THE ROAD FROM McPHERSONVILLE—Sherman and Staff Passing Through Water and Mire.
Then he stood up and walked slowly about the room. After a bit he pointed to a shelf of the book-case, where the bulky volumes of the Nicolay-Hay memoirs stood.
"There," he remarked, "in those ten volumes you'll find all the Lincoln literature you want; I have made many speeches on Lincoln, but I don't remember where they are now—I don't remember."
Sherman's first family bereavement was the death of his son Willie, from typhoid fever, at Memphis, October 3, 1863. The boy had shown great fondness for military life, and had been playfully adopted as a sergeant by the battalion that formed his father's headquarters guard. He always turned out at drills and guard-mountings with a zeal that both amused and delighted the general, and he was a great favorite with all the soldiers who knew him. When he died, the battalion gave him a military funeral, and the heart broken father thereupon wrote to its commanding officer, Captain C. C. Smith, as follows:
"My Dear Friend: I cannot sleep to-night till I record an expression of the deep feelings of my heart to you and to the officers and soldiers of the battalion for their kind behavior to my poor child. I realize that you all feel for my family the attachment of kindred, and I assure you of full reciprocity.
"Consistent with a sense of duty to my profession and office, I could not leave my post, and sent for the family to come to me in this fatal climate and in that sickly period of the year, and behold the result. The child that bore my name and in whose future I reposed with more confidence than I did in my own plan of life now lies a mere corpse, seeking a grave in a distant land, with a weeping mother, brother and sisters clustered about him. For myself I ask no sympathy. On, on I must go to meet a soldier's fate or live to see our country rise superior to all factions, till its flag is adored and respected by ourselves and by all the powers of the earth.
"But Willie was, or thought he was, a sergeant in the Thirteenth. I have seen his eye brighten, his heart beat, as he beheld the battalion under arms, and asked me if they were not real soldiers. Child as he was, he had the enthusiasm, the pure love of truth, honor and love of country which should animate all soldiers.
"God only knows why he should die thus young. He is dead, but will not be forgotten till those who knew him in life have followed him to that same mysterious end.
"Please convey to the battalion my heartfelt thanks and assure each and all that if in after years they call on me or mine and mention that they were of the Thirteenth Regulars when Willie was a sergeant they will have a key to the affections of my family that will open all it has; that we will share with them our last blanket, our last crust."
Willie Sherman's remains were afterward removed from Memphis and interred at St. Louis, in Calvary Cemetery, by the side of another son, Charles, who died in infancy, in 1864. In the same plot the body of Mrs. Sherman was placed at her death, to be followed soon by the dust of the great soldier himself.