroe chose him for the job, Thayer traced his military tastes to his boyhood. Fascinated by the American Revolution, and aware of the major role France played as an ally of the United States, the young man developed into an ardent admirer of Napoleon Bonaparte—and apparently all French military achievements. He jumped at the chance, in 1816, to tour Europe for the U.S. Army. There he studied the military schools of France, rightly considered the best in the world, and took in French coastal fortifications. He also sent back French books on military science and engineering for the library at West Point.
Thayer knew his role as superintendent would be a serious challenge. Not only was the school in “a mess and a subject of constant political contention,” but also a number of cadets were hostile to any change of leadership, five faculty members were under arrest and the revenge-seeking, ex-superintendent Partridge hoped to undermine Thayer’s authority and reputation. Indeed, Partridge proved more than once that he was nothing if not a jealous, petty little man whose only true interest was himself. In spite of myriad problems, Thayer succeeded.25
“Thayer’s greatest contribution to the Academy,” observed historian Stephen Ambrose, “was the system he created, but he was able to introduce that system only through the strength of his own character.” Standing staunchly against incompetence and political favoritism, Thayer’s academic and disciplinary policies soon became standard practice at the academy. His regime was demanding, as fifteen-hour days were packed with class work, drill and study. The academy’s most important courses, in Thayer’s judgment, were French, because the truly significant military works had been published in that language, and mathematics, which was indispensable for engineering.
Living conditions were spartan. Cadets slept “on mattresses thrown on the bare floors,” with only small fireplaces providing heat. They usually studied while wrapped in blankets. Summer vacations became a luxury of past regimes. Thayer’s cadets camped on the Plain during the summer and “learned to be soldiers.” Their only visit home, during the entire four years, came after the sophomore year. Quite possibly, “all of the hardships of West Point life,” as Ambrose claimed, “paled beside the food.” The monotonous fare consisted of boiled potatoes, boiled beef, boiled fish, boiled pudding, stale bread, and black coffee—“uniformly ghastly,” according to one cadet.26
Despite the demanding, tough existence, the fame of the school increased and applications for admittance grew. The school’s critics, however, refused to give up, their voices rising dramatically when Andrew Jackson’s Democratic Party won the presidency in 1828. Ambitious, unscrupulous politicians and advocates for the common man cried out against the establishment of a military “aristocracy” for the sons of the wealthy. It was an era when “aristocrat” became regularly employed by Democrats as a political smear, much the same as today’s right-wing politicians have demonized the word “liberal.” Worse, Jackson himself, who once praised West Point as “the best school in the world,” turned against the academy. For reasons not entirely rational, the President came to despise Thayer. For example, Thayer’s friendship with John C. Calhoun irritated “Old Hickory,” who disliked Calhoun intensely. Ironically, given Jackson’s own wielding of arbitrary power, the President once bellowed that “Sylvanus Thayer is a tyrant! The autocrat of all the Russias couldn’t exercise more power.”27
Thayer loved West Point and he enjoyed being the academy’s superintendent. He came to realize, though, that with Andrew Jackson, you were either his friend or his enemy, that in the mind of Old Hickory differences often became personal feuds. Fearing his clash with the President might ultimately destroy West Point, Thayer resigned his superintendency in 1833, after Jackson had been elected to a second term. Never again would he return to the academy grounds, not even for a day. But every professor at the school had been appointed by him, and most would remain in their positions for many years, even decades. Sylvanus Thayer was gone, but the system he instituted would endure.28
Sherman, like all who matriculated the Point with him, would be the product of a military academy envisioned and implemented by Thayer. Thayer had laid the foundation for a “hallowed venue,” as many cadets would come to think of West Point—an institution, eventually, of “legendary figures and legendary deeds.”29 Robert E. Lee had graduated with the class of 1829, finishing second among his mates, but destined to become the first of the school’s great military talents.30 And when the sixteen-year-old Sherman landed on the wharf at West Point in June 1836, the academy gained another cadet whose career one day would elevate him to the front rank of its legendary figures.