Next week, bidders will engage in a fierce monetary battle at an Ohio auction house for the opportunity to acquire the sword once wielded by the Civil War Union general who led a scorched-earth campaign across Georgia and famously declared, “War is hell.”
The wartime sword of General William Tecumseh Sherman, likely used between 1861 and 1863, is among the coveted items that will be open for bidding on Tuesday at Fleischer’s Auctions in Columbus. Other notable offerings include Sherman’s rank insignia worn during the Civil War, a family Bible, and his personal, annotated copy of Ulysses S. Grant’s memoirs.
Sherman, a graduate of the prestigious West Point military academy, was serving as the superintendent of a military school in Louisiana when South Carolina’s secession in 1861 ignited the Civil War. He quickly joined the Union army, and Sherman’s campaign to capture of Atlanta in September 1864 proved instrumental in securing President Abraham Lincoln’s reelection that November, ensuring victory in the fight to preserve the Union.
After seizing Atlanta, Sherman embarked on his legendary — or to some, infamous — “March to the Sea,” culminating in the capture of Savannah in December 1864, a devastating blow to Confederate morale.
“Had it not been for William Tecumseh Sherman, it is conceivable that the North would not have won the Civil War and that the Union would not have been preserved,” asserted Adam Fleischer, president of the auction house.
Fleischer estimates that a “conservative” sales price for the saber could range between $40,000 and $60,000, while the entirety of Sherman’s collection could potentially fetch as much as $300,000.
“As Americans, we live with the consequences of the Civil War whether we know it or not,” Fleischer stated, “and if you remove William Tecumseh Sherman from history, the war could have ended very differently.”
These relics of Sherman’s were provided to the auction house by his direct descendants, according to Fleischer.
In addition to Sherman’s belongings, the auction will feature a diverse array of historical artifacts, including a 1733 document signed by Benjamin Franklin, the eleventh known “free” badge issued to a formerly enslaved person in 1790, the scrapbook of a Tuskegee Airman, and various other effects, as stated in a release from Fleischer’s Auctions.