General Sherman's Wife Chose South Bend

Before the March to the Sea, William Tecumseh Sherman needed somewhere safe for his family. His wife chose South Bend.

BY AARON HELMAN // POSTED MARCH 10, 2026

It was the winter of 1860, Lincoln had just won the election, and the United States was about to tear itself apart. William Tecumseh Sherman was right in the middle of it, and as the divide widened throughout the nation, Sherman found himself with one foot planted on either side of the fissure.

He was running a military academy in Pineville, Louisiana. The place would eventually become LSU. He was, by all accounts, beloved by his students and respected by his colleagues. He knew how wars worked, and he knew what it looked like when they began. As the calendar turned into 1861, it was clear a war was beginning.

In January 1861, Louisiana seceded. The state ordered Sherman to transfer federal arsenal weapons to the Louisiana state militia. He resigned his post and wrote his refusal to the governor:

"On no earthly account will I do any act or think any thought hostile to the United States."

He became a man without a home, and he needed a new place to put down roots. 160 years before Brian Kelly made a treasonous journey in the exact opposite direction, William Tecumseh Sherman chose loyalty, and his wife chose South Bend, Indiana.

Ellen Ewing Sherman was the man's wife and his foster sister. After William's father died early, Ellen's father — Ohio Senator Thomas Ewing — took him in. The boy was nine when he took his new family. Ellen was five. They were close from the beginning, and found they agreed about most things, but never religion.

Ellen was devoutly and uncompromisingly Catholic. Sherman himself had technically been baptized Catholic, but his religious views were something closer to skepticism. He had little patience for organized religion and especially for the Catholic Church. Ellen spent much of their marriage trying to change that. He spent much of it resisting.

But he never stood in her way when it came to the children. All eight of them were raised Catholic, and as the nation teetered on the brink of war, they needed a safe northern outpost to wait out the conflict. Preferably somewhere that would offer the children a quality Catholic education.

I think you see where this is going.

Ellen took up temporary residence in South Bend so her young family could be educated at Notre Dame and St. Mary's. Her husband, now called General William Tecumseh Sherman, was somewhere in Georgia at the time, cutting a famous path to the sea that would briefly make him the most admired man in America — so long as you were north of the Mason-Dixon Line.

General Sherman was a hero, but for all of those years, he only saw news of death. Men on his side. Men he recognized on the other. Back home, the death of one son in 1863. The next year, the death of an infant son the General never even got to meet. Father Sorin performed that burial himself while the General was still on the march.

 

 

The war ended in April 1865. A few weeks later, the much-celebrated General Sherman arrived to fanfare in South Bend. You couldn't blame him if his own personal celebrations were more muted. He'd lost a lot and in so many ways.

Sherman served as the guest speaker for Notre Dame's 1865 commencement. He didn't speak from a manuscript, but someone in that crowd recorded at least part of what the man had to say:

"So I call upon the young men here to be ready at all times to perform bravely the battle of life," he told the graduates. "Life is only another kind of battle and it requires as good generalship to conduct it to a successful end as it did to conquer a city, or to march through Georgia."

The Shermans did not remain in town past the end of the war. They had lives to return to and big jobs to do. By 1869, William Tecumseh would be named Commanding General of the United States Army. If he ever took the time to return to South Bend, we don't know about it. But a piece of the General remains.

In the 1950s, the General's granddaughter donated his personal effects to the University of Notre Dame. The William T. Sherman Family Papers are a comprehensive collection housed in the university's archives. For decades, Civil War scholars wanting insight into military strategy have been forced to do it at the Catholic university in South Bend, and that's just the way Ellen Sherman would have liked it.

Aaron Helman is an author, historian and adventurer from South Bend. You may have seen him around South Bend drinking coffee. Learn more about his work or check out his books at aaronhelman.com.