'Extraordinary' William Sherman collection to be auctioned

William Sherman's sword will be among the items from the general's personal 
collection up for auction. (Images of Sherman collection courtesy of Fleischer’s Auctions)

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Moments after ending a call with Adam Fleischer — the 30-year-old president of Columbus, Ohio-based Fleischer’s Auctions — I made a beeline to Mrs. B.

”This man in Ohio is auctioning off Gen. William Sherman’s sword and other artifacts,” I said, practically spitting out the words. “It’s an incredible collection.”

William Sherman

Staring at her computer, Mrs. B looked as exhilarated as Jefferson Davis the day he found out the United States Army made it to the outskirts of Richmond.

For those of us ingrained in the Civil War community, though, this is big news.

On May 14, Fleischer will auction off the remarkable collection, long owned by Sherman’s western Pennsylvania-based descendants. On a visit to a Gettysburg museum, they asked for recommendations for an auction house for the collection, most of which they had stored for decades in an attic. (They kept the sword in Sherman’s trunk.)

Use Fleischer’s, they were told.

“It’s an honor to be handling this,” Fleischer told me.

Besides the sword, which would look great in my home office, the collection includes the “War Is Hell” general’s personal copies of Ulysses S. Grant’s memoirs, his uniform’s rank insignia worn during the Civil War, the Sherman family bible with “meticulous records” written by the general himself and Sherman’s copy of Photographic Views of Sherman’s Campaign — George Barnard’s photographic record of the general’s “March to the Sea.”

“When I saw this collection for the first time, I had goosebumps,” Fleischer said.

Sherman’s copy of Photographic Views
 of Sherman’s Campaign.

During our phone call, Fleischer seemed especially excited about Sherman’s copies of Grant’s memoirs. As Fleischer's rare books specialist Danielle Linn was taking photos of one of the volumes, she shouted, “Adam!”

In pencil, the general had written in the margins of the book, including a mild criticism of Grant.

Fleischer has handled big-time collections before. Over the years, he has dealt with the nation’s leading repositories and institutions, including the Smithsonian, Library of Congress and National Portrait Gallery. But the Sherman collection tops them all for him.

“Extraordinary,” Fleischer calls it.

For information on the auction, go here.

William Sherman's uniform’s rank insignia worn during the Civil War.