02/15/2024 – “Victor Davis Hanson joins Pepperdine School of Public Policy Dean Pete Peterson for a four-part seminar series titled . This set of special interviews will explore the class “Roots of American Leadership in Peace and War” currently being taught by Dr. Hanson to Pepperdine School of Public Policy graduate students. This episode: William Tecumseh Sherman
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Tecumseh_Sherman
Short excerpts:
“After the April 12–13 bombardment of Fort Sumter and its subsequent capture by the Confederacy, Sherman hesitated about committing to military service. He privately ridiculed Lincoln’s call for 75,000 three-month volunteers to quell secession, reportedly saying: “Why, you might as well attempt to put out the flames of a burning house with a squirt-gun.”[71] In May, however, he offered himself for service in the regular Army. Senator John Sherman (his younger brother and a political ally of President Lincoln) and other connections in Washington helped him to obtain a commission.[72] On June 3, he wrote in a letter to his brother-in-law: “I still think it is to be a long war—very long—much longer than any Politician thinks.”[73]“
“General Grant is a great general. I know him well. He stood by me when I was crazy, and I stood by him when he was drunk; and now, sir, we stand by each other always.[146]“
“Sherman’s military legacy rests primarily on his command of logistics and on his brilliance as a strategist. The influential 20th-century British military historian and theorist B. H. Liddell Hart ranked Sherman as “the first modern general” and one of the most important strategists in the annals of war, along with Scipio Africanus, Belisarius, Napoleon Bonaparte, T. E. Lawrence, and Erwin Rommel.[192]“
Note: Patton did a special intensive study of Sherman early in his career.
Soli Deo Gloria!