Early in life he cherished a desire for a cadetship at West Point; this desire was gratified in 1848. Sheridan speaks in his "Memoirs" of his (Slocum's) studious habits and willingness to aid others. I was myself at the academy and remember his strong character when the pro-slavery sentiment at West Point was so great as to lessen the popularity of any one even suspected of entertaining abolition views. He fearlessly and openly expressed himself as an opponent to human slavery.
General Slocum graduated high in his class; saw service in the Seminole wars in Florida, and remained stationed in the South until 1857, when, having studied law, he resigned to practise his profession in Syracuse, N. Y., being a representative at Albany in 1859, and instructor of militia from 1859 to 1861. When Fort Sumter fell he tendered his services, and was given the command of the Twenty-seventh New York Volunteers, which he led in a charge at Bull Run, where he was severely wounded. In August, 1861, he was made brigadier-general of volunteers, and took a brigade in General Franklin's division. When Franklin passed to the command of a corps, Slocum took the division. His work was noticeable on the Peninsula, at Yorktown, West Point, Gaines's Mill, Glendale, and Malvern Hill, and on each occasion he received the praise of his commanders. At South Mountain his division drove the enemy from its position with such a rush as to prevent any chance of rallying, which act brought him still more commendation. It was Slocum who led the advance of Franklin's corps to the field of Antietam, and enabled us to recover and hold much ground that had been taken from us in the first struggle.
By October of 1862 Slocum's manifest ability had given him the Twelfth Corps, with which his name is so closely identified. In the Chancellorsville campaign it was Slocum who made the march around Lee's left, and showed himself the "cool, self-poised, and prompt commander that he had always been, and which made him distinguished even in the brilliant group of generals of which he was a member." It would require the whole history of Gettysburg to fairly portray Slocum's part there. The most impressive incident of that battle to me was Slocum's own battle on the 3d day of July, 1863. For five anxious hours Slocum commanded the field to our right; that dreadful struggle went on until Ewell with Early's and Edward Johnson's large divisions was forced to give up and abandon his prize of the night before. Slocum's resolute insistence, on the 2d, upon leaving Greene and his brigade as a precaution when General Meade ordered the Twelfth Corps to be sent to his (Meade's) left, with Greene's marvellous night battle, and more still, Slocum's organized work and engagement of the following morning, in my judgment prevented Meade losing the battle of Gettysburg.
The disaster at Chickamauga took Slocum's corps from the Rappahannock to Tennessee. Soon after his arrival he was sent to command the district of Vicksburg, where his work consisted of expeditions to break up bridges and railroads and to repel rebel raids. When the death of General McPherson, Slocum's department commander, at Atlanta, caused so many changes, Slocum was brought to that city to command the Twelfth Corps. When, a little later, we swung off on Hood's communications, Slocum being located south of the Atlanta crossing of the Chattahoochee River, it was his quick perception that recognized the significance of the final explosions, and it was he who pushed forward over the intervening six miles and took possession of that citadel of Georgia; and it was his despatch to his watchful commander, thirty miles away, that inspired that brief proclamation, "Atlanta is ours, and fairly won!"
In the march to the sea and through the Carolinas, General Sherman had given to Slocum the left wing, the Army of Georgia. He crossed the Savannah River when the high waters made it most difficult, pushing and fighting through the swamps of the Carolinas. He fought the battle of Averysboro, and later took a leading part at Bentonville, where Johnston, the toughest Confederate of them all, surrendered, and we turned our faces homeward.
At the close of the war General Slocum resigned from the army and engaged in civil pursuits, adding to his magnificent military reputation a civil repute for ability, honesty, and probity in business as well as in political affairs.
GENERAL WILLIAM TECUMSEH SHERMAN.
With regard to the central figure of this group, General Sherman himself, libraries are so full of his characteristic work and worth that I will simply add to the above sketches a few items. Those have been chosen which are the more personal. It is said that when his father gave him the name of the great Indian chief, Tecumseh, he remarked: "Who knows but this child may be a fighter?" It is indeed remarkable how often names are prophetic. A fighter he was, but one thoroughly equipped with that most valuable weapon to a general, namely, such knowledge of history as to make him an authority to all of us. Any disputed point we carried to him; we relied upon his being able to set us right. Indeed, one of his most marked characteristics was his quick perception and exceedingly retentive memory. This he evidenced in many ways; years after he ascended the Indian River in Florida he remembered with minute distinctness what he saw, from the shape of the inlet to the roosting pelicans along the mangrove islands. Talking with him before the battle of Kenesaw Mountain, I found him so conversant with the Chattahoochee Valley and the roads to and from Marietta, and all the features of that region, that I was astonished, and asked him where he had gotten such valuable information. He said he had gained it twenty years before, when travelling through the country as a member of a board of officers detailed to appraise horses lost in the Florida war. During his service in the South before the war he travelled much, and appears to have remembered ever after, with wonderful distinctness, the features of the country.
Sherman was, above all, pure in his patriotism and free from thought of self. When, from his position at the Military Seminary in Louisiana, he saw the conflict coming, he wrote: "I accepted this position when the motto of the seminary, inserted in marble over the main door, was, 'By the liberality of the General Government of the United States.'—'The Union'—'Este perpetua.' ... If Louisiana withdraws from the Federal Union, I prefer to maintain my allegiance to the old Constitution as long as a fragment of it survives;" adding, "for on no account will I do any act or think any thought hostile to or in defiance of the old government of the United States." When his clear perception of the magnitude of the struggle before us made him declare to Secretary Cameron that it "was nonsense to carry on a picayune war; that sixty thousand men were needed for immediate work to clear Kentucky and Tennessee; and two hundred thousand men to finish the war in that quarter;" and when the supposed extravagance of his demands led to the suspicion that his mind was unbalanced, thus placing him under a cloud, no selfish thought seems to have occurred to him. Instead of dwelling upon the injustice done him, he devoted all his knowledge, his wonderful energy and skill, to aiding General Grant; and, further, while under this cloud he gathered and sent forward to Grant much-needed supplies and men. He put order among quartermasters and commissaries anew, equipped new commands, and pushed them, never thinking of himself, to the front. This energy and generosity General Grant promptly acknowledged; and it was here, after the battle of Fort Donelson, that the celebrated Army of the Tennessee was born.