Monterey-San Francisco-Statewide County CA Archives Biographies.....Sherman, Gen. William T. February 8, 1820 - February 14, 1891
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Ila Wakley iwakley@msn.com October 30, 2010, 2:02 pm

Source: California and Californians, Vol. IV, Published 1932, Pages  90 - 91
Author: The Lewis Publishing Company

     GEN. WILLIAM T. SHERMAN. If General Sherman had not become a great 
American for his important part in the Civil war his early life in this state 
would have made him a great Californian.

     William Tecumseh Sherman was born in Lancaster, Ohio, February 8, 1820. 
His father died when he was nine, his mother a little later, and he was 
brought up in the home of the Hon. Thomas Ewing, who secured him an 
appointment at West Point, where he graduated in 1840. He was stationed in the 
South and devoted his spare time to studying law. When the Mexican war was 
imminent Sherman was sent by sea to California, and served at Monterey as 
assistant adjutant general. He was here from 1847 to 1850.

     When gold was discovered he visited many mining camps on all the streams 
from the American to the Tuolumne to get first-hand information for an 
official report to the President. In 1848 he was one of the American army 
officers who surveyed Sacramento and laid it out in blocks and lots.

     In 1850 Sherman returned East and was stationed at St. Louis and later at 
New Orleans. In September, 1853, he resigned from the army and came back to 
San Francisco as the manager of Lucas, Turner & Company's Bank. On this trip 
to California the ship he was on went ashore at Bolinas Bay because of the 
lack of lighthouses on the coast. Sherman was one of the strongest advocates 
of adequate marine protection and also emphasized the necessity for an 
interocean canal across the Isthmus of Panama.

     As a banker he was prominent in the business affairs of San Francisco, 
and because of his experience as a soldier he was appointed major-general of 
the California militia. In that capacity he worked hard for the preservation 
of law and order, and if he had been given proper support he probably would 
have prevented many of the disturbances that characterized San Francisco in 
1856. The governor, however, was indecisive and after a little Sherman 
resigned from the militia.

     Business conditions became unsettled in California and in 1857 Sherman 
left San Francisco and returned to New York. Until the beginning of the Civil 
war he engaged in various activities he was in business in New York, he 
practiced law in Leavenworth, Kansas, he was superintendent of a military 
academy in Louisiana, and the president of a street railway company in St. 
Louis.

     In May, 1861, he reentered the army as colonel of the Thirteenth Infantry 
and in a few weeks was appointed brigadier-general. Grant said of him, after 
the battle of Shiloh, in which he played a conspicuous part: To his individual 
efforts I am indebted for the success of that battle." Throughout the war he 
served brilliantly, and upon Grant's appointment as full general in 1866 
Sherman was made lieutenant general. When Grant was elected President Sherman 
succeeded him as general.

     General Sherman retired from the army in February, 1884, and died in New 
York February 14, 1891. Not only as a great general, but also as a man whose 
greatness was tried and trained in the turbulent California of the '40s 
and '50s we should remember him.—By Eric Howard. 

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