Beginning at the Sherman House in Lancaster, OH, Sherman visited the site where he was born and reminisced with staff about his life prior to fame.  A poignant story, marked by the loss of his father at age nine, Sherman would be adopted by Thomas Ewing – a friend of his father Charles Sherman, and he would move up the hill to the Ewing mansion.  A one-time Senator and Secretary of the Treasury, Ewing would arrange for Sherman’s appointment to West Point that would set him on the path to glory.

The eccentric pair next invaded Tennessee where they visited the Shiloh battlefield.  Scene of carnage in April 1862, Shiloh was the first big battle of the Civil War.  Over 23,000 men would fall here – blue and gray.  Despite a ferocious fight on the first day that nearly drove the Union army into the Tennessee River, Grant engineered a come back on the second day with Sherman’s help to claim a blood victory.

In Chattanooga, Grant and Sherman scaled Lookout Mountain to gaze down on the city and Tennessee River from a dizzying height.  Surveying the landscape below, the pair recalled the situation in the fall of 1863 when the Union army was penned up in the city virtually cut-off from supplies and reinforcements with the Confederate army occupying all of the high ground in site with artillery facing down upon the town.

After arriving, Grant engineered an unlikely victory with Sherman’s help after first re securing a supply line.  Despite the strong Confederate position on Lookout Mountain and Missionary Ridge, Grant looked on from an observation outpost on Orchard Knob as Union forces under Gen. Hooker, on the right, and Gen. Sherman, on the left, held the rebels on Missionary Ridge in a vice while forces under Gen. Thomas scaled the ridge and pierced the Confederate center, sending Gen. Bragg’s army into a head-long retreat into Georgia.

For his many contributions during the war, Gen. Grant was promoted to Lieutenant General in early 1864.  After adding new rank insignia to his weathered uniform – featuring three stars – Grant headquartered with the Army of the Potomac in the spring and traveled with the army during the Overland Campaign.  After driving Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee back to the gates of Richmond, Grant swung his army around to the south – crossing the mighty James River – and laid siege to the city of Petersburg.  Grant would make his headquarters at the junction of the James and Appomattox Rivers at City Point.

A visit to City Point was a must for the fatigued professor-generals, for here was the site where the conversation between Grant and Sherman actually took place in March 1865.  It is that momentous conversation that the generals are reproducing for audiences beginning in the fall of 2018.

At City Point, the pair were received with reverence and respect by National Park Service staff (well, respect anyway).  Ordinarily not open to visitors, Grant and Sherman were allowed to enter Grant’s headquarters cabin at City Point, where he would make his home for nearly a year.  From here Grant would plan for the end of the war. Here Grant would receive Sherman, and more importantly President Lincoln, in pursuit of that plan.

Although they never fought there, Grant and Sherman would return northward to visit the battlefields at Spotsylvania Court House, Fredericksburg, and finally Gettysburg.

The first public opportunity to see Grant and Sherman in action is Saturday, Sept. 8th at 2:00 PM at the Clarendon Historical Society.  Written and directed by Derek Maxfield, Associate Professor of History, Now We Stand By Each Other Always will be performed by he and Tracy Ford, Associate Professor of English.  The pair have plans to take the show on the road thereafter, with bookings already set for Hornell and Batavia, NY.