Open forum: William Tecumseh Sherman: Was he the ‘South’s best friend’?

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John Marszalek, march through Georgia, open forum, William Tecumseh Sherman

Historian John Marszalek spoke to the Roundtable on Tuesday, July 12, about William Tecumseh Sherman, the Union general whose march through Georgia in 1864 brought a “hard war” to the civilian population.

William Tecumseh Sherman

The event still echoes in the minds of Americans.

But Marszalek called Sherman the “South’s best friend.”

KCWRT.org invites readers to participate in an open forum about William Tecumseh Sherman. You may have been present to hear Marszalek’s presentation. If so, let us know what you think.

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William Tecumseh Sherman: Marching through the American mind

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Ed Caudill, John Singleton Mosby, march through Georgia, Nathan Bedford Forrest, Paul Ashdown, William Tecumseh Sherman

The Union Army, under the command of William Tecumseh Sherman, decamped from a devastated and burning Atlanta on November 16, 1864 and marched across the expanse of Georgia until it reached Savannah. The purpose, according to its commander, was to bring the horrors of war into the farms, fields, parlors and living rooms of the South in a way that would teach Southerners the futility of continuing the fight for their independence.

William Tecumseh Sherman

The march through Georgia took almost exactly a month. A week before Christmas, Sherman wired President Abraham Lincoln from Savannah, offering him the city as a “Christmas present.”

Sherman succeeded far beyond anything that he had in mind at the beginning of his journey.

As Ed Caudill and Paul Ashdown (two of my good friends and colleagues at the University of Tennessee) write in their Sherman’s March in Myth and Memory: