The Last Leaf / Observations, during Seventy-Five Years, of Men and Events in America and Europe

by James Kendall Hosmer

In speaking of soldiers I shall do better to pay slight attention to the men of chief importance; for them the trumpets have sounded sufficiently and I came into personal contact with only one or two. Grant, I saw once, after he was Lieutenant-General, on the platform of a railroad station submitting stoically to the compliments of a lively crowd of women. Once again I saw him, in academic surroundings, sturdy and impassive, an incongruous element among the caps and gowns; but it was among such men that he won what is to my mind one of his greatest victories. What triumph of Grant's was greater than his subjugation of Matthew Arnold! I rode once on the railroad-train for some hours immediately behind Sheridan, and had a good chance to study the sinewy little man in his trim uniform which showed every movement of his muscles. Though the ride was hot and monotonous I was impressed with his vitality. He seemed to have eyes all around his head. The man was in repose, but it was the repose of a leopard; at a sudden call, every fibre would evidently become tense, the servant of a nimble brain, and an instant pounce upon any opposition could be depended upon. What a pity, I found myself thinking, that the fellow has no longer a chance for his live energy (the war was then well over), and I had to check an incipient wish that a turmoil might arise that would again give a proper scope to his soldierly force. Happily there was no longer need for such service, but I feel that Sheridan was really more than a good sword. One finds in his memoirs unexpected outbursts of fancy and high sentiment, and he could admire the fine heroism of a character like Charles Russell Lowell. It is fair to judge a man by what he admires.

At the Harvard commemoration of 1865, standing under the archway at the northern end of Gore Hall, I encountered the thin, plainly clad figure of Ralph Waldo Emerson. I was in soldier's dress and as he gave me a nod of recognition he said, looking at my chevrons, very simply but with feeling, "This day belongs to you." Passing around then to the west front, I had before me a contrast in a brilliant group marshalled by my friend and classmate Colonel Theodore Lyman, in the centre of which rose the stately figure in full uniform of Major-General Meade. "Ah, Jimmy," said Theodore with the aggressive geniality which his old associates so well remember, "come right here," and catching me by the arm he pulled the corporal into the immediate presence of the victor of Gettysburg. "This is Corporal Hosmer," said he, "and this, Jimmy, is Major-General Meade," introducing us with much friendly patting of my shoulder and a handling of the Major-General almost equally familiar. He had long been a trusted member of Meade's staff but the war was over and a close friendship held them on common ground. "He has written a book, General, about the war." Then came a word of commendation and the tall General, as he gave my hand a cordial pressure, beamed down upon me with pleasant eyes. In the peaceful time that had come, we were all citizens together; the private and the General were on a level, though that aquiline face had been called upon not long before to confront, at the head of one hundred thousand men, the hosts of Lee.

Of our other great commanders I never saw Thomas, but my knowledge of Sherman was something more than the mere glimpse I had of the figures of his compeers. His home was in St. Louis, in which city I was then residing, and he was much in society. He was really a Connecticut Yankee though transplanted to Ohio, and he was, in figure and character, thoroughly a New Englander. He was tall and slender, his prominent forehead standing out from light straight hair, a stubby beard veiling a well-pronounced and well-worked jaw (for he was one of the readiest of talkers), it would require little scratching to get to the uncontaminated Yankee underneath. A New Englander of the best type, shrewd, kindly, deeply concerned for the welfare of his country and of men. A fashionable lady invited him to dine without his wife. Sherman, on arriving, found other ladies present; to his hostess, who came forward to receive him with effusion, he said: "Madam, I dine with Mrs. Sherman to-night," and the party went forward without the lion who was to have given it distinction. He would not have his wife slighted; nor in more important things would he endure to see a lame outcome when he might set things in better shape. He encouraged schools and worthy charities by giving them his hearty countenance. No arm was more potent than his in saving the country, nor was his patriotism selfish. He saved his country because he believed it was for the good of the world.

Sherman has been criticised for his ruthlessness, but no one can say that he was not effective. He bore on hard but with the belief that only such action could bring the war to a close. No one could come in contact with him without feeling that he was a soft-hearted man. It was one of the most interesting evenings of my life when, as a guest of N.O. Nelson, the philanthropic captain of industry in St. Louis, I was one of a company of a dozen to hear Sherman tell John Fiske his story of the war. We sat at table from seven o'clock until midnight, the two illustrious figures with their heads together exchanging a rapid fire of question and answer, but the rest of us were by no means silent. Sherman was full of affability and took good-naturedly the sharp inquiries. "How was it, General, at Shiloh; was not your line quite too unguarded on the Corinth side, and was not the coming on of Sidney Johnston a bad surprise for you?" "Oh, later in the war," said Sherman, "we no doubt should have done differently, but we got ready for them as they came on." "Was there not bad demoralisation," I said, "ten thousand or more skulkers huddled under the bluff on the Tennessee?" "Oh," said Sherman, "the rear of an army in battle is always a sorry place; but on the firing line, where I was, things did not look so bad."—"Your adversaries, General, were often good fellows, were they not, and you are good friends now?" "The best fellows in the world," said Sherman, "and as to friendship, Hood wants me to be his literary executor and take care of his memoirs."

He was ready to confess to mistakes, and with frank and proper exultation pointed out the gradual improvement and the triumphant result. Plenty of good stories and much hearty laughter came in among the more tragic episodes. We saw John Fiske take it all in, swaying in his chair ponderously back and forth, but the War in the Mississippi Valley, which came out soon after, showed that his memory retained every point. On another occasion, as Sherman on a stormy night took me home in his carriage, we skirted the blocks which had been the site of Camp Jackson, the first field of the Civil War that Sherman had witnessed. That was the beginning of things in the West, and he on that day only a by-stander. He was at the time possibly irresolute as to what he should do, and he certainly had no premonition of the large part he was destined to play. As he looked out of the window that night into the driving storm on the spot where once he had brooded so anxiously, I wondered if he had any memory of the soul struggle of that crisis.

After his death, there took place in the streets of St. Louis an imposing military funeral. As the cortège paused for a moment, I stood at the side of the gun-carriage which bore the coffin wrapped in the flag, and paid my tribute to this good man and great citizen who had played his part well.

A controversy, which has now died away, used to be waged during and soon after the Civil War as to whether West Point had really vindicated a place for itself. Many an American, full of that over-confidence which besets us, maintained that a man could become a good soldier by a turn of the hand as it were. Given courage, physical vigour, and fair practical aptitude, a lawyer, a merchant, or a civil engineer could take sword in hand and at short notice head a squadron or muster an army. This view has so far as I know been set forward by no one more plausibly than by Jacob D. Cox, a stout civilian soldier who led well the Twenty-third Corps and later became Governor of Ohio and a successful Secretary of the Interior. I once met General Cox in an interesting way, on a Sunday afternoon, at the home of Judge Alfonso Taft at Walnut Hills, a pleasant suburb of Cincinnati. Judge Taft in those days was a somewhat noteworthy figure. He had served the country well as Minister to Russia and also as a member of the Cabinet at Washington, and was one of the foremost men of the fair city where he lived. His sister-in-law married an intimate friend of mine, and there were other reasons which gave me some title to his notice, and I was for the time his guest. A sturdy white-haired boy of ten or so sat at the table at dinner and hung with his brothers about the group of elders as they talked in the afternoon. This boy was William H. Taft taking in the scraps of talk as the chatting progressed on his father's porch. General Cox dropped in for an afternoon call and I scanned eagerly his scholarly face and figure, well knit through the harshest experiences in camp and battle. He was a man of fine tastes and well accomplished both in science and literature with a substratum of manly tenacity and good sense, who did noble duty on many a field and produced, in his Military Reminiscences one of our most satisfactory books on the Civil War period. The manner of the veteran was simple and pleasant. Nothing betrayed that he had been the hero in such an eventful past. I have of course no thought of sketching his career or criticising his account of it. As to the point to which I have referred, his claim that a peaceful American can be turned into a soldier off-hand and that the West Pointers no more made good in the war than did the civilians, he sets forth the case calmly. He takes the curriculum at West Point as it was sixty years ago and plainly shows that as regards acquirements in general it bears a poor comparison with that of civilian universities and colleges of that period. As to especial military education, he claims that the instruction at West Point was comparatively trifling; the cadets were well drilled only in the elements, while as regards the larger matters of strategy and the management of armies there was slight opportunity to learn. The cadet came out qualified to drill a company or at most a regiment, while as to manoeuvring of divisions and corps he had no chance to perfect himself. The cadet, moreover, had this handicap—he had been made the slave of routine and his natural enterprise had been so far repressed that he magnified petty details and precedents and was slow to adapt himself to an unlooked-for emergency. He cites an example where he himself was set to fight a battle by a West Point superior with old-fashioned muzzle-loading guns, the improved arms which were at hand and which might easily have been used with good effect remaining in the rear. His conclusion is that a wide-awake American trained in the hustle of daily life, with a good basis of common sense and some capacity for adaptation, could, with a few month's experience, undertake to good advantage the direction of soldiers, and that the West Point preceding 1861 had an influence rather nugatory in bringing about success. It is perhaps sufficient answer to arguments of this kind that while during our Civil War there was a most relentless sifting of men for high positions, little regard being paid to the education and antecedents of those submitted to it, the men who finally emerged at the front were almost exclusively West Pointers. Grant, Sherman, Sheridan, and Thomas, the Union champions par excellence, were West Pointers. Lee, Stonewall Jackson, the Johnstons, and Longstreet are no less conspicuous among the Confederates. Civilians for the most part were not found in the high places, or if they were so placed the results were unfortunate, as in the cases of Butler, Banks, and McClernand. There were of course good soldiers who came from civil life. Cox himself is a conspicuous instance, and there were Terry, John A. Logan, and other good division commanders. On the Southern side may be instanced N.B. Forrest and J.B. Gordon; but these men rarely attained to more than secondary positions, the highest places falling, as if by gravitation, into the hands of West Pointers. An influence there was in the little academy on the Hudson which somehow brought to pass a superior warlike efficiency. The training at West Point, supplemented as it usually was by campaigning on the plains, although duty was done only by men in squads, and the hardships and perils were scarcely greater than those encountered by the ordinary pioneer and railroad-builder, somehow evoked the field-marshal quality and made it easier to grapple with the tremendous problems with which the army was so suddenly confronted.

A certain pathos attaches to the story of some of those civilian soldiers. In my youthful days, I had often seen N.P. Banks, who had risen from the humblest beginning into much political importance. No large distinction can be claimed for him in any direction, and for elevation of character he was certainly not marked; but he was a man of respectable ability and he climbed creditably from factory-boy to mechanic and thence (through no noisome paths) to Congress, to the post of Governor, and to the Speakership at Washington.

He had military ambition and with the beginning of the war went at once into the army, unfortunately for him, as major-general and commander of a department. Could he have gone in as captain or colonel, his fortune would probably have been different. But, sent to command in the Shenandoah Valley, it was his fate to meet at the outset the most formidable of adversaries, Stonewall Jackson. He was sorely hoodwinked and humiliated, but so were several of his successors. At Cedar Mountain, understanding that his orders were peremptory, he threw his corps upon double their numbers and fought with all the bravery in the world though with defective tactics. Another corps should have been at hand, but it failed to arrive. There was a moment when Banks, weak though he was, was near to victory, but he failed in the end in an impossible task and was made scapegoat for the blunders of others. He was sent to supersede Butler in Louisiana with a force quite inadequate for the duty expected. It was here that I came into contact with him. Interested friends had laid my case before him, as one who might serve well in a higher position than that of a private, and he good-naturedly sent word to me to report to him at a certain hour in the rotunda of the St. Charles Hôtel at New Orleans. The city was in the firm grasp of the Union, as our transport had sailed up the evening before. The ships of Farragut, their decks crowded with blue jackets held under their broad-sides a dense and sullen multitude. A heavy salute reverberated from the river as the new commander took his place, but conditions were precarious.

As I walked up the street in my soldier's dress, a handsome Southern girl almost ran me off the sidewalk with a look in her face which, but for fear of the calaboose, might have been backed up by words and acts of insult, while the faces of the men were full of hate. I stood at last in the rotunda of the St. Charles Hôtel and presently the commander-in-chief, threading his way through a throng of officers, was at my side. I was much dishevelled and still ill after a stormy passage in a crowded ship, but the General was very courteous to the private. He had heard of my enlistment and indicated that he would be glad to utilise me, as he desired to utilise every man, for the best welfare of the service. What did I desire? I told him I had no thought but to do my duty as well as I could wherever I might be put. He discussed the situation reasonably, then offered me a clerkship at headquarters, where I might escape the chief perils of the campaign and where perhaps my education would serve the public. For a moment I hesitated and he passed on, leaving me to decide. My friends felt that I had not the physical strength for work in the field; should I accept the snug place back of the firing-line or risk it at the front? By the next day, I had fully determined to stick to my regiment. I sought the General again at headquarters. Colonel Irwin of his staff at the moment was arranging around his shoulders the yellow sash of the major-general for the formal ceremony of taking command, which was close at hand. But the General had a kindly recognition of the private, assented to my decision, and gave me a pass to the regiment, which had already been hurried onward to the front. I laid my knapsack down by the side of that of my young brother in the camp, which was then at the front.