Night after night, day after day, I read among the letters, picking out only those that seemed of interest to the public, and to be perfectly proper to print.
At that time I edited for the North American Review six chapters of them. Nothing went without General Sherman’s approval. He allowed his clerk, Mr. Barrett, to copy for me. Hundreds of the most entertaining letters I regarded it indiscreet to print at that time, and they have never been printed yet.
The General and myself sat there in the basement by the little open fire many a time till twelve or one o’clock at night; I looking through the almost thousands of letters and papers, he smoking a cigar and reading. The poems of Burns lay there on his desk all the time, because Burns was his favorite poet. Dickens and Scott, he read time and again; some of the stories once a year, he said.
When I would find something of especial interest among the letters, I would speak of it. He would stop reading and, for an hour, tell me all about it, and add interesting things concerning the writer. What would I not now give could my memory recall faithfully his talks to me in the silence of those nights. He suffered some with asthma, and it was always easier for him to sit up far into the night and talk, than to go to bed. Sometimes a wee drop from a black bottle in the back room refreshed us both, without harming either.
About this time, a few over-zealous friends of Grant, not satisfied with the world’s recognition of his genius, were claiming for him the impossible merit of everything that happened in the war, even the origin of the March to the Sea. The claim was ridiculous, and I do not believe that General Grant personally had anything to do with it. But I am sure that Sherman felt that Grant ought to have spoken at this juncture.
One evening I came across an autograph letter from Grant to Sherman, congratulating him on the achievement of the March to the Sea, “a campaign,” in Grant’s words, “the like of which has not been read of in past history.” There was not a thought of claiming any of the glory for himself. Right beside it lay a letter from Robert E. Lee, telling how this movement of Sherman’s resulted eventually in the fall of Richmond. Reading these, determined me, while with General Sherman in his home, to write, myself, an account of the March to the Sea, for the North American Review. My article was printed in the Review, September, 1887.
When it was finished I asked the General to listen to it. He sent upstairs one morning for Mrs. Sherman to come down and hear it also. “Let me read it aloud,” said Mrs. Sherman. It was one of the delightful hours of my life, to sit there and hear the wife of the great soldier read to him my story of his March to the Sea. I watched his face while she read, and could see that his mind was again afire with the thought of the campaign. He made no important changes, and a note to the editor of the Review showed that he approved my paper fully.
Life went on in the General’s family very much as at Washington. It was a happy, hospitable home. “Tom,” the father now being reconciled to the idea of his being a priest, came up often from the college down town, and many were the interesting conversations I heard between the great soldier and his intellectual son. It seemed to me the same fire of intellect was in each, only it was all different in flame and purpose. Mrs. Sherman had a little office of her own upstairs, just as at her Washington home, where she devoted her energy to planning for the poor. She was a noble, unselfish woman, and her charities, unheralded to the world, did much to soften the hard lines of the unfortunate.
The General’s health was not the very best. He was often taking such severe colds as even threatened his life. The doctors were uneasy, and Mrs. Sherman was on one or two occasions much alarmed. “Should such a misfortune occur,” she said to me one morning after the breakfast, “should I survive him, I want you to undertake the publication of all my husband’s papers and correspondence. He has told me of his affection for you many times, and you know my own.” I was greatly touched by this new proof of confidence in me, but I could not but think that General Sherman had many years to live.
The General, simple in public life, was still simpler in his home. He came to breakfast mornings in his comfortable old slippers and wearing a shiny little morning coat that was more comfortable than decorative. After lunch at noon, he usually took an hour’s nap and then went down in the basement to his work of answering letters. He answered everybody, and gave himself as much labor in this imposed letter writing as if he were well paid for it. Hundreds and hundreds of people asked him to help them get office, and hundreds asked him for money. He gave a great deal, and the giving helped to keep him a comparatively poor man. Mrs. Sherman told me how he kept accounts at certain Washington stores, and sent needy men there almost daily with orders for hats, coats, etc. His daughter Lizzie was one of the kindest and sweetest spirits I ever knew. She was almost a constant companion of her father in his many travels.