Brooks D. Simpson

On 12 September 1864, ten days after the fall of Atlanta to
Union soldiers, Ulysses S. Grant dispatched staff officer
Horace Porter to the headquarters of General William T.
Sherman to discuss what to do next. Porter had never met
Sherman, although he had heard more than enough from
Grant about the general and the man. Eight days later, he
approached Sherman's headquarters, a brick house off the
courthouse square, and saw the general sitting on the porch,
scanning a newspaper. "With his large frame, tall, gaunt form,
restless hazel eyes, aquiline nose, bronzed face, and crisp
beard," the staff officer recalled, "he looked the picture of
'grim-visaged war.'" Sherman called on Porter to take a seat
and began to talk, exhibiting "a peculiar energy of manner
in uttering the crisp words and epigrammatic phrases which
fell from his lips as rapidly as shots from a magazine-gun. I
soon realized that he was one of the most dramatic and pic-
turesque characters of the war." He is also one of the most
controversial figures in American military history, primarily
because of his willingness to bring the war home to Confed-
erate civilians--a policy most vividly demonstrated in the
March to the Sea ( November-December 1864) and the March
through the Carolinas ( February-April 1865). ¹

Henry M. Hitchcock, who joined Sherman's staff as mili-
tary secretary some six weeks later, got a chance to observe
the general up close during the military campaigns which
would mark his chief claim to fame--and infamy. A nephew
of General Ethan Allen Hitchcock, he had practiced law in
St. Louis before the war. For three years he had watched the
course of conflict; by 1864, he wanted to participate, and so
his uncle presented him to Secretary of War Edwin M.
Stanton with the words, "Here is a young fellow spoiling for
a fight." He was assigned to the Judge Advocate General
and sent to Sherman (who had met him in St. Louis).

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