Sherman and the small professional U.S. Army

The biographical pause follows Sherman from thirteen years of prewar Army service through his Civil War and postwar commands. The United States kept a small permanent army because Congress feared the political uses of a large standing force and disliked its cost. That policy left limited employment for trained officers between wars and made senior rank unusually scarce when mass mobilisation arrived. Grant's promotion to lieutenant general required congressional action, while Sherman advanced through the Fifteenth Corps, Army of the Tennessee, and Military Division of the Mississippi before later becoming commanding general. One officer's career therefore reveals the institutional framework within which Union armies had to expand and professionalise.