August at KCWRT: “The Question of Supplies” – The logisitics of Sherman’s Atlanta campaign

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Atlanta campaign, William Tecumseh Sherman

Join us as historian Greg Biggs examines the nuts and bolts of Sherman’s logistics including the errors that were made in the process. 

(Meeting details on the left side of this page.)

No army in history moved without a secure line of supplies especially if it moved into enemy territory.

If an army got cut off from its supplies calamity usually followed, often ending in defeat and/or destruction.

When William T. Sherman set his sights on Atlanta he prepared for the supplying of his army in a manner that surpassed every other Civil War general.  Rebuilding railroads and confiscating locomotives and cars to haul supplies, Sherman set daily goals for shipments to his forward base in Chattanooga.

Ruthless in making sure that only supplies got on the cars, Sherman also had to worry about protecting the line of rails that ran back to Louisville, Kentucky from Confederate raiders.

Marszalek tells KCWRT about Sherman’s “hard war” and “soft peace”

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Civil War, John Marszalek, Louisiana State University, video, William Tecumseh Sherman

John Marszalek, professor emeritus at Mississippi State University, said that William Tecumseh Sherman, despite his modern-day reputation, was the South’s “best friend” because he advocated a “hard war” and a “soft peace.”

John Marszalek on William Tecumseh Sherman as the “South’s best friend” from Jim Stovall on Vimeo.

Marszalek spoke to the Knoxville Civil War Roundtable on July 12, 2016 about the general whom many in the South and elsewhere consider a 19th century terrorist.

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.

If you weren’t able to attend, we still invite comments. You may want to respond to something one of the commenters has said, or you may have opinions of your own. Either way, we would like to hear from you.

To comment, click on the “Leave a comment” button just under the title of this post. Comments are moderated and should be civil and appropriate.

Or, respond to our survey:

Marszalek: Sherman was ‘no villain’

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John Marszalek, Knoxville Civil War Rountable, Shiloh, Ulysses S. Grant, William Tecumseh Sherman

The members of the Knoxville Civil War Roundtable will have to wait until Tuesday (July 12, 2016) to find out what historian John Marszalek has to say about William Tecumseh Sherman being “the South’s best friend.”

Before then, however, we can read a bit of what Marszalek has written about Sherman.

Here are some excerpts from Marszalek’s biography John F.. Sherman : A Soldier’s Passion for Order.

This from the Prologue:

William Tecumseh Sherman, photo by Matthew Brady

The destructive methods Sherman employed in the march to the sea were controversial, but he was no villain; he was one of the great military leaders of the Civil War. He knew how to outmaneuver a major Confederate army and how to destroy the Confederate will. He was an appealing individual, whom soldiers, family, and friends idolized. As a major public figure, he was in demand for both the office of the presidency and small social gatherings and public speeches. He impressed his contemporaries, influenced his age, and left a name for posterity.

Marszalek, John F.. Sherman : A Soldier’s Passion for Order. Carbondale, US: Southern Illinois University Press, 2007. ProQuest ebrary. Web. 7 July 2016.
Copyright © 2007. Southern Illinois University Press. All rights reserved.

Find out ‘more to the Sherman story’ at the July KCWRT meeting

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John Marszalek, William Tecumseh Sherman

Many people in the South, whether familiar with the Civil War or not, recoil at the mention of Gen. William T. Sherman.

William Tecumseh Sherman

The negative image of the man who wreaked havoc in the Carolinas and made “Georgia howl” persists to this day. But there is more to this story than first meets the eye. Sherman had many close relationships with Southerners before, during, and after the war. He spent most of his life after his 1840 graduation from West Point in the South, and just before the war began he was superintendent of the Louisiana Military Seminary, the forerunner of today’s Louisiana State University.

At the close of the war, this leading practitioner of “hard war” became the strongest advocate for a “soft peace,” so much so that he was roundly denounced by Stanton, Halleck and many Northern newspapers for the lenient peace terms he offered Joe Johnston.

‘Sherman: The South’s Best Friend’ is topic for July KCWRT meeting

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Assault at West Point, Civil War, generals, John Marszalek, Ulysses S. Grant, William Tecumseh Sherman

John F. Marszalek, the Giles Professor Emeritus of History at Mississippi State University, will be the speaker for the July meeting of the Knoxville Civil War Roundtable.

John Marszalek

Marzalek’s topic will be “William Tecumseh Sherman: The South’s Best Friend.”

Marzalek is the author of a number of books, including three on the life and career of Sherman.

The talk will begin  at 8 p.m., Tuesday, July 12, at the Bearden Banquet Hall, 5806 Kingston Pike. The cost for just attending the talk is $5; students may attend for free. Dinner is at 7 p.m. and costs $17 for non-members of the roundtable and $15 for members.  Those wishing to attend should RSVP by noon,  Monday July 11, by calling 865-671-9001.

Marzalek began teaching at MSU in 1973 and retired in 2002. He served as director and mentor of MSU’s Scholarship Program.

William Tecumseh Sherman: A reading list

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John Marszalek, William Tecumseh Sherman

William Tecumseh Sherman will be the topic of John Marszalek, the July speaker for the Knoxville Civil War Roundtable.

To help us prepare for John’s talk (you can find out more about it on our events page), I asked John to provide a reading list, and he kindly consented. Here is what he sent:

SHERMAN: A SOLDIER’S PASSION FOR ORDER was first published by the Free Press, then in paperback by Vintage Press, and most recently in paperback by Southern Illinois University Press.

From the Library Journal:

That Sherman was a troubled soul who sought to make his family appreciate his trials and triumphs is evident in the small cache of Sherman letters published for the first time in Joseph Ewing’s Sherman at War (Morningside, 1992). The new letters notwithstanding, Marszalek’s psychobiographical musings about Sherman’s inner self doubtless will cause some historians to blush. But the rich historical contextual material on everything from Western finances, Indian wars in Florida and the West, and Civil War military policy make Marszalek’s Sherman real and powerful. Highly recommended.
– Randall M. Miller, St. Joseph’s Univ., Philadelphia

SHERMAN’S MARCH TO THE SEA, paperback, published by McWhiney Foundation Press (distributed by Texas A and M University Press).

SHERMAN’S OTHER WAR, THE GENERAL AND THE CIVIL WAR PRESS with Memphis State University Press, but more recently a paperback by Kent State University Press.

Dorothy E. Kelly: The Civil War in Blount County

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Ambrose Burnside, Blount County TN, Fort Sanders, James Longstreet, Joseph Wheeler, Maryville TN, Rockford TN, William P. Sanders, William Tecumseh Sherman

By Dorothy E. Kelly, Knoxville Civil War Roundtable

Copyright 1998 by Dorothy E. Kelly. All rights reserved.

The Civil War brought division, dissension and hardship to Blount County, but no major battles. At one point in the War, however, Blount County found prominence thrust upon it as blue and gray cavalry wrestled for access to the “back door” to Knoxville.

William Price Sanders

Shortly after the September 1863 Confederate victory at Chickamauga, Confederate Major General James Longstreet moved from Chattanooga toward Knoxville with orders to capture or drive the Federals under Major General Ambrose E. Burnside out of East Tennessee. Longstreet’s cavalry under Major General Joseph Wheeler was ordered to push through Blount County to claim the heights on the Holston (now Tennessee) River opposite Knoxville. For several weeks prior to Longstreet’s advance in November of 1863, Blount County played host to Union cavalry under the command of Brigadier General William P. Sanders. Sanders’ assignment was to guard the Little Tennessee River fords against roving bands of Confederate cavalry and to notify the Federal authorities of any Confederate advance through Blount County. Blount County Unionists and Home Guards served as guides and scouts for the Federal cavalry, collecting information and reporting on Confederate activity in the area.

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: