William Sherman Union General Born in an Ohio frontier town in 1820, William Tecumseh Sherman began his military career as a 16-year-old cadet at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point. But as a young officer, William grew restless at the lack of action, and he resigned from the army in 1853. When the Civil War broke out in 1861, he was recalled to the Union army. He played a major role in the defeat of the South by taking the city of Atlanta and marching through Georgia to Savannah. He firmly believed that to win, he had to end the South's will to fight. Southerners hated him for the destruction he unleashed. But he was a brillant general, and to Northerners he remained a hero until the end of his life.
