“Oh, well, that’s all right,” said the old hero, “if they think I am worthy of them; but don’t put me on a circus horse.”
This comment I repeated at the Metropolitan Club luncheon which followed the unveiling of Saint-Gaudens’s equestrian statue of the illustrious soldier. While McKim, who designed the pedestal, the poet Stedman, and others smiled, the gifted sculptor looked solemn. The steed, whose feet are not all where Sherman wished them to be, is supposed to be a counterfeit presentment of “Lexington.”
PHILIP H. SHERIDAN, who was in half a hundred battles and skirmishes without ever being wounded, wrote to an army friend in January, 1876:
In regard to the black horse, I am glad to say that he is still living, and is now in my stable. He has been a pensioner for the past eight years, never being used save in the way of necessary exercise. He is of the Black Hawk stock, was foaled at, or near, Grand Rapids, Michigan, and was brought into the army by one of the officers of the Second Michigan Cavalry, of which I was made Colonel in 1862. Early in the spring of that year, while the regiment was stationed at Rienzi, Miss., the horse was presented to me by the officers, and at that time was rising three years old. He is over seventeen hands in height, powerfully built, with a deep chest, strong shoulders, has a broad forehead, a clear eye, and is an animal of great intelligence. In his prime he was one of the strongest horses I have ever known, very active, and the fastest walker in the army, so far as my experience goes.[3] I rode him constantly from 1862 to the close of the war, in all the actions and in all the raids, as well as campaigns in which I took part. He was never ill, and his staying powers were superb. At present he is a little rheumatic, fat and lazy; but he has fairly earned his rest, and so long as I live he will be taken care of.
The celebrated charger died in October, 1878, when Sheridan made a slight addition to his biography, saying:
He always held his head high, and by the quickness of his movements gave many persons the impression that he was exceedingly impetuous. This was not the case, for I could at any time control him by a firm hand and a few words, and he was as cool and quiet under fire as one of my old soldiers. I doubt if his superior for field service was ever ridden by any one.
The poet-painter Buchanan Read, Herman Melville, and many minor writers made “Winchester” the subject of poems and sketches, while several sculptors and painters delineated him in marble and bronze and on canvas. On every returning Memorial day many gray-haired survivors of Sheridan’s rough-riders who remember the services of his
Steed as black as the steeds of night,
cross over from New York to Governor’s Island museum, and place flowers on the glass case containing the celebrated charger, whose body, after being set up by a skilled taxidermist, was, accompanied by his accoutrements, presented by the general to the United States Military Service Institution.