Personal Recollections of Distinguished Generals. Shanks William Franklin Gore
army after Sherman took command. He subsequently became indirectly in command of the Army of the Cumberland, which, though directly commanded by that strict disciplinarian, General George H. Thomas, soon felt the effect of Sherman's presence and control, and became very relaxed in discipline. Subsequently, on the march to the sea and through the Carolinas under Sherman, the discipline of the formerly model armies became still more relaxed, and gradually the whole army became regular "Bummers," a term which is not generally understood in its proper sense of reproach. The people to this day only half know what a "bummer" is, from having a general idea of the character of Sherman as the chief of bummers. The veil of romance which surrounded Sherman's army has never been entirely torn away. Its pilgrimages are still romances. It has always been viewed in that dim and distant perspective which adds a charm to beauty, and hides internal troubles and blemishes, and the evils it did and the outrages it committed have never been made public. But the friends of Sherman might reasonably claim even the want of this special tact for organizing and disciplining troops as a virtue. It can not really be said to have detracted from Sherman's ability as a soldier. What was lost thereby to the army in discipline was made up in mobility. If its morale was bad, the marching was good, and that satisfied Sherman. If he did not teach his soldiers how to fight, he gave them the mobility which the execution of his strategic designs required of them, and thus the end aimed at was gained, and the country was satisfied. He merely changed his men from heavy to light infantry. Success justifies all means, and thus Sherman became – and justly became – a great general without ever having won a battle.
It is very strong language, I admit, to say that Sherman never won a battle, but considerately so, for if the purely tactical operations of General Sherman be critically examined, it will be found that they were almost invariably failures. He was the chief in command, the central and controlling power, in the battles of Chickasaw Bayou, Resaca, Kenesaw Mountain, and Jonesboro, all of which, with the bare exception of the latter, where his overpowering force and strategic march of the night before insured victory, were tactically great failures. The failure of the co-operative movements of Grant at Chickasaw Bayou doubtless caused Sherman's defeat at that point – at least it has served to explain it away, and stands as the excuse for it; but all will remember how signal a failure it was. The battle of Resaca was a still greater failure. Doubt, delay, and inaction lost Sherman the great advantage which his strategic march through Snake Creek Gap had given him in placing him in the rear of the enemy's position, and he ought to have captured every gun and wagon of the enemy, and dispersed the army which subsequently retarded his advance in Atlanta; but the battle was begun too late and pushed too feebly. Sherman's strategy had at one time rendered a battle unnecessary, and it was forced on him through another's indecision (I believe that General McPherson admitted before his death that that fault was his), but certainly it was the fault of Sherman that the battle, when fought, was indecisive. Every body will remember the Kenesaw Mountain battle and its useless sacrifices, and every body will remember, too, the candor with which Sherman wrote that it was a failure, and that the fault was his. All the minor engagements of his great campaign against Atlanta were either positive defeats or negative advantages, and yet that wonderful campaign was won, and all the advantages which could have under any circumstances accrued from it were gained to us without the losses which a great battle would have caused. The strategic marches executed during that campaign are now chapters in the theory and history of war, and the close student of the art will see more to admire in the passage of the Chattahoochee River, the march through the gorge of Snake Creek Gap, and across the Allatoona Mountains, and the flank movements around Kenesaw and Atlanta, than in the more dashing but less skillful marches through Georgia and the Carolinas. The campaign of Atlanta was made in the face of the enemy commanded by their most skillful general, while during the other and more famous marches no enemy was met. The campaign through Georgia was merely extensive; that against Atlanta was both grand in conception and difficult in execution. One was accomplished at a stride, the other step by step. The campaign of Atlanta gave rise not only to a new system of warfare, but even to a new system of tactics. Never before in the history of war had an army been known to be constantly under fire for one hundred consecutive days. Men whom three years of service had made veterans learned during that campaign a system of fighting they had never heard of before. The whole army became at once from necessity pioneers and sharp-shooters. The opposing armies lay so close to each other that not only pickets, but whole corps were within musket range of each other, and every camp had to be intrenched. As a singular fact, showing the impression made on the minds of the men by the changed tactics which this campaign rendered necessary, I may mention that the soldiers called each other "gophers" and "beavers;" and "gopher holes" were more common in the armies' track than were camp-fires. It used to be laughingly said of the men that, instead of "souring onto," i.e. taking without leave each other's rations, they were in the habit, during the Atlanta campaign, of purloining each other's pick-axes and spades with which to dig their "gopher holes" or trenches for their protection from the enemy's sharp-shooters. I imagine it is on this campaign and its results, rather than on that from Atlanta to the sea, and from thence to Goldsboro', that General Sherman would prefer to rest his reputation in the future. 2 We of to-day study the holiday marches from a very different stand-point from that which the generations which follow us will view them. When all things come to be critically examined and carefully summed up, it will be decided and adjudged that the battles which made the campaign to the sea and through the Carolinas successes were fought on the hills around Nashville by General Thomas, not by General Sherman. Yet they are not without their great merit. Undertaken with deliberation and after elaborate preparation, they were not wanting in boldness and originality of design, but they do not serve to illustrate strategy: it is only the logistics which are so admirable.
A great deal has been said and written about General Sherman's dislike for the newspapers and for that class of necessary nuisances which were with every army, the war correspondents; but it was a dislike that was in a great measure affected. All men are egotists, Grant and Sherman among the rest, and both like to be well spoken of and written about; they would hardly be human if they did not. In fact, if Sherman can not find somebody to write about him, he does it himself. One of the instances in which he has complimented himself is destined to give every student of the art of war a knowledge of this weak point of his character. Shortly after the successful passage of the Chattahoochee River in the face of the enemy, an operation which was among the finest accomplishments of the campaign of Atlanta, Sherman published an address to his troops, in which he said, with pardonable egotism, "The crossing of the Chattahoochee and breaking of the Augusta Road was most handsomely executed by us, and will be studied as an example in the art of war." A still greater piece of egotism from his pen is not less amusing. It is that letter in which he refers to his having been a scourge to the South, and in which he adds, "Think how much better that it was I than Ben Butler or some other of that school." This, to say the least, must have been pleasant to "Ben" and "others of that school," if not modest in General Sherman.
This egotism led to an affectation of simplicity in style and carelessness in habits which produced a very pleasant incident at Nashville in 1864. Sherman was very fond of the theatre, and would go as often as he found time. When he first arrived in the "City of Rocks," the manager of the "New Nashville Theatre" waited on him with the tender of a private box. The general declined it, and instead of appearing in a private box, would be found very frequently sitting in the pit of the theatre surrounded by his "boys in blue," and laughing at the comicalities or applauding the "points" with as much gusto as any of the audience. This affectation of the republican in manners gained him more notice than if he had sat in a private box, and every body enjoyed seeing him there except the manager, who complained that it was injuring his business. No officer dared to sit in a private box with Sherman present in the pit, and these places became, during Sherman's stay, "a beggarly account of empty boxes" indeed.
I once had a long conversation with General Sherman on the subject of the press and war correspondents, from which I learned very little more than that he was very much disposed to underrate the advantages of the one and the abilities of the other, but very willing to accept, though with an affected ill grace, the praises of either. He declared in that conversation that the government could well afford to purchase all the printing-presses in the country at the price of diamonds, and then destroy them, and that all the war correspondents should be hung as spies. Sherman, with all his affected contempt for
A more laborious campaign than that of Atlanta was never undertaken, and it is difficult to say which soldier deserves the most credit for the movements, Sherman or Joe Johnston. The retreats of the latter were not less admirable than the flank marches of the former, and Johnston showed as clean heels as Sherman did a fully guarded front. His camps were left barren; Sherman found only Johnston's smoking camp-fires, but no spoils left behind him. It was looked upon by the officers of Sherman's army as the "cleanest retreat of the war," and it is very evident now that, had Johnston remained in command, and been allowed to continue his Fabian policy, Sherman could never have made his march to the sea, and the capture of Atlanta would have been a Cadmean victory to him. Johnston proved himself a very superior soldier – in fact, the superior general of the Southern armies. If it could be said of any of the rebels, it could be said of Johnston that, in fact, he was