and by their liveliness accentuate the contrast with death, of which the turf mounds are ever-present reminders. The old house in which generations of the Lees first saw the light and learned to know the meaning of the word home, stands on the highest part of the estate. It is in the stately Greek style so much affected by our revolutionary sires and their sons. The house is spacious, and the great portico with its high white pillars gives it a large appearance, and commands the landscape in conspicuous fashion. Sheridan rests among his comrades. He rests in scantified earth, made holy alike by its rescue from the degradation of slavery and the entombment therein of those who died that the Republic might live. What worthier grave could be found for heroic dust? What loftier memories could be evoked than those which must arise, even to the dullest of the many who will stand there, gazing upon the grave of Sheridan, and then raising their eyes to take in the wonderful landscape, made glorious with its vast array of memories — sad and sombre, grave and great, as they may be, yet filled forever with cheer to those who strive for the betterment of mankind? Our soldier, whose stainless sword was never drawn unworthily, lies where his name must be, as long as the Nation lives, a reminder of the nobility of service, the exaltation of patriotism, the unquenchable dignity and fame of those who nobly labored for both. The historic Potomac rolls its waters where the mounds of our heroes swell to the sunlight. Some miles below stands a mausoleum, bearing within its walls the ashes of Washington. All vessels, of whatever nationality, pay homage to the great dead by the solemn toll of their bells as they sail by. May it not yet seem fitting, as the sacred shades of Arlington are passed, that the dipping of the colors at least will be made the evidences of honor to the manes of Sheridan, Logan, Stanley, Paul, and the great, silent army of their comrades who lie there in their sentineled mounds? "Rest on, embalmed and sainted dead, dear is the blood you gave; CHAPTER XXXI. GENERAL SHERIDAN'S LIFE AND CAREER-A REVIEW. SHERIDAN'S SERVICES OPINIONS OF CONTEMPORARIES - CHARACTER AND POSITION AS A SOLDIER — AS A CITIZEN AND MAN A WONDERFUL STORY OF GREAT DEEDS A ROMANCE OF WAR AN HONORABLE AND UPRIGHT PERSONALITY-HIS GRAPHIC POWERS AS A WRITER BADEAU'S TESTIMONY BRIEF SPEECHES AT ARMY REUNIONS. IN closing this volume, it will not be out of place to briefly review the career of the great soldier and honored citizen, as well as to give some of the contemporaneous opinions of his character, which, following his death, have been given to the world. To write of his career is to speak of national forces. To discuss it personally involves the growth of a great people. Could such a career have occurred anywhere else than in this democratic country? The child of Irish immigrant parents, born in 1831* in Ohio, his father a railroad laborer or sub-contractor, his brothers printers and country storekeepers, he is enabled to become a cadet at the National Military Academy. Again it may be said, what a career! At seventeen a cadet; at twenty-two a brevet second lieutenant; two years later receiving his grade; at thirty commissioned a captain in the Thirteenth Infantry, United States Army; fourteen months later a colonel of volunteer cavalry; thirty-seven days passed, of which thirty-four were under fire, and he fought and won a battle with 1,200 men against 7,000, -a battle which makes him a brigadier at thirty-two; four months later a division commander and tenaciously holding in a great battle the key ⚫Colonel Burr was informed when in Somerset, Ohio, and by the venerable mother of the general that her son Philip was born at Albany, New York, March 6, 1831. There was a difference of opinion in the town as to this, and it is known also that Mrs. Sheridan has given at other times Somerset as the birthplace of her famous son. But it was decided to let the last statement stand. These inquiries were made for this volume, and before it was known to the publishers that the general was preparing his memoirs. Since then General Sheridan himself settled the question by correcting, shortly before his death, the proofs of a biographical article to be published in Appleton's Cyclopædia. Albany was named by him as his birthplace. R. J. H. 31 of the Union position; three months later still, leading and fighting in one of the greatest battles of the Civil War- that of Stone River, for his service and ability in which he was made, and before he quite reached his thirty-third birthday, a major-general of volunteers. In the next twelve months he was a foremost participant in a vast forward movement, that of the Tullahoma campaign, ending in the occupation of Chattanooga, followed by the terrible battle of Chickamauga; and still later winning the plaudits of commanders, soldiery, and nation by his masterly capture of Orchard Knob and the audacious and victorious assault on Mission Ridge, in the three-days fighting and victory known to Union annals as the battle of Chattanooga. A winter of hard work and some fighting, and then ordered East to the command of the finest cavalry army that has been organized, equipped, and handled in modern days. And what a record of service! The constant fights and as constant victories are to be reckoned by the hundred. Around Richmond, between May and August, 1864, Sheridan's troopers were ubiquitous. They were a flame of destruction; a tornado of defeat to the rebels; a very cyclone of victory to the Union cause. In eleven months seventy-six battles were fought and won by that cavalry, and Sheridan personally participated in sixty-two of them. Then came that campaign of massive fighting and magnificent triumphs, which swept the Shenandoah Valley within three months clear of the enemy that had held it almost unbrokenly for three years -a campaign of five great battles, fought with all arms, and won, too, against a foe always having a decided advantage in chosen positions. It was a campaign of constant struggle, skirmish, sortie, infantry charges, and fiercest cavalry encounters. One, too, that was so dramatic in character, so heroic in mould, that its commander's name has passed into the world's history- become renowned in poesy and painting, and accepted finally as that of one of the greatest soldiers of the century. Sheridan was not more than half way over his thirty-third year, when he received the thanks of Congress and was made a major-general in our regular army. It is a record of honors won grandly, only equaled, as to the age of him who received them, by that other great soldier, to whom Sheridan has sometimes been not inaptly compared―Napoleon Bonaparte. Our soldier was at the very front of his career when, within a month after his thirty-fourth birthday, he planned, fought, and won the splendid tactical campaign, fierce battle, and complete victory of Five Forks. That wonderful "barn door" of devoted human lives he so skillfully swung with such terrible and unerring precision against Lee's army on that April day of 1865, has made Sheridan renowned as the most famous tactician of the Union Army. Then came that unerring and relentless pursuit, in whose grip the slave-holders' rebellion was at last strangled to death on Saylor's Creek and at Appomattox. Sheridan was a captain on the 14th of March, 1861. On the 4th of April, 1865, he was the youngest of our renowned soldiers, and in fame surpassed only by two others- Grant and Sherman; in rank only by Grant. As Grant so often said, "Sheridan never failed." That is why the general sent him to the Rio Grande, with the expectation of having to lead the way into Mexico in order to destroy the usurping defiance of the Monroe doctrine, insolently executed while we were struggling in the throes of civil war, created by a similar and sinister sympathy of despotism. Then his career since the clash of arms, was one both notable and characteristic. The administration of the turbulent Fifth Military (reconstruction) District is now acknowledged by friend and foe to have been remarkably able, and now his bitterest antagonists recognize that he sought within his orders only the maintenance of peace and civil liberty. The splendid policy by which, during Grant's terms as President, the entire Central and trans-Missouri West was cleared of its Indian difficulty, so that the vast material development thereof made by railroad, mine, ranch, and prairie farm, could go forward unmolested, owes very much of its success to the military skill and administrative sagacity with which Sheridan conducted all the field operations, as well as the tribal negotiations. Made a lieutenant-general as the first act of Grant's presidential term, his commission being, like Sherman's, dated March 4, 1869, Sheridan received the news of his promotion to the grade of lieutenant-general while returning from an Indian campaign in Kansas. And then came his last promotion — that of general. Given by a grateful country while its valiant and worthy soldier lay in the darkest recesses of the Valley of Death, it was indeed a tribute worthy of a nation and of the services of the public servant by whom it was then received. The estimation in which Sheridan was held while living, and now that he is dead, by those competent to pass judgment on him as a soldier and man, is such as to accord to him a lofty place among his contemporaries. Interviews had with famous German soldiers illustrate this: Count von Moltke is reported as saying: "General Sheridan struck me as the type of a thoroughly American general, with all the wonderful energy and fertility of resource that characterize the Nation, and probably no better cavalry commander has ever taken the field. All the armies of Europe have adopted many of the lessons taught by him in the tactical use of cavalry." General von der Goltz: "I consider General Sheridan one of the ablest cavalry commanders in the world." General von Pape, who commands the entire Prussian corps of guards says that Sheridan's campaign in Western Virginia is a model of the way to handle large masses of cavalry in the warfare of the future. Prince Frederick of Hohenzollern says: "The late emperor often spoke of him as the man who knew best how to make cavalry horses do more work than any other commander ever got out of them." General Boulanger, the French soldier of whom Von Moltke is said to have allowed that there is something in him, pays, as reported, this tribute to Sheridan: "The judgment I personally formed of him was that he was a most intellectual man and a most competent soldier." The London editorial writers, among other foreign critics, have not been chary of discriminating praise of the dead soldier. The writers are still biased by their overstrained admiration of the Confederate commanders, but some of their expressions in regard to Sheridan will bear preservation: 66 General Sheridan," said the Times, "had an eagle eye for piercing through the designs of the enemy and for detecting at a glance all their weak points." "Sheridan," remarked the Morning Post, “was a man whom his enemies admired even while his genius was overcoming their stubborn courage." The Daily News, the day after the intelligence of Sheridan's death was received, wrote of him that he was "not only the most brilliant cavalry officer," of our Civil War, but he was also "both a tactician and a strategist, capable of the most extensive combinations, and able to carry out far-reaching plans, and he had the nerve, resource, and decision for emergencies that were wanting to some of the greatest strategists, notably the Archduke Charles.” The same writer tells that "his warmth of nature and the peculiar character of his genius made him loved. He was one of the most soldierly soldiers of his time. He united brilliant courage, which he owed to his Irish origin, to perfect steadiness and presence of mind in emer LONDON |