John Sherman was an American politician from Ohio who served in federal office throughout the Civil War and into the late nineteenth century. He was the younger brother of Union general William Tecumseh Sherman, with whom he had a close relationship.

William Tecumseh Sherman was an American soldier, businessman, educator, and author. He served as a general in the Union Army during the American Civil War (1861–1865), achieving recognition for his command of military strategy as well as criticism for the harshness of the scorched-earth policies that he implemented against the Confederate States. British military theorist and historian B. H. Liddell Hart declared that Sherman was "the most original genius of the American Civil War" and "the first modern general".