150 years ago, on November 21, 1861, William Tecumseh Sherman was a man
consumed by depression and anxiety. He wrote two letters that day, one to
his friend General Robert Anderson, and the other to his brother,
Senator John Sherman. Earlier in the month, on November 9, Sherman had been relieved
of his command in the state of Kentucky. After weeks of worrying and sending
frantic notices to Washington regarding the rebel menace and the threat of
Kentucky falling to Confederate forces, Sherman’s superiors, Henry Halleck,
Lorenzo Thomas, and George McClellan, finally had enough of his complaints.
Many thought Sherman had indeed gone insane. Sherman was a man predicting that
victory would take a force of hundreds of thousands of men fighting against
determined Confederates in equal or greater numbers. The telegrams and letters
which Sherman sent during October and early November of 1861 portray a man who
believed his command and his own life were threatened by the growing
Confederate threat and a lack of adequate forces to stop it. Many throughout the country thought that surely such notions of a long and protracted conflict requiring so many men must be either off base or insane.
In Sherman's letters, his inner battles and frustrations poured out to his readers. To Robert Anderson, he apprised his former commander of the situation
in Kentucky and his many concerns regarding the state, as well as his own
feelings of inadequacy to the task at hand:
We
have now a pretty large force in Kentucky, but the Regiments are hastily
assembled and poorly disciplined, and being still in a manner dependant on the
Railroad they are scattered. My deep earnest conviction from the secession
feeling wherever I went, and from my knowledge of the forces collected round
about Kentucky I made my declaration that
we should need in this Department a very large force, and the very
gingerly way in which they came induced me to think the War Department did not
share with me these fears and apprehensions at not only the loss of Kentucky,
but the forces sent here—I asked that Halleck or any one else be sent here, and
Buell has been here a week, in command and I am ordered to Saint Louis.
I
confess I never have seen daylight in the midst of the troubles that now
envelope us. I am therefore disqualified to lead, and must follow—you know with
what reluctance I entered on my command and have always felt that Somehow or
other I would be disgraced by it.
In the letter which he wrote to his brother John, Sherman
again elucidated his fears and worries regarding not only Kentucky, but the
perilous state in which the nation rested:
Your letter was received
yesterday. I know that others than yourself think I take a gloomy view of
affairs without cause. I hope to God tis so. All I know is the fact that all
over Kentucky the People are allied by birth interest and preference to the
South…
One soldier less than two
hundred thousand will be imperiled the moment the Confederates choose… I suppose
I have been morose and cross—and could I now hide myself in some obscure corner
I would so, for my conviction is that our Government is destroyed, and that no
human power can restore it—They have sent me here old Condemned European
muskets, and have sent no arms for Cavalry, and when I bought pistols wherewith
to arm some scouts, the accounts have been disallowed at Washington because I
had not procured authority beforehand. Troops came from Wisconsin and Minnesota
without arms, and receive such as we have here for the first time, and I cannot
but look upon it as absolutely sacrificing them. I see no hope for them. In
their present raw and undisciplined condition they are helpless, and some
terrible disaster is inevitable—Buell is however imbued with the same spirit
that prevails in Washington that there are plenty of Union people, South, in
Tennessee and Kentucky, and does not share with me in my fear of the People
among whom we live.
In
closing, Sherman proclaims that as long as the attitude in Washington went
unchanged, he would not desire or seek a command for himself. Thus, following his dismissal from Kentucky, he had only to move on to his next post. “For myself I will blindly obey my orders
and report to General Halleck in Missouri—but till I can see daylight ahead I
will never allow myself to be in command.”
While Sherman's next post was in Missouri with General Henry Halleck, his fears and worries followed him from Kentucky. Rumors began to spread that the general had gone insane. Some even
feared he would take his own life; to that end, Sherman’s wife, Ellen Ewing
Sherman, was sent to comfort and rescue her beleaguered and troubled husband. Sherman
later told his wife that during this stretch of time he had thoughts of
suicide. When in Missouri in late November, Halleck had Dr. J.B. Wright, the
medical director for his department, examine Sherman to discover what was
troubling him. Wright’s analysis suggested that Sherman was so riddled by
nerves “that he was unfit for command” (Marszalek, Sherman: A Soldier's Passion for Order, 164). Because of such
conclusions, as well as Sherman’s persistent worrying regarding an imminent
Confederate attack all along the Union positions in the West, he was given a 20 day leave. Thus, Brigadier General William Tecumseh
Sherman was sent home to Lancaster, Ohio, with his wife. Today, Sherman’s name
evokes images of Atlanta in flames, a long column of Union troops snaking its
way through Georgia, and a victorious march down the streets of Washington for
the Grand Review of May, 1865. However, in November of 1861, all of that was
but an impossible dream, as William Tecumseh Sherman had fallen from grace due
to uncertainty, nerves, and fear.
