William Tecumseh Sherman was more than just one of our greatest
generals. "Fierce Patriot" is a bold, revisionist portrait of how
this iconic and enigmatic figure exerted an outsize impact on the
American landscape--and the American character.
America's first "celebrity" general, William Tecumseh Sherman was
a man of many faces. Some of them were exalted in the public eye.
Others were known only to intimates--his family, friends and
lovers, and the soldiers under his command. In this rich and
layered portrait, Robert L. O'Connell captures the man in full for
the first time. From his early exploits in Florida, to his role in
California at the start of the Gold Rush, through his brilliant but
tempestuous generalship during the Civil War, and to his postwar
career as a key player in the building of the transcontinental
railroad, Sherman was, as O'Connell puts it, the "human embodiment
of Manifest Destiny."
Here is Sherman the military strategist of genius, a master of
logistics whose uncanny grasp of terrain and brilliant sense of
timing always seemed to land him in the right place at the most
opportune moments. O'Connell shows how Sherman's creation of an
agile, improvisational fighting force--the Army of the West--helped
turn the tide of the Civil War and laid the foundation for modern
U.S. ground forces. Then there is "Uncle Billy," Sherman's public
persona, a charismatic hero to his troops and quotable catnip to
the newspaper writers of his day.
Here, too, is the private Sherman. He was born into one powerhouse
family--his grandfather signed the Declaration of Independence--and
was adopted into another. His foster father, Thomas Ewing, was an
influential politician and cabinet member who helped provide key
opportunities for Sherman throughout his career. But Sherman's
fraught relationship with Ewing, coupled with his appetite for
women, parties, and the high life of the New York theater,
certainly complicated his already turbulent marriage to his foster
sister Ellen, a relationship O'Connell likens to a mix of
"gunpowder and gasoline"--altogether a family triangle that might
have sprung from the pages of a Victorian novel.
As he peels away the layers of the Sherman persona, O'Connell
dispels a number of common misperceptions about his subject. He
sheds new light on Sherman's relationship with Ulysses S. Grant,
and also on his struggle against Nathan Bedford Forrest and the
insurgency that was the other half of the Civil War along the
Mississippi. Later he reveals Sherman's fabled march from Atlanta
to the sea not as a campaign of unmitigated destruction, as it is
often portrayed, but the careful execution of a necessary piece of
strategy calculated to scare the South back into the Union.
O'Connell's Sherman is no Attila, but a complicated
soldier/statesman--perhaps the quintessential nineteenth-century
American.
Warrior, family man, American icon, William Tecumseh Sherman has
finally found a biographer worthy of his protean gifts. A masterful
character study whose myriad insights are leavened with its
author's trademark wit, "Fierce Patriot" will stand as the
essential book on Sherman for decades to come.
Advance praise for" Fierce Patriot"
"William Tecumseh Sherman is one of the great characters in
American history--protean, highly effective, cunning, outrageous,
and in every way memorable. He has found just the right biographer
in Robert L. O'Connell. "Fierce Patriot" is a surprising, clever,
wise, and powerful book."--Evan Thomas, author of "Ike's Bluff:
President Eisenhower's Secret Battle to Save the World"
"From the Hardcover edition."
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