The Smithsonian
Collections
Timeline
Resources
Slavery & Abolition
Abraham Lincoln
First Blood
Soldiering
Weapons
Leaders
Cavalries
Navies
Life & Culture
Appomattox
Winslow Homer
Mathew Brady
Home
Site Index
Comments
     
 




 

 

 




 

William T. Sherman (1820–1891)


“War is war and not popularity-seeking.” With these words to his Confederate opponent at Atlanta, General William T. Sherman suggested the attitude that made him a successful Civil War commander and a bitterly hated figure in the South. He stripped war of glory and chivalry. By his destructive march through Georgia and his later campaign in the Carolinas, he demolished the economic base of the Confederacy and shattered the morale of its citizens. His methods anticipated twentieth-century total war.

Influenced perhaps by Sherman’s reputation for ruthless tactics in the field, artist G. P. A. Healy once noted that he found the Union general a forbidding portrait subject at first. But as the posing progressed, he found the general quite convivial. Eventually Healy made three versions of his finished likeness. The one here was done for Sherman’s family, and another was auctioned off to raise funds for the Civil War wounded.


George Peter Alexander Healy (1813–1894)
Oil on canvas, 1866
National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution
Transfer from the Smithsonian American Art Museum; gift of P. Tecumseh Sherman, 1935

 

Home SI