“ ‘I’m not going to Charleston.’
“ ‘Then, at Wilmington.’
“ ‘I’m not going to Wilmington.’
“ ‘I’ll see you, I think, in Richmond.’
“ ‘I’m not going to Richmond. You don’t know where I’m going. Howard don’t know.’
“But he gave me the pass; I, at least, know where he was not going.
“The country may well honor and admire General Sherman. His personal presence is an army of itself. His army is duplicated by the spirit with which he inspires it. Such a man wields destiny. God will guide his way. May He sanctify him. We shall hear more of him hereafter.”
General Sherman’s character from childhood has been above reproach, and his honor unsullied. His amiable wife is a member of the Roman Catholic Church, while he, as has been intimated, usually attends the Episcopal service. Besides the death of his son recorded in these pages, within a year he has lost a child he had never seen—born while he was in the smoke of battle; the young spirit went to heaven before the father’s eye could rest on its earthly greeting to him through the smile of infancy.
But a nation sympathizes with him in his sublime self-denial and his griefs, and in the language of our beloved President, “follows him with its prayers.”