baronessekat | 2017 reading challenge: a book tied to your ancestry

William Tecumseh Sherman: In the Service of My Country: A Life by James Lee McDonough

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Outside of the stuff you learn in school... even taking a class in college on the American Civil War, I can't say that I knew much about General Sherman. This book was a wonderfully well written account of the man's life. It felt well researched and the body of the book did not feel like it was just a regurgitation of bland facts.

I can say that throughout the book, my one thought kept coming back to his family. He married a woman who knew he was not religious, yet kept trying to force him to convert to Catholicism. She and her family were constantly harping on him to quit the army, which he was more than clear that he loved and felt was his calling, because they wanted his wife to have the lifestyle she grew up with. And when he did finally cave and go into the private sector, he was miserable to the point of making himself sick and still could not make the money that she wanted to spend. It seemed that it was ONLY when the war broke out and he returned to the military AND achieved a rank that might be socially respectable did they suddenly have a change of face and back him in the occupation that he loved, though still seeming to spend what they did not have. Frankly with the constant badgering, criticizing and nagging, it's no wonder that Sherman preferred the military that took him away and rarely had him home.

Even in death, his family didn't seem to care about his wishes and did what they wanted - including the Catholic funeral and the funeral train, when he just wanted to a quite burial with no services or pomp and circumstance.

Sherman came across as a man who did not get respect from his family and therefore strove to get outside validation. Which he did. Despite the reputation he earned in the South because of his march to the sea, he was a man who was aware of the toll war took on the non-combatants and did what he could to cripple the military without being overly cruel to those who were not in it. In fact, my own family was one whose home was spared by Sherman, though he did burn the fields. My family story states he came to the plantation, finding that only my great-great grandmother there with a toddler, an infant and one house servant, ordered the house to be spared, burned the crops, but left a milk cow so that the children would not suffer. And based on the accounts in this book, though I still question the cow part, am pretty sure that the family story holds true.

All in all, while a long book, (over 800 pages in physical form and over 28 hours as an audio), I found it compelling, engaging and am glad I listened to it.

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