Docents at William Tecumseh Sherman’s boyhood home in Lancaster, Ohio, treat visitors to a telling anecdote from the general’s youth. The ginger-complected Sherman was so incensed when a foster brother christened him “red-haired woodpecker” that he furiously concocted a chemical treatment and dyed the offending mane . . . green.
“Dirty, ragged, and saucy,” is how Sherman characterized his army. The description could be applied to its leader as well, with “theatrical,” “mercurial,” and “ferocious” appended for good measure. Cump, as intimates called him, was a grand character in an era populated by them. But the full scope of his personality and the reach of his life are less understood and contemplated than those of many other primary players of the Civil War.
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