Personal Recollections of Distinguished GeneralsShanks, William Franklin Gore
History
Personal Recollections of Distinguished Generals
Shanks, William Franklin Gore
Generals -- United States; United States -- History -- Civil War, 1861-1865 -- Biography
and strategist, must always be ranked as greatly the superior of both
Thomas and Sherman.
General Sherman may be described as a bundle of nerves all strung to
their greatest tension. No woman was ever more painfully nervous; but
there is nothing of the woman's weakness in Sherman's restlessness.
It is not, as with others, a defect of the organization; it is really
Sherman's greatest strength, for from it results the brilliancy of
conception and design which has characterized his strategic movements,
the originality which has appeared in his views on political economy
and the policy of war, and the overwhelming energy which is "his all
in all," the secret and cause of his great success. From his extreme
nervousness results the most striking feature of his character--a
peculiar nervous energy which knows no cessation, and is resistless.
It is not merely that energy and quickness of movement which naturally
belongs to nervous organizations, but intensified a hundred fold. At
the same time, it is energy without system, and oftentimes without
judgment, but nevertheless always effective. General Sherman is the
engine, but he is not always the engineer. He furnishes the motive
power, but he frequently requires some person or thing to keep him
to the track; in fact, he requires to be controlled and directed.
He is untiring in his efforts; you can never dismay him with the
amount or frighten him with the dangers of a task; and he hesitates
at nothing, matters great and small receiving his attention. He is no
believer in that too common fallacy that labor is a wearisome waste
of the physical and vital powers; a punishment, not a privilege; and
degrading, not elevating. Work is necessary to his existence, and
hard, earnest work at that. Always a hard, earnest worker, he devoted,
during the continuance of the war, but little time to sleep, and that
little sleep was never sound. His active mind, I once heard him say
to a fellow-officer, delights in preposterous dreams and impossible
fancies, and, waking or sleeping, continues ever active in planning
and executing.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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