America's Civil War

SHERMAN’S SECRET WEAPON

In his memoirs, William Tecumseh Sherman wrote that his saddlebags always contained four essential items: “a change of underclothing, a flask of whiskey, cigars, and my maps.” Sherman believed that accurate maps were invaluable to the success of any military campaign and came to value the skills of the topographical engineers of the Army of the Cumberland above all others. He knew they were men trained to exacting standards. While Jedediah Hotchkiss, Stonewall Jackson’s chief topographer, is probably the best known Civil War mapmaker, it was Lt. Col. William Emery Merrill, more than anyone else, who advanced the field. Merrill took a task that had been done by gifted amateurs or army engineers working part-time and elevated it to a science performed by professionals whose only job was to produce military maps and keep them up-to-date. While many of Merrill’s maps are preserved at the Library of Congress, the man himself has almost slipped off the pages of history. Almost, but not completely.

errill might never have drawn a single map had his father not died when the boy was nearly 10. Captain Moses Merrill was killed leading the 5th U.S. Infantry at the 1847 Battle of Molino del Rey during the Mexican War. Because Merrill was an 1826 graduate of the U.S. Military Academy, his death allowed President Franklin Pierce to nominate the captain’s eldest son to West Point as a legacy candidate from Fort Howard, Wis., in 1854. Merrill didn’t disappoint. He graduated first in the

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