Thomas Ewing Sherman

When his superior, Ulysses S. Grant, became President of the United States, William Tecumseh Sherman was appointed commanding general of the army.

The elder Sherman wrote a letter to John McCloskey, Archbishop of New York, in 1879 telling him to dissuade his son from such a course of action.

When pressed for comment by the newspaper's editor, McCloskey simply replied that General Sherman's letter was marked 'personal and confidential.

He was ordained as priest in 1889 by a friend of his mother's, Archbishop Patrick Ryan of Philadelphia; and belonged to the Western Province of the Jesuit Order (headquarters in St. Louis).

[1] He presided over General Sherman's funeral mass in 1891 and was in demand as a public lecturer, frequently speaking out against anti-Catholic prejudice in the United States.

[2] In poor health, after 1931 he lived with his wealthy niece Eleanor Sherman Fitch in New Orleans, Louisiana, where he died of acute dilation of the heart and arteriosclerosis, at the age of 76.