By Todd Hatton / Berry Craig
http://stream.publicbroadcasting.net/production/mp3/wkms/local-wkms-990027.mp3
Murray, KY – Among the great figures of American Civil War history to tread the Bluegrass is a military man not commonly associated with the Commonwealth: William Tecumseh Sherman. On today's Kentucky Civil War Dispatch, we'll hear that after a lukewarm showing at Virginia's 1st Battle of Bull Run, but before making his reputation at Shiloh, Tennessee, Sherman had a bit of a rough time in the Bluegrass State.
On this date in 1861, Brigadier General William Tecumseh Sherman was having grave doubts about his new command in Kentucky.
Sherman had recently taken over the Union Department of the Cumberland, which included Kentucky, from General Robert Anderson, the Kentucky-born hero of Fort Sumter, who had resigned for health reasons.
In his book, Life of William Tecumseh Sherman, W. Fletcher Johnson writes that Sherman didn't want Anderson's job. He told the War Department as much and was assured that General Don Carlos Buell would be appointed to relieve him.
From his Louisville headquarters, Sherman complained to Washington that he had far too few troops to repel a Confederate attack. He expected the Rebels any day.
A Confederate army under Kentuckian General Albert Sidney Johnston was at Bowling Green, about 100 miles south of Louisville, and General Felix Zollicoffer's rebels were advancing into Kentucky from the Cumberland Gap.
Sherman respected Johnston as a commander and he expected Johnston would combine his forces with Zollicoffer's, then march both against Louisville.
Sherman wrote, "had he done so, in October 1861, he could have walked into Louisville, and the vital part of the population would have hailed him as a deliverer."
The general misjudged the citizenry. Most Louisvillians were Unionists.
Even so, Major Blanton Duncan of the First Kentucky Confederate Infantry and a Louisville native, believed his hometown was indeed ripe for Rebel picking. Duncan vowed, "I should gladly see all my possessions blazing, if necessary to aid in roasting Prentice, Guthrie, and Harney." The three were pro-Union leaders and newspaper editors.
Duncan was in Virginia, but Sherman feared the worst from Johnston. He declared he needed 2 hundred thousand troops to defend the Commonwealth, but said he had a mere 15 thousand.
Seeking first-hand information, U.S. Secretary of War Simon Cameron visited Sherman in mid-October. Cameron reported to President Abraham Lincoln, "Matters in Kentucky are in a much worse condition than I expected to find them." The secretary agreed Sherman required more soldiers, if not the 2 hundred thousand he wanted.
On November 15th, Don Carlos Buell took over from Sherman, who was transferred to the Saint Louis headquarters of the Department of the Missouri. Department commander, Major General Henry Wager Halleck, said Sherman was unfit for duty and sent him away.
Sherman went home, to Lancaster, Ohio. His request for 2 hundred thousand troops in Kentucky fueled rumors he'd gone insane.
Meanwhile, Louisville stayed on the Stars and Stripes. Confederates operated as far north as Elizabethtown, but never made any real effort to take Louisville itself until the late summer and fall of 1862. Union forces under Buell cut them off at the October 8th battle of Perryville, the bloodiest battle ever fought in the Bluegrass State.
Sherman returned to active duty in mid-December, 1861 and was assigned to Paducah the following February. He spent his brief time in Paducah organizing incoming recruits into the divisions he would later lead at Shiloh. After that battle on the west bank of the Tennessee River, his star rose. "Uncle Billy" went down in history as one of the Civil War's greatest generals, eclipsing Halleck and Buell.
But Buell's name lives on in Lexington. Buell Armory, long a University of Kentucky Landmark, is named for the Ohio-born general who worked in Kentucky after the war. He died there in 1898 at age 80. Sherman died in 1891, aged 71. He and Buell are buried in St. Louis, Missouri.
WKMS produces Kentucky Civil War Dispatches from West Kentucky Community and Technical College history professor Berry Craig. The Murray State alumnus is the author of Hidden History of Kentucky in the Civil War, Hidden History of Kentucky Soldiers and True Tales of Old-Time Kentucky Politics: Bombast, Bourbon, and Burgoo. For WKMS News, I'm Todd Hatton.