Friday, March 29, AD 2024 5:36am

Father Thomas Ewing Sherman

Abraham Lincoln said that “A House divided against itself cannot stand”.  Thomas Ewing Sherman was born into a House divided by religion on  October 12, 1856.  He was the son of William Tecumseh Sherman, at the time an obscure former officer, and Ellen Ewing Sherman.  Ellen Sherman was a devout Catholic, and, I think, a saint.  She constantly did good works and was a champion of the Church her entire life.  Among her many activities was the foundation of the Catholic Indian Missionary Association, and a prominent role in the Golden Jubilee celebrations in the US of the reign of Pio Nono in 1877 for which she received the personal thanks of the Pope.

William Tecumseh Sherman attended mass with his family when he was at home prior to the Civil War, but ceased doing so during the War.  He and Ellen had been raised together, Ellen’s father, Thomas Ewing, a Senator from Ohio, taking the orphan “Cump” Sherman into his home after the death of Sherman’s father, an Ohio Supreme Court justice, in 1829.  The Ewings were devout Catholics, although Thomas would not be baptized into the Faith until just before his death after decades of attending mass, and “Cump” was baptized a Catholic while living with them.  Sherman’s religious views are often described as agnostic but that is an oversimplification.  I think he basically believed in God, but he was skeptical of organized religion and especially the Catholic Church.  However, he had no objection to Ellen raising all of their children as Catholics, but over the years the religious tension between Sherman and his wife grew. 

The Shermans had eight children.  Thomas Sherman was probably his father’s favorite, being his eldest surviving son and blessed with a good mind.  He attended Georgetown and graduated with a BA in 1874.  He received a law degree from Washington University in 1878.  His father assumed that Thomas would go far in this world and he was shocked when his son announced that he was going to become a Jesuit.

In a letter dated April 21, 1885 to Mrs. Mary Audenreid, the widow of his former chief of staff, and perhaps his mistress, he made his opposition to his son’s decision clear:  “With Catholics the church is Greater than God himself and they will abandon Father & Mother if the Church Commands.  I have read your letter carefully and now write to repeat my advice of this morning that you allow Florence [her 18-year-old daughter] rope. Let her play her own game.Tell her to take her own way and you choose yours. If she becomes a nun she can do no harm and is dead to the world. Natures God intended all women to be mothers but if all breed too fast, wars, pestilence and famine come to destroy the surplus. I confess that I feared Florence would err on the other side, but if she has been indoctrinated let her go her course – you keep up your house ready & willing to afford her at all times a safe refuge. I remember well my feelings when Tom [29-year-old son, Thomas Ewing Sherman, his eldest living son] left me, his sisters & all for the Church and my judgment remains the same that it was an awful crime against nature for I had a right to depend on him in my old age to look after those dependent on me. I hope Cump [18-year-old son, Philemon Tecumseh Sherman, his youngest child] will take his place but even in that I have not absolute confidence “

Nothing daunted by his father’s opposition Thomas went forward with his plans to become a priest.  He explained his decision with these words:    “People in love do strange things. Having a vocation is like being in love only more so, as there is no love so absorbing, so deep and so lasting as that of the creature for the Creator.”

He did his novitiate in London, England and Frederick, Maryland.  He was ordained a priest in 1889.  His mother died the year before and it is to be regretted that she did not live to see her eldest son become a priest in the Jesuit order.  His father died on February 14, 1891 in New York.  He was surrounded by his children who made certain he received the Last Rites of the Church.  Thomas said his funeral mass.

Father Thomas Sherman was a much sought after speaker among the Jesuits, emphasizing love of God and love of country, and ardently opposing socialism, anarchism and anti-Catholicism.  He was quite popular with Civil War veterans’ groups, and became very much a national figure.  He taught at Jesuit colleges in Saint Louis and Detroit.  During the Spanish American war he served as a chaplain in the Puerto Rican campaign.  He fell in love with the land and the people and often spoke about his desire to be a missionary priest there, but such was not to be. 

Father Sherman would be called a workaholic today, and after a little over two decades of strenuous activity in the priesthood, he suffered a nervous collapse in 1911.  He became convinced in his disturbed state of mind that he had no hope for eternal salvation.  He left the Jesuits, eventually living with his wealthy niece Eleanor Sherman Fitch shortly before his death in 1933.  Just before his death he renewed his Jesuit vows.

He is buried in the Jesuit cemetery at Grand Coteau Louisiana, next to Father John Salter,SJ, grandnephew of Alexander Stephens, Vice-President of the Confederacy.

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jh
jh
Wednesday, September 15, AD 2010 7:30am

Ah a interesting Man. For those that want to visit his grave if you happen to be on I-49 or near Lafayette Grand Couteau ( a beautiful historic liite Town with a ton of Great Catholic history) is just off the Intersate. You can get to his grave in minutes

Dale Price
Dale Price
Wednesday, September 15, AD 2010 10:48am

I wonder if his nervous breakdown was partially genetic, given his father’s problems.

Another great piece, Donald.

Jay Anderson
Wednesday, September 15, AD 2010 11:47am

“Ellen Sherman was a devout Catholic, and, I think, a saint.”

Too bad her husband was a war criminal.

“William Tecumseh Sherman attended mass with his family when he was at home prior to the Civil War, but ceased doing so during the war.”

Too bad. Maybe if he had kept it up he wouldn’t have been a war criminal.

That’s not just Southern sour grapes. I am a great admirer of men like Joshua Chamberlain and George Thomas (my favorite Union general). I’ll even give Grant his due, mostly for his magnanimity at Appomattox. Sherman and Sheridan? Not so much.

Tom
Tom
Thursday, September 16, AD 2010 9:52am

Glad his son could infinitely repair the moral evil perpetrated by his, yes, war criminal father… an excellent example that there is no such thing as “fate” or genetic determinism, and every soul is free to choose the good and the right.

The needless reduction by bombing of Atlanta (a grim foreshadowing of the deliberate destruction of civilian targets in WWII, e.g., Dresden, London, Hiroshima, Nagasaki); the crimes condoned by his command during the March to the Sea; the abduction and deportation of 400 women for the “crime” of weaving tents at a Georgia cotton mill, etc. etc.

Sorry, but Sherman was certainly the father of the modern and immoral concept of total war which denied the distinction between combatant and non-combatant which had carefully developed over the centuries as part of the Christian just war doctrine.

Dale Price
Dale Price
Thursday, September 16, AD 2010 12:42pm

As with all discussions of Sherman and Sheridan, I recommend a review of the Lieber Code.

http://avalon.law.yale.edu/19th_century/lieber.asp

Francis Lieber’s work was a codification of the laws of war as they existed at the time, and involved few, if any, innovations. The destruction of an armed enemy’s civilian property was clearly contemplated an an accepted part of warfare at that time. It would be limited and finally banned over the next few decades, just as slavery was written out of legitimacy.

I don’t endorse or trumpet the morality of certain actions of some of the Union forces during the war, but “rubbish” is a lot nicer term than I’d use for analogizing the March to the Sea to Hiroshima or Dresden. Equating the incineration of property to the incineration of human beings trivializes the latter.

Tom
Tom
Thursday, September 16, AD 2010 12:50pm

Well, under the Catholic just war doctrine, most recently embodied in the Catholic Catechism, what Sherman did was a violation of just war principles, or precisely, jus in bello.

“Actions which are forbidden, and which constitute morally unlawful orders that may not be followed, include:

– attacks against, and mistreatment of, non-combatants, wounded soldiers, and prisoners…

– indiscriminate destruction of whole cities or vast areas with their inhabitants.”

The destruction of Atlanta alone violated these principles, and the destruction of civilian infrastructure, such as cotton mills, and the forcible seizure and deportation of their civilian employees, certainly violates these principles.

That this practice may appear mild vs. subsequent war crimes in the 20th century, or that these offenses were supposedly common practice, is irrelevant.

Tom
Tom
Thursday, September 16, AD 2010 1:08pm

Oh, and the destruction of Atlanta is what presages Dresden, not the subsequent march to the sea. “I peremptorily required that all the citizens and families resident in Atlanta should go away, giving to each the option to go south or north, as their interests or feelings dictated. I was resolved to make Atlanta a pure military garrison or depot, with no civil population to influence military measures.”
Then on Nov. 15, 1864 Sherman simply burned the town to the ground, destroying home, factories, churches, and shops.

Why? He didn’t want a hostile civilian population in his rear as he began his notorious March to the Sea.

Sorry, but deliberate destruction of private homes and businesses, and forcible depopulation and deportation of entire civilian populations is just flat out immoral and criminal, and can in no way be justified by reference to any Christian principles of just warfare.

Tom
Tom
Thursday, September 16, AD 2010 1:11pm

My point of reference is not what was acceptable practice at the time (while not conceding that the Federal practice of deliberate destruction of civilian property and deportations was accepted practice), but whether what was done is justifiable by any recognized Christian principle of just war.

Jo Flemings
Jo Flemings
Thursday, October 7, AD 2010 8:27pm

Ok, I have not studied this indepth but I am interested in this because I am a Southerner and I was a cadet at West Point, and I am a Catholic convert. I think Sherman was pretty miserable about what he believed his duty required of him as a soldier and commander in the Civil War, and I think that might have been what stood between him and a more public expression of faith in God. I think he was a good man at heart, a principled man, but a man to whom a tragic duty fell and when it did he saw very clearly the brutal path necessary for a successful end and outcome to the war. I also believe he was pretty disgusted by the whole thing, by the war, by his own actions- but would see it to the finish because it was his duty- and he was a man of tenacity. Who knows but maybe that up close misery made anything idealistic about God’s goodness, mercy, and love hard to swallow.You know there is never a civil war that does not devastate all participants so it’s not like anyone who lived through that could walk away feeling good about any of it. I think Sherman found his own peace in life, but the chasm in his understanding gouged out by his experience might have made his family’s faith life foreign to him- and who knows how much his ‘saintly’ wife was able or willing to help him with that? And then later when his son cracks- is it possible that his sorrow was the same kind- maybe he could not find a path of reconciliation between something in himself and the idealism inherent in our understanding of our faith or in its expression- until the time when God’s grace reached him in a critical place/plane. I am guessing, but it’s possible. In any case these men were heroic in so many ways, both of them.

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