Sarah, the Cow and General William T. Sherman in the Civil War

As a child I had heard my grandmother, Nana, tell the story of her mother Sarah confronting Gen. Sherman in 1864 (in Georgia) and demanding that he return the cow that his Union Army had stolen. It wasn’t until many years later that I realized that the story sounded too good to be true.

According to Nana, Sarah and her family lived on a 2300-acre plantation in northwest Georgia, a Confederate state. During the fighting, Sherman’s army raided the plantation and stole all the food and livestock, except for a cow that the cook’s son had hidden. The boy fed the cow meal to keep it quiet. When the meal ran out, the cow bellowed. Sherman’s soldiers followed the sound, found the cow and confiscated it.

Sarah had heard that Gen. Sherman was a Mason, so she took her husband Jack’s Masonic Apron and walked to the General’s headquarters, which just happened to be on the plantation. He was very gracious, “and with a wave of his hand, he ordered his soldiers to return the cow and escort her home.”

As an adult, I discovered many holes in the story. Sarah and her husband Jack did not live on a plantation. They lived in the town of LaFayette, Georgia. According to the 1860 slave census record, Jack had a 60-year-old mulatto cook. If the cook had a son, he was not counted.  

There were several true facts in the story. Jack was a Mason, and the town of LaFayette had been devastated by the fighting. A cousin recently speculated that two of Sarah and Jack’s babies had died of malnutrition in 1864. I believe Sarah was desperate, but did she confront the general? And would he have helped her, a resident in hostile territory?

On the Internet, I found General Sherman’s Memoirs that had been digitized by the Gutenberg Project for public use. I discovered that the general had been in LaFayette, but not on a plantation. His first priority was to feed his men, and he had taken sheep from a local farmer. In the memoirs, he justified stripping the land for food if he could not get supplies for his troops via the local railroad that was often damaged during the fighting. http://www.gutenberg.org/files/4361/4361-h/4361-h.htm#ch16

Even more interesting – the general may not have been a Mason. According to Christopher Hodapp, the author of Freemasons for Dummies, there is no indication that Sherman was in the Masonic order. http://freemasonsfordummies.blogspot.com/2011/04/masonic-passover.html

Did Sarah go to the general for help? I think she may have. After all, her children did not have enough to eat. Did he help her? I don’t know, but I like to think that even Sherman would have given her at least some food.