Letters of William T. Sherman Leading Up to The Battle of Bull Run

            William Tecumseh Sherman is one of the key figures of the Civil War. He served as a general in the Union army under Ulysses S. Grant during the war.  Sherman would be appointed as the Union commander in the western theater of the war by Grant and would later be promoted to Grant’s position as Commanding General of the Army. Sherman was known for being one of the Union’s top military strategists, while also earning a reputation for his scorched earth polices. Using a few letters that Sherman sent during the war, I hope to find an in interesting look into the mind of a man who was a key cog in the Union’s defeat of the Confederacy.

The letters I’ve decided to focus on cover the week leading up to the First Battle of Bull Run. From these letters we can see a man who realizes that his life can end at any moment, a man that is dealing with the reality of an army that is made up of men who are not trained for this type of conflict, and finally a man who comes out on the losing end of a .major battle in the early part of the war. The selected letters that I will be focusing on are between Sherman and his wife Ellen and his brother John Sherman.

            The first letter sent is on July 16^th, 1861 to Sherman’s wife Ellen Ewing Sherman. The first thing that stands out to me is how much military strategy he shares with his wife. He tells her the number of men in each unit, 3400 in his case. He also tells her of his plan to attack Beauregard’s headquarters from the rear. The next thing that stands out to me is the clear feeling of impending doom. Sherman almost seems to be writing a goodbye to his wife, telling her of the things she needs to do in case he doesn’t come back. While many in government believed that the war would be quick and relatively painless, Sherman believed otherwise. At one point he tells his wife, “I still regard this as the beginning of a long war, but I hope that my judgment therein is wrong, and that the People of the South may yet see the folly of their unjust rebellion.” The next letter to his wife, which is sent two days before the Battle, he writes his wife telling her of General Tyler making an unauthorized attack, which led to the sever wounding of four of his soldiers. This letter begins a theme of Sherman’s uneasiness with the volunteer soldiers. He also continues to discuss the confidence in his wife and their children should anything befall him.

            The next set of letters are to his brother John.  The first is actually sent the same day as the first letter to his wife. In this letter Sherman again sends quite a bit of tactical information to his loved ones. He tells his brother that they plan to strike the next day with a force of 35,000 men. Again Sherman emphasizes to his brother what needs to be done should he not make it, ensuring that his wife gets his pay and that she be in charge of all of his affairs. His last letter before the July 21^st is sent to his brother on July 19^th. In this letter he details his march from a camp near Centerville to Bull Run. We again see Sherman frustrated with his volunteers as he tells his brother, “The volunteers test my patience by their irregularities. Robbing, shooting in direct opposition, and like conduct showing a great want of discipline. Twill take time to make soldiers of them.”

            In these letters leading up to the battle I believe there are two themes that run throughout them. The first is that he was clearly concerned about his well being leading up the battle. Each letter ends with a passage about “what may befall him.” He constantly refers to his children and the confidence he has in his wife about her and their family’s ability to raise them correctly. I believe that this fear for his life is also based on the fact that he was worried about the condition of his troops. More than once in his letters he refers to the fact that they are poorly trained and lack discipline. As with most of the soldiers in the war, they were volunteers or recruits and had little to no training.

For Sherman, the worries about what may befall him would prove to be founded. Sherman would end up being grazed by two bullets, one in the knee and the other in the shoulder. His other worry, the discipline of his troops, would also end up coming to fruition as some of his soldiers would desert the army after the loss. While Sherman would go on to find much success in the war, this short look into the mind of a man who was heading into one of the first major battles of the Civil War shows that these men were not soulless killing machines who were happy to fight off their fellow man. After looking over Sherman’s letters, we see a man who while in charge of thousands of men, had his doubts about what he was heading into.

Sherman, William.  Sherman’s Civil War: Selected Correspondence of William T Sherman.  Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 116-119..