The Civil War was a collective effort between the Union leaders, but the individual efforts of one man determined the outcome of the war. General William Tecumseh Sherman's contribution to the Union war efforts altered the fate of the war's outcome more than any other personage of the civil wartime era. The strengths of the Confederate and Union armies' leaders were crucial to every battle, and Sherman demonstrated his ability as successor of General Grant in the west. His tactics and principles of battling the enemy's economy as well as physical forces were revolutionary and strengthened the hand of the Union, and the results of his leadership and triumph over the confederacy won the 1864 election for President Lincoln against General George B. McClellan, an event that determined the future of the war.

Union and Confederate forces were led by both the capable and the incompetent. Although the Confederacy...