Bryant prof examines Civil War general’s surprising attitudes toward the South

January 18th, 2012 | New York Times

Thom Bassett is a contributor to the New York Times' "Disunion" series, which "revisits and reconsiders" the Civil War — "America's most perilous period — using contemporary accounts, diaries, images and historical assessments to follow the Civil War as it unfolded."

Bassett, a lecturer in the Department of English and Cultural Studies, is writing a novel about William Tecumseh Sherman and the burning of Columbia, S.C., in February 1865. In his "Disunion" essay, "Sherman's Southern Sympathies," Bassett notes that "Sherman's relationship with the South makes him one of the most paradoxical and polarizing figures of the Civil War. He understood, and to a great extent embraced, the beliefs and values that led the South to secede. Yet of all Union generals he was the most viscerally opposed to the rebellion, causing him, as the war went on, to become the Confederacy's sympathetic, vengeful enemy."

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Keywords: Civil War, In the News, Thom Bassett, William Tecumseh Sherman