Sherm

“ One hundred and twenty solid days of fighting and marching and retreating—one hundred and forty days that were like a hot red slice carved out of hell—fighting every day and mighty near every hour, hanging on Sherman's flanks and stinging at him like gadflies and being wiped out and swallowed in mouthfuls. ”

“ Springing to arms, half prepared only to rush through the blinding smoke to meet the serried columns of the rebels’ impetuous advance—truly it is not strange that they fell into confusion, fighting blindly and at random. But it was a grand sight when Sherman dashed along the lines, shouting encouragement to the men, exposing his own life a hundred times, and rallying his forces with a wonderful power of voice and action. The herculean exertions of this brave man no doubt saved the division from utter destruction. ”

“ Sherman,’ he writes, ‘exhibits the oddest shaped character I ever remember to have met with. He is awkward, un-meaning, and unaccountably strange in his manner. But in his train of thinking there is something regular, deep, and comprehensive; yet the oddity of his address, the vulgarisms that accompany his public speaking, and that strange New England cant which runs through his public as well as his private speaking make everything that is connected with him grotesque and laughable;—and yet he deserves infinite praise,—no Man has a better Heart or a clearer Head. ”

“ Sherman was more perfectly happy than he had been for many a day, and more ardently thinking. All nature seemed full of a Divine fulfilment. Everything fulfilled its law—fulfilment that is peace, whether it be for good or for evil, for evil also has its peace, the peace of the birds of prey. Sherman looked from the sea to the ship and grew sad. Upon this thing, crawling slowly along the sea, moved to and fro many mournful and slouching figures. ”

“ Even during this march of Sherman′s the newspapers in his front were proclaiming daily that his army was nothing better than a mob of men who were frightened out of their wits and hastening, panic-stricken, to try to get under the cover of our navy for protection against the Southern people. As the army was seen marching on triumphantly, however, the minds of the people became disabused and they saw the true state of affairs. ”

“ Sherman was down before her son. A spare, delicate-featured woman, with somewhat thin lips tightly closed as with silent people, and eyes at once gentle and distrustful, tempering the hardness of the lips. She helped the servant to set the table, and then, for her old-fashioned ideas would not allow her to rest, began to knit, often interrupting her knitting to go into the kitchen or to listen at the foot of the stairs. ”

“ Sherman, tall, with high, commanding forehead, is almost as loosely built as Lincoln; has sandy whiskers, closely cropped, and sharp, twinkling eyes, long arms and legs, shabby coat, slouch hat, his pants tucked into his boots. He is talking hurriedly, gesticulating now to Lincoln, now to Grant, his eyes wandering everywhere. Meade, also tall, with thin, sharp features, a gray beard, and (p. 489) spectacles, is a little stooping in his gait. Sheridan, the shortest of all, quick and energetic in all his movements, with a face bronzed by sun and wind; courteous, affable, a thorough soldier. ”

“ Sherman. Indeed! When at Lookout Mountain the storm of rebel shot had melted the first line, and the reserves were already wavering, and you seized and dared them to follow their flag, rallying the broken ranks to that wild charge that swept the rebel army from its entrenchments among the clouds, it was a glory beside which the command of this army pales into insignificance!
Halcom. Then the soldier shares equally with his commander! (Watches out R.)
Sherman. But you have not told me of this marvelous escape. ”

“ Sherman cried, "Halt! front face!
Who are you? Speak, my gallant boy!"
"A drummer, Sir:—Fifty-Fifth Illinois."
"Are you not hit?" "That's nothing. Only send
Some cartridges: our men are out;
And the foe press us." ”

“ It always has been and always will be so. When a fair-minded man who knows something about war, examines the conduct of my troops under the circumstances, he will not be surprised at what they did, but he will be surprised that it was no worse. At any rate, I was very glad when I had my army out of those States.”
By the way, it is a curious fact that in the South, General Sherman himself is still to this day held responsible for all the mischief connected with his famous march. ”

“ Sherman's whole force was across the Chattahoochee and marching on Jonesborough, twenty miles away.
"I have sure information to the contrary," said the commanding general, singularly deceived by a strong conviction, enforced by scouts who depended on rumor for authority. "It is some feint to cover the general movement."
"I counted the flags, guidons, regimental insignia—such force of cavalry, artillery, infantry," giving the numbers. "I saw and recognized General Sherman," said the scout briefly. ”

“ Probably none of us can do more than our noble General Sherman, years ago, suggested. He said in substance: We who were involved in the controversies, the battles, and campaigns of the great war, are not the men to write the history. We are like witnesses in court. ”

“ That Sherman was marching to a victory the fruits of which should be peace was the essential thing about Sherman. Death and Duty—Victory and Peace—in each case the compound ideal found its expression in a figure entirely original and astonishingly living: a person as truly as Shaw or Sherman themselves. ”

“ Sherman still bars her doors against the wanton, yet never fails to convince herself that she is an infallible judge of virtue. If there are rumors and whisperings in advance, she invariably takes the bull, or, more accurately speaking, the heifer, by the horns and puts the inquiry. ”

“ Having by their swords made these inseparable forever, their names will go down to the most distant posterity as identified with the flag which they saved and glorified.
"No test can measure the frightful strain which came upon those who bore for us the chief burden of the war which involved the existence of the Nation itself; but to-day the fresh graves of Sherman and Porter, the last survivors of that glorious group, reveal its fatal force and result. ”

“ There was a slight resentment in Sherman’s voice. The other noticed it, and said, changing his manner from the insolent air of a young beauty to a self-depreciatory one, which was wont to give him at times a very genuine charm: ‘It is really a great pity, for you Shermans are a deep people, much deeper than we Howards. We are like moths or butterflies, or rather rapid rivulets, while you and yours are deep pools in the forest where the beasts go to drink. No! I have a better metaphor. Your mind and mine are two arrows. Yours has got no feathers, and mine has no metal on the point. ”

“ JOHN SHERMAN REVISITS BALLAH.
I.
The others had gone, and Sherman was alone in the drawing-room by himself, looking through the window. Never had London seemed to him so like a reef whereon he was cast away. In the Square the bushes were covered with dust; some sparrows were ruffling their feathers on the side-walk; people passed, continually disturbing them. The sky was full of smoke. A terrible feeling of solitude in the midst of a multitude oppressed him. ”

“ In a few brief closing words permit me to say that the high privilege of having moulded and directed such a character as that of General Sherman—a character which has so eminently honored our country and blessed the age in which we live—is a matter of honorable and just pride to any man and family and a constant source of inspiration to high and noble living. ”

“ From 5,000 to 7,000 of these people accompanied the triumphal return of Sherman's expedition, and I defy any human being with as much feeling in his bosom as even Legree in Mrs. Stowe's immortal story to look on such a scene unmoved. Old men with the frosts of 90 years upon their heads, men in the prime of manhood, youth, and children that could barely run, women with their babies at their breasts, girls with the blood of white men in their veins, old women tottering feebly along, leading children and grandchildren, dear to them as our own sons and daughters are to us. ”

“ The remnant of that army which Sherman had disdained to pursue into Alabama or Mississippi had traveled a thousand miles to surrender to him! No story of fiction could be more romantic than that fact of real war history. ”

“ There was a little frame church near where I had found Sherman, known as the Shiloh meeting-house (it gave its name to the battle) , whose interior presented the most woeful scene in all this sadness. The seats for the worshippers had been removed, and on the floor were extended, in two rows, on the bare planks and without any cover over them, twenty-seven dead and dying rebels, officers and men. Not a human being was about to offer them tender mercies. ”

“ Below in the street passed by country people, townspeople, travellers, women with baskets, boys driving donkeys, old men with sticks; sometimes he recognized a face or was recognized himself, and welcomed by some familiar voice.
“You have come home a handsomer gentleman than your father, Misther John, and he was a neat figure of a man, God bless him!” said the waiter, bringing him his lunch; and in truth Sherman had grown handsomer for these years away. His face and gesture had more of dignity, for on the centre of his nature life had dropped a pinch of experience. ”

“ Sherman, holding out both hands. Sherman, who knew all his mother’s peculiarities, noticed on her side a slight coldness; perhaps she did not altogether like this beautiful dragon-fly.
‘I have come,’ said Miss Leland, ‘to tell John that he must learn to paint. Music and society are not enough. There is nothing like art to give refinement.’ Then turning to John Sherman—‘My dear, I will make you quite different. You are a dreadful barbarian, you know.’
‘What ails me, Margaret?’
‘Just look at that necktie! Nothing shows a man’s cultivation like his necktie! ”

“ I want to say to General Sherman—who is considered an able man in our part, though some people think he is a kind of careless man about fire—that from the ashes he left us in 1864 we have raised a brave and beautiful city; that somehow or other we have caught the sunshine in the bricks and mortar of our homes, and have builded therein not one ignoble prejudice or memory. ”

“ Losing patience at this unfortunate contretemps when time was so precious, the aviator lifted an iron foot and kicked him, vigorously and with purpose, in the place where kicks do the most good. The ape-man pitched forward, dropping the fascinating pin, then rose and came toward Sherman, his expression clearly indicating his intention of tearing the American limb from limb. The cage was narrow: the ape-man the bigger of the two. Sherman thought hard and fast. The oil-ball! ”

“ The history of our country is rich in soldiers who have set examples of simple soldierly obedience to the civil law and of self-abnegation. Washington, Grant, Sheridan and Sherman lead the list. Sherman was the last of the illustrious trio who were by universal consent the foremost figures in the armies of the Union in the late war. Among the precious traditions to pass into our history for the admiration of the old and the instruction of the young was their friendship, their most harmonious co-operation, without a shadow of ambition or pride. ”

“ So for twelve miles I rode with Sherman, and we became fast friends. He asked me all manner of questions on the way, and I found that he knew my father well, and remembered his tragic death in Salt Creek Valley. ”

“ With every unsound man and every useless article sent to the rear, General Sherman now had fifty-five thousand three hundred and twenty-nine infantrymen, five thousand and sixty-three cavalrymen, and eighteen hundred and twelve artillerymen, with sixty-five guns. ”

“ We could find no trace of Sherman’s army, and remained with Isaac two days. We slept in the barn, and were well supplied with food; we also had plenty of peanuts, as they grew on this plantation, and were called “ground peas.” ”

“ We soon overtook Stuart and closed in, General Sherman on the right, Morgan's force on the left, reaching to the river, where the gunboats were, while Sherman reached from the road which connected the post with the back country, toward where the earthworks reached the river above the fort, and threatened their communications with Little Rock. The night was cold and cloudy, with some snow. There were a good many abandoned huts to our rear, but our forces in position lay on the frozen ground, sheltered as best they could, among the bushes and timber. ”

“ Had Sherman been at the head of that army, and that distance between him and the pursuing forces, he would have gone to Philadelphia, Pittsburg, Buffalo, Cleveland, Cincinnati,509 and then cut his road back into Virginia. A little band of 4000 men under Morgan went through Ohio and Indiana, and Lee, with his great army, with nothing before him but wealth and supplies and cities able to pay tribute for not being burned, is not to be compared with Sherman. ”

“ Then the two generals went to the steamboat, "River Queen," to see Lincoln, who was on board. A notable trio they made—Lincoln, the tall, round-shouldered, loose-jointed, large-featured, deep-eyed, with a smiling face, and dressed in black, with a fashionable silk hat on his head; Grant, shorter, stouter and more compactly built, wearing a military hat with a broad brim, a cigar in his mouth, and his hands in his trouser's pockets; Sherman, almost as tall, but more sineury than Lincoln, with sandy whiskers closely cropped, and sharp, flashing eyes ”

“ The last of the immortal trio has joined his waiting comrades. Already in the fields of the blessed one may believe that their spirits sadly regard our simple tributes to the earthly casket which holds the dust of Sherman. The mourning thousands who have lined the highway of the sad procession have gone to their homes with a tenderer reflection upon the meanings of existence and death. ”