Episode Details

William Tecumseh Sherman spent much of his first 40 years by his own account as a failure. Born in Ohio in 1820 and left destitute when his father died, he was raised by the Ewing family and sent to West Point, where he excelled academically and piled up demerits. He missed combat in the Mexican-American War while serving in California, where he drafted documents confirming the gold discovery. He then managed a San Francisco bank that failed in a national panic, survived two shipwrecks, practiced law in Kansas without passing the bar, and ran the Louisiana military college that became LSU, warning Southern friends that Northern industry would beat them.

In 1861 he resigned, fought well at Bull Run, then broke down in Kentucky, overestimating enemy numbers until he was relieved and newspapers called him insane. At Shiloh he had three horses shot from under him and was wounded twice, and the episode argues the battle cured his anxieties. His bond with Grant led to Atlanta, the March to the Sea, and hard war aimed at property rather than civilians. The episode also covers his rejected surrender terms, the Indian Wars, and how Lost Cause writers and British historians reshaped his reputation.

• Sherman's troops heated and twisted rails around trees, known as Sherman's neckties.
• He fed about 60,000 men off the land after cutting his own supply line in Georgia.
• His lenient terms in the Carolinas were rejected in Washington, and the Secretary of War hinted to the press that he might be a traitor.
• He attacked corrupt reservation agents while pressing war against tribes resisting the railroads.
• He died of pneumonia in New York City in 1891, respected in both North and South.