Part 21

Cats, too, were his especial delight, a white one and a black. "His love of animals," says Mrs. Kingsley, "was strengthened by his belief in their future state--a belief which he held in common with John Wesley and many other remarkable men. On the lawn dwelt a family of natter-jacks (running toads) who lived on from year to year in the same hole in the green bank, which the scythe was never allowed to approach. He had two little friends in a pair of sand-wasps, who lived in a crack of the window in his dressing-room, one of which he had saved from drowning in a hand-basin, taking it tenderly out into the sunshine to dry; and every spring he would look out eagerly for them or their children, who came out of, or returned to, the same crack."

His guests were one day amused when his little girl opened her hand and begged him to "look at this _delightful_ worm."

Mr. Harrison tells this characteristic incident. One Sunday morning, in passing from the altar to the pulpit, he disappeared, and was searching for something on the ground, which he carried into the vestry. It was found later that he had discovered a beautiful butterfly, which, being lame, he feared would be trodden upon. Thus great in all little humanities was the great preacher of Eversley and Westminster Abbey.

His life was like his own poem,--

"Be good, sweet maid, and let who will be clever; Do noble things, not dream them, all day long: And so make life, death, and that vast forever, One grand, sweet song."

GENERAL WILLIAM TECUMSEH SHERMAN.

Like Grant, Sherman was born in Ohio; the former in a log house at Mt. Pleasant, 1822, the latter at Lancaster, Feb. 8, 1820.

His ancestor, Edmund Sherman, came from Dedham, England, to Massachusetts, with his three sons, in 1634. From his son Samuel, who was one of the original proprietors of Woodbury, Conn., came the noted general, through a line of ministers and lawyers.

The grandfather, Taylor Sherman, was a judge in Norwalk, Conn., and one of the commissioners appointed by the State to go to Huron and Erie Counties, Ohio, to settle some land matters with regard to the Indians. He received two sections of land for his services.

His wife, Betsey, was a woman, says E. V. Smalley, in the _Century_ for January, 1884, "of uncommon strength of character, who was always called on to give advice in times of trouble to her whole circle of relatives and descendants--a strong-willed, intelligent, managing woman.... To Grandmother Betsey might be attributed the talent of the later members of the family."

Her son Charles, admitted to the bar at twenty, married Mary Hoyt, and soon went to Lancaster, Ohio. He returned in a year, and took his young wife and baby over six hundred miles on horseback to the new home in the West, where ten other children were born, the eleven comprising six boys and five girls.

The third son, William, was named Tecumseh after the famous Indian chief, who died at the battle of Tippecanoe. When the child was four years old, the father was appointed a judge of the supreme court of Ohio, but died suddenly in Lebanon while on the bench, after he had held the position for five years.

Mrs. Sherman found her home full of children, with an annual income of only two hundred and fifty dollars with which to support them. Her husband had been loved for his genial nature and his generous heart, so that friends were not wanting to help the young mother bear her burdens.

John, the now well-known senator, was sent to an uncle in Mount Vernon, another to a friend in Cincinnati, and Tecumseh to the home of the Hon. Thomas Ewing, a prominent United States Senator from Ohio.

The lad of nine attended the village schools till he was sixteen, when, through the influence of Mr. Ewing, he entered the Military Academy at West Point. He had no love for warlike pursuits, but looked forward to becoming a civil engineer in the far West.

He had all along cared for history, travel, and fiction, but never especially for battles. He enjoyed out-door sports, and long rambles with rod and gun. He studied well while at West Point, standing high in drawing, chemistry, mathematics, and philosophy, reaching the sixth place in a class of forty-three at his graduation in 1840.

He was never fond of display, and had no relish for the minutiæ of dress and drill. "Men who have successfully conducted great campaigns, and fought great battles, have not," says Mr. Smalley, "as a rule, taken much interest in the polishing of buttons, or the exact alignment of a company of troops."

Soon after graduating, young Sherman, tall, slender, with auburn hair and hazel eyes, a second lieutenant in the Third Artillery, was sent to Florida to keep in check the Seminole Indians. After two winters he was transferred to Fort Moultrie, near Charleston, South Carolina, as first lieutenant, where he remained for four years. Here he enjoyed Southern hospitality, and learned the character of the people and the topography of the country, both here and in Georgia. More than twenty years later, this knowledge was invaluable when he fought his battles at Atlanta and made his immortal March to the Sea.

War with Mexico was threatening; and in 1846 Sherman was sent to New York, and afterwards to Ohio, as a recruiting officer. When he heard of the battles of Palo Alto and Resaca de la Palma, May 8 and 9, he was eager to be at the front: recruiting, as he says in his memoirs, while "his comrades were actually fighting, was intolerable."

He was soon ordered to California, which his company reached, after a voyage of nearly two hundred days, by way of Cape Horn. At Rio Janeiro, "the beauty of whose perfect harbor words will not describe," they remained for a week, and the young Ohio officer enjoyed the delights of travel. He saw Dom Pedro and his Empress, the daughter of Louis Philippe of France, the Palace, the Botanic Gardens, the Emperor's coffee plantation, where the coffee-tree reminded him of "the red haw-tree of Ohio; and the berries were somewhat like those of the same tree, two grains of coffee being enclosed in one berry."

At Cape Horn, "an island rounded like an oven, after which it takes its name (_ornos_, oven)," they were followed by Cape-pigeons and albatrosses of every color. At Valparaiso they remained ten days, and enjoyed large strawberries in November. The last of January, 1847, they entered Monterey Bay, and saw live-oaks and low adobe houses, with red-tiled roofs, amid dark pine-trees.

The camp was soon established, and some of their six months' provisions hauled up the hillside in the old Mexican carts with wooden wheels, "drawn by two or three pairs of oxen yoked by the horns."

They brought a saw-mill and a grist-mill with them to the new country. Living was cheap, as cattle cost but eight dollars and fifty cents for the best, or about two cents a pound.

Sherman soon met Colonel Frémont, afterwards a candidate for the Presidency, General Kearney, and other officers noted in those early days of California. San Francisco was called Yerba Buena, and Sherman felt almost insulted when asked if he wished to invest money in land "in such a horrid place as Yerba Buena."

The best houses were single-story adobes; the population was about four hundred, mostly Kanakas, natives of the Hawaiian Islands.

Sherman spent much time in hunting deer and bear in the mountains back of the Carmel Mission, and could often in a single day load a pack-mule with the geese and ducks which he had shot. These geese would appear in profusion as soon as the fall rains caused the young oats to come up.

"The seasons in California," he writes, "are well marked. About October and November the rains begin, and the whole country, plains and mountains, becomes covered with a bright green grass, with endless flowers. The intervals between the rains give the finest weather possible. These rains are less frequent in March, and cease altogether in April and May, when gradually the grass dies and the whole aspect of things changes, first to yellow, then to brown, and by midsummer all is burnt up, and dry as an ash-leaf."

The "gold-fever" broke out in the spring of 1848. Thomas Marshall found some placer-gold fifteen miles above Mormon Island, in the bed of the American Fork of the Sacramento River. He had worked for Captain Sutter in his saw-mills, and seeing this gold in the tailrace of the saw-mill, tried at first to keep it a secret, after telling Sutter; but others soon found the yellow metal, and not only California, but the whole civilized world, was excited over the discovery.

Sutter's saw and grist mills soon went to decay. Men earned fifty, a hundred, and sometimes thousands of dollars a day, if they found a "pocket" of gold. Prices became fabulous. Flour and bacon and other eatables sold for a dollar a pound. A meal usually cost three dollars. Miners slept at night on the ground. All day they worked in cold water in the river-beds, their clothes wet; but no complaints were heard.

Soldiers deserted from the coast to join the gold-diggers. At one time six hundred ships were anchored at San Francisco, and could not get away for lack of crews. Sherman and his officers were obliged to pay three hundred dollars a month for a servant, or go without, as their own pay was but seventy dollars a month. Often they did their own work. Sherman cooked, and Lieutenant Ord cleaned the dishes, but "was deposed as a scullion because he would only wipe the tin plates with a tuft of grass, according to the custom of the country," says Sherman; "whereas, Warner insisted on having them washed after each meal with hot water. Warner was, in consequence, promoted to scullion, and Ord become the hostler."

Twice Sherman and some other officers visited the mines, being obliged to cross the Sacramento River in an Indian dug-out canoe. The unwilling horses and mules were driven into the water, following the one led by the man in the canoe. When across, several of the frightened creatures escaped into the woods, where they were recovered and brought back by the Indians.

The winter of 1848-49 was a serious one to the thousands of homeless men and women who had come to seek their fortunes in the mountains. The president had made the gold-finding the subject of a special message to Congress, and emigrants were pouring into California by land and by sea. Of course there was much hardship, much disregard of law, and extremes of poverty and wealth.

The winter of 1849-50 only deepened the distress. In crossing the plains and mountains many animals of the emigrants perished, and they themselves lacked food. One hundred thousand dollars were used to buy flour, bacon, etc., for these people, and men and mules were sent out by General Persifer F. Smith to meet and relieve them. In San Francisco, after the long rains, Sherman says: "I have seen mules stumble in the streets and drown in the liquid mud. Montgomery Street had been filled up with brush and clay, and I always dreaded to ride on horseback along it, because the mud was so deep that a horse's legs would become entangled in the brushes below, and the rider was likely to be thrown, and drown in the mud."

A room twenty by sixty feet for a store or gambling-saloon rented for a thousand dollars a month. Sherman took a share in a store, and thereby made fifteen hundred dollars, which helped him to live with these exorbitant prices. Later he made about six thousand dollars in three lots in Sacramento.

He returned East in January, 1850, on a leave of absence for six months. His comrades had fought great battles in Mexico, which he had not been able to share. "I thought it the last and only chance in my day," he writes, "and that my career as a soldier was at an end."

He visited his mother, then living at Mansfield, Ohio, and on the 1st of May, 1850, married, after an engagement of some years, Miss Ellen Boyle Ewing, daughter of the man who had adopted him in his childhood. Mr. Ewing was then Secretary of the Interior, and, of course, the wedding, on Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington, was a brilliant one. President Taylor and his cabinet, Daniel Webster, Henry Clay, and other leaders were present. In the fall of 1851 Sherman was made a captain in the Commissary Department, and ordered to St. Louis. The following year he was sent to New Orleans, to which city Mrs. Sherman went with her two children.

Seeing little prospect of advancement in the army, in 1853 Captain Sherman resigned his position, and became manager of a bank in San Francisco, a branch of a house in St. Louis.

On his way to California, when near the Pacific coast, the ship Lewis struck on a reef, and all came near losing their lives. Sherman, with his usual mastery over circumstances, sat on the hurricane deck with the captain, and while others prayed, or called for help, waited calmly, and was among the last to leave the ship. When all were safely on the beach, he scrambled up the bluff, and finally saw a schooner loaded with lumber, on which he asked a passage to the city of San Francisco, that he might send help to the wrecked.

This schooner capsized, and Sherman found himself in the water, mixed up with planks and ropes, steadily drifting out to sea. He was finally picked up by a boat, and as soon as possible he sent two steamers to the relief of the passengers of the Lewis, which went to pieces the night after they got off.

In the unsettled state of the country, the bank did not prove a success, and was closed May 1, 1857. Mrs. Sherman and her three children, Minnie, Lizzie, and Willie, returned to Lancaster, Ohio.

For a time Sherman became agent in New York for the St. Louis house; but the latter failing in the financial disturbances of the country, his business ventures seemed at an end, and Sherman returned to Lancaster, July 28, 1858.

"I was then perfectly unhampered," he says, "but the serious and greater question remained, what was I to do to support my family, consisting of a wife and four children, all accustomed to more than the average comforts of life?"

Like General Grant, he had resigned from the regular army that he might earn enough to support his family. Banking had been no more successful than Grant's leather business.

Two sons of Mr. Ewing had gone to Leavenworth, Kansas, where they had bought some land, and opened a law office. They offered Sherman a partnership, as he had read law considerably. He accepted the position, but soon found that he did not earn money enough, so began to manage a farm, forty miles west of Leavenworth, for his father-in-law.

This not proving more remunerative than Grant's farming, he offered himself to the army again in 1859, feeling, that a sure, though small, amount was better for his family than the uncertainties of business. He was soon appointed the superintendent of a military college about to be organized at Alexandria, Louisiana.

This position did not prove an easy one. The building was a large and handsome one in the midst of four hundred acres of pine-land, but there was not a table, chair, or black-board ready for beginning. Sherman immediately engaged some carpenters, and went to work with his usual energy.

Meantime, the slavery question bade fair to rend the Union asunder. South Carolina seceded Dec. 20, 1860, and Mississippi soon after. In the middle of January, 1861, Sherman wrote to the Governor of the State: "If Louisiana withdraw from the Federal Union, I prefer to maintain my allegiance to the Constitution as long as a fragment of it survives.... I beg you to take immediate steps to relieve me as superintendent, the moment the State determines to secede, for on no earthly account will I do any act or think any thought hostile to, or in defiance of, the old Government of the United States."

Sherman soon came North and visited his brother, Senator John Sherman. Both called upon Lincoln, and the President asked the soldier "how the people of the South were getting along." "They think," was the reply of Sherman, "they are getting along swimmingly--they are preparing for war."

"Oh, well!" said Lincoln, "I guess we'll manage to keep house."

April 1, through the influence of friends, Sherman was made President of the Fifth Street Railroad, in St. Louis, at a salary of twenty-five hundred dollars a year, and moved his family thither. Five days later, and six days before the attack on Sumter, April 12, 1861, he was asked to accept the chief clerkship of the War Department, with the promise that, when Congress met, he should be made Assistant Secretary of War. This offer he declined, as he had already moved his family to St. Louis, and did not feel at liberty to change his position.

He wrote later to Simon Cameron, Secretary of War, that he would not volunteer for _three months_, "Because," said he, "I cannot throw my family on the cold charity of the world," but for a _three-years_' call, good service might be done. He was appointed Colonel of the Thirteenth Regular Infantry, May 14, 1861, and again his family returned to Lancaster, Ohio.

The war feeling had been greatly intensified at the North by the death of Colonel E. Elmer Ellsworth, a young man of twenty-four, who had organized a body of Zouaves in Chicago, and had escorted President Lincoln to Washington. On May 24, when the Union forces crossed into Virginia, Ellsworth's Zouaves occupied Alexandria. A part of the troops were proceeding towards the centre of the town, when they saw a secession flag flying from the Marshall House.

Ellsworth ascended to the roof and pulled it down. The hotel keeper, James T. Jackson, shot him through the heart, and attempted to shoot Private Francis E. Brownell, who was with Ellsworth. Brownell at once shot Jackson through the head.

Brownell died at Washington, D.C., March 15, 1894.

The body of Colonel Ellsworth lay in state in the East Room of the White House for several hours. President Lincoln, and indeed the whole North, were deeply affected by his death.

Mr. Lincoln soon called for four hundred thousand men and four hundred million dollars, to carry on the war. Two Confederate armies were already before Washington; one at Manassas Junction under General Beauregard, the other at Winchester under General Joseph E. Johnston.

General Irvin S. McDowell, aged forty-three, of the Mexican War soldiers, had command of the Union forces, and Sherman held a brigade under him. The battle of Bull Run, or Manassas, was fought Sunday, July 21, with a loss on our side of 2,896, and on the Confederate of 1,982. Over thirty thousand men were in each army.

General John D. Imboden, in vol. 1 of that most interesting and valuable series, "Battles and Leaders of the Civil War," edited by Messrs. Johnson and Buel, tells the following incident of "Stonewall" Jackson in this battle. He had been wounded in the hand, but paid no attention to it, binding it up with his handkerchief, saying, "Only a scratch, a mere scratch," and galloped along his line. Three days later General Imboden found him at a little farm-house near Centreville. Jackson was bathing his hand at sunrise, in spring water. It was swollen and very painful. Mrs. Jackson had already come to him. "General," said Imboden, "how is it that you can keep so cool, and appear so utterly insensible to danger, in such a storm of shell and bullets as rained about you when your hand was hit?" referring to the Bull Run battle.

"Captain," he said, "my religious belief teaches me to feel as safe in battle as in bed. God has fixed the time for my death. I do not concern myself about _that_, but to be always ready, no matter when it may overtake me." After a pause, he said, "Captain, that is the one way all men should live, and then all would be equally brave."

Imboden apologized for the use of profanity on the battle-field, and Jackson simply remarked, "Nothing can justify profanity."

The men idolized Jackson, in part because he almost always succeeded. They trusted him without questioning. "Where are you going?" was once asked of some of his troops.

"We don't know," was the reply, "but old Jack does."

"It is now generally admitted," says Sherman, "that it [the Battle of Bull Bun] was one of the best planned battles of the war, but one of the worst fought.... Nearly all of us for the first time then heard the sound of cannon and muskets in anger, and saw the bloody scenes common to all battles, with which we were soon familiar. We had good organization, good men, but no cohesion, no real discipline, no respect for authority, no real knowledge of war. Both armies were fairly defeated, and whichever had stood fast, the other would have run."

Though the Union army retreated in great disorder, and the North was saddened thereby, Sherman and some others were made brigadier-generals for their bravery.

President Lincoln and Seward came to the Union camps soon after the battle. Lincoln said, in his homely fashion, "We heard that you had got over the big scare, and we thought we would come over and see the 'boys.'"

He stood up in the carriage and made a most feeling address, telling them how much devolved upon them, and how all looked for brighter days. When they began to cheer, he said, "Don't cheer, boys. I confess, I rather like it myself; but Colonel Sherman here says it is not military, and I guess we had better defer to his opinion."

A little later an officer who had attempted to go to New York without leave, and whom Sherman had threatened to shoot if he deserted at that critical time, approached the President, saying that he had a grievance, and that Colonel Sherman had threatened to shoot him.

With that rare good sense for which Lincoln was famous, and knowing that his leaders must be supported in authority, he bent over toward the aggrieved officer, and said in a loud whisper, "Well, if I were you, and he threatened to shoot, I would not trust him, for I believe he would do it." Sherman afterwards thanked the President for his confidence.

Soon after this General Sherman was assigned to the department of the Cumberland, under General Robert Anderson, formerly at Fort Sumter. Anderson's health failing, Sherman soon took his place. Mr. Cameron, Secretary of War, having a consultation with Sherman, the latter complained that he had only eighteen thousand men, whereas two hundred thousand men were needed to destroy all the opposition in the Mississippi Valley.

It soon came out in the papers that Sherman was "crazy," as at that time the North seemed to have no adequate idea of the immensity of the work in hand. The succeeding years proved that Sherman was right in his estimate of the power and purpose of the South in its war against the Union.

Sherman was relieved by General Buell, and the "insane" general was ordered to take charge of a Camp of Instruction. Hurt by the cruel charge, he still performed his duties "for a country and government," as he said, "worth fighting for, and dying for if need be."

Early in 1862 Grant had won some great victories at Forts Henry and Donelson, on the Tennessee and Cumberland Rivers. The latter fort, under General Buckner, surrendered Feb. 16, with sixty-five guns, seventeen thousand six hundred small arms, and nearly fifteen thousand troops.

Major-General Grant was now commanding the Army of the Tennessee under Halleck, and Sherman was assigned to a division under Grant. The latter held about the same "crazy" idea that Sherman held,--that the Southerners were hard and brave fighters, and would never surrender till forced to it through exhaustion of men and money.