Forty-Six Years in the Army

In this volume of memoirs, John M. Schofield, Union Army general and post-Civil War commander of the U.S. Army, provides provocative views of General William T. Sherman's campaign against Atlanta and army operations in the late nineteenth century. His Civil War years began in Missouri, where he fought alongside Nathaniel Lyon at Wilson's Creek. Then Schofield took command of the Army of the Ohio in 1864 and led it during Sherman's Atlanta Campaign, finally helping to defeat John B. Hood's Army of the Tennessee at Franklin and Nashville. In the postwar years he became secretary of war under Andrew Johnson and later succeeded General Philip Sheridan as commander of the army. As William M. Ferraro notes in his foreword, Schofield offers valuable insight not only into Sherman's campaign but also into such postwar concerns as Reconstruction, diplomacy, Indian affairs, the Johnson C. Whittaker case, the Fitz-John Porter court martial, and labor unrest.