Sherman: A Soldier’s Passion for Order
By John F. Marszalek

Illustrated, map, notes, bibliography, index, 635 pp., 2007 reprint. Southern Illinois University Press, 1915 University Press Dr., Carbondale, IL 62901, $24.95 plus shipping.

Reviewer: Carl R. Schenker Jr.
Carl R. Schenker Jr. is a lawyer living in Washington, D.C. His wife, Susan Sherman Richardson, is a great-great-granddaughter of William Tecumseh Sherman. Schenker is the author of “Grant’s Rise from Obscurity” in North & South magazine.

Review:
This is a softbound reissue of the 1993 biography of William Tecumseh Sherman, my wife’s great-great-grandfather, written by John Marszalek. My reaction when it was first issued was to urge the book upon my wife and to buy more copies for her parents and siblings.

Marszalek’s 500 pages of text lay out in pleasing proportions: approximately one quarter is devoted to Sherman’s prewar life (highlighted by his days as a soldier and banker in Gold Rush California), one half to the Civil War years, and one quarter to his important postwar career (as national icon, Indian fighter, godfather to the railroads, and the man who would not take a presidency that he probably could have had).

For this review, knowing more about Sherman and the Civil War than I did when this book was first issued, I have reread the nine Civil War chapters. My reaction now is to be happy to have purchased the reissued book for members of my family and to recommend it to a broader audience.

Sherman’s Civil War career is an incredibly rich tale, involving many of the war’s most prominent events and controversies, as he moved from the earliest battlefields to the latest, on a great loop from Bull Run to Shiloh to Vicksburg to Chattanooga to Atlanta to Savannah to Bentonville to the Grand Review in Washington.

He started as a colonel with a nonexistent regiment and ended as commander of the vast Military Division of the Mississippi, often in the midst of personal or familial turmoil.

Marszalek captures this saga in an account that is richly researched and annotated, steadily paced and smoothly written. He is fundamentally sympathetic to Sherman and his hard-war policies, but criticizes his generalship at Chickasaw Bayou, Missionary Ridge and Kennesaw Mountain and his decisions to let vulnerable Confederate armies slip away from Atlanta, Savannah and Bentonville.

What are the book’s shortcomings? Unfortunately, there are no maps of campaigns or battlefields. I did not find two of my favorite Sherman quotations, noticed three or four errors of detail, and would have liked more insight into Sherman’s relationships with his important subordinate generals.

Also, there are few new features in the reprint, only new cover art from a Mathew Brady photograph and a brief new preface. I wish the latter had discussed the differences in perspective between Marszalek and the more recent but less exhaustive biographies of Sherman by Michael Fellman, the late Stanley Hirshson and Lee Kennett.