On October 24, 1863, Major General William Tecumseh Sherman began his tenure in command of the Union Army and Department of the Tennessee. Succeeding Ulysses S. Grant in that responsibility, Sherman advanced from command of the XV Corps to leadership of the army with which he had served during the Vicksburg campaign. The appointment marked an important step in his rise within the Union’s western command structure.
His immediate challenge was the campaign to relieve Union forces besieged at Chattanooga. Already moving eastward before his appointment, Sherman faced difficult roads and competing demands on his troops. His advance initially included railroad repairs, but Grant subsequently ordered him to leave that work to others and bring his forces forward as quickly as possible.
At Chattanooga in November, Sherman received a major role in Grant’s plan: attacking the Confederate right at the northern end of Missionary Ridge. His assaults on Tunnel Hill, however, failed to dislodge Patrick Cleburne’s defenders. The decisive breakthrough came farther south, where troops of George H. Thomas’s Army of the Cumberland stormed the Confederate center and helped force Braxton Bragg’s army into retreat.
Sherman’s appointment therefore deserves recognition as an important expansion of his responsibilities, rather than as the immediate beginning of a fully developed system of warfare. It placed an experienced corps commander at the head of an army and department, while the Chattanooga campaign soon demonstrated both the demands of his new position and the limits of his battlefield success.
