CHAPTER VIII WILLIAM TECUMSEH SHERMAN My next commander was General Sherman; or, rather, I also served under him while serving with Thomas-the one commanding the other. I first met Sherman personally not long after our momentous victory at Chattanooga (November 25, 1863), when he came up to Nashville to discuss and settle the great campaign of 1864 with General Grant. Later (March, 1864) Grant became commander in chief of all our armies and went to Washington, and Sherman became his successor in the Military Division of the Mississippi, embracing all of the United States from the Alleghanies to the Rocky Mountains. General Sherman was then in the prime of life—a tall, brisk, wiry man; with dark reddish hair, inclining to baldness; sharp blue eyes, kindly as a rule, but cold and hard as steel sometimes; an aggressive, fighting nose and mouth; considerable of a jaw; and a face a mass of wrinkles. I have his photograph still, taken at his headquarters in the spring of 1864, which is so full of wrinkles he ordered it suppressed. But I begged it of his photographer and preserved it, because so faithful and lifelike, and present an engraving of it. Habitually he wore a Western slouch hat, with a simple gold cord around it, and a rusty blue uniform indicative of his rank (Major General U. S. A.); but with his coat open and the lapels buttoned back. Indeed, this was the first thing that struck me on meeting both Grant and Sherman; they hardly ever wore their coats buttoned up to the throat; whereas our Eastern generals (McClellan, Hook er, Meade, etc.) hardly ever wore theirs otherwise. In campaigning he usually wore only a simple blouse, but with his proper shoulder straps, of course. Like Hooker, he was noted for his high shirt collars, and also like him, was distinguished for his "gamey" qualities at all times. and everywhere. He impressed you at once as a keen, wide-awake man of affairs, with a mind and will of his own; bookish, but greater than his books; a master of his profession; alert, decided, far-sighted; knowing well what was needed, and resolute to do it, and also resolved everybody about and under him should know and do the same. I think he had absolutely no patience with incompetence or imbecility, and a harder man for a humbug to impose upon or a coward to deceive never breathed. Like all our great commanders on both sides, of course, he was a West Pointer, ex necessitate; for education tells everywhere, but nowhere more than in "War Days." Bravery-mere brute courage-is not an uncommon quality among men. Said General Sir Henry Havelock: "In my experience, in any British regiment there are always a hundred men who would storm the gates of hell; eight hundred who, if they did, would follow in; one hundred who want to skulk in the ditches; and about thirty who do skulk there or elsewhere." But military brains—a natural aptitude for arms and the best culture West Point can give him that is what an army commander needs, and Sherman was well dowered in that way. He was a native of Ohio, and came from good parentage there. Like all (or nearly all) who rose to prominence during the civil war, on both sides, he served in the Mexican War, but only in California, where he distinguished himself as a quartermaster and commissary merely, there being no fighting worth mentioning there. Afterward he resigned from the army, and failed as a banker in San Francisco and as a lawyer at Leavenworth -evidently having few gifts that way. When Sumter was fired upon (April, 1861) he was superintendent of a State Military Academy down in Louisiana, on a comfortable salary, but promptly resigned, with the frank and manly declaration: "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."1 Aided by his great brother, Hon. John Sherman, then and long afterward United States Senator from Ohio (also Secretary of the Treasury and Secretary of State), he was early appointed Colonel of the Thirteenth United States Infantry (he had been previously offered the “chief clerkship" of the War Department!),2 and served with credit at our first Bull Run, July 21, 1861, commanding a brigade there. Soon afterward he was appointed brigadier general of volunteers, and ordered to Kentucky, August 24, 1861, and here took such large views of the rebellion, and of the force required to subdue it in the West, that the then Secretary of War (Cameron) thought him "insane," and relieved him of his command.3 His estimate was that we needed two hundred thousand men to conquer and hold the Southwest; but subsequently, in 1864, he himself commanded over three hundred and fifty thousand men there. However, events soon convinced the government of his thorough sanity; and April 6, 1862, found him at Shiloh or Pittsburg Landing, under Grant, in command of our advance division there. Here he suffered severely (I think was really surprised, though he would never admit that, technically); but fought gallantly and skillfully, and on the whole did much to retrieve our hard fortunes there. Next he campaigned with Grant down the Mississippi and 1 See Appendix, p. 380. |