Life of Wm. Tecumseh Sherman. / Late Retired General. U. S. A.

by Willis Fletcher Johnson

"Sherman was greatly beloved by his soldiers, partly for their success under him and partly for his kind treatment of them. He rarely consulted his subordinates, however, though he accepted suggestions when he thought them good. Still he was intolerant of negligence or carelessness, and punished it severely. He was not a bigoted man on the subject of religion. I am confident that while he felt deeply disappointed at his son's becoming a Roman Catholic priest, the disappointment was due more to his having abandoned a profession which General Sherman had set his heart upon his following. He wanted his oldest son to become a lawyer. The son studied for that profession and the opening of his career was exceedingly brilliant.

"General Sherman told me frequently that he wished to have nothing to do with politics, and after General Grant had been elected President he told me that he thought Grant had made a mistake, as his reputation as a soldier was worth more than any office. The last time I saw him was at the New England dinner in this city. We sat side by side, and he referred to the subject, and spoke of the number of bright men he had seen ruined by politics."

Chauncey Depew also knew Sherman well, particularly in his later years, in New York. "He was," said Mr. Depew, "at once the most distinguished and delightful figure in our metropolitan society. He seemed to have a most elastic constitution, and endured an amount of social obligation which would have tired out and used up many a younger and stronger man. He loved to be in the company of men and women. I think he dined out every night of his life, and very often he would be found at late suppers, especially theatrical suppers.

"He was, easily, at any table, at the head wherever he sat, and had a wonderful faculty for entertaining conversation. No person ever heard him say a disagreeable thing. With the most positive, pronounced and aggressive opinions on all questions, and never concealing them, he so stated them as never to offend an adversary. His attention to ladies was a most delightful exhibition of knightly and soldierly courtesy. There was in his manner and speech something of deference, respect and admiration, which conveyed a more signal compliment than can be wrought in phrase or flattery. At a night supper where the guests were mostly theatrical people he was, in his joyous hilarity, like a boy. In the speech which he invariably made there was much of the fatherly feeling of an old man rejoicing in the artistic success of his auditors, and to those who deserved it, whether actors or actresses, a neatly turned compliment which expressed all that a trained dramatic critic could say, and became in the recollection of the happy recipient the best memory of his or her life.

"I have been with him at hundreds of public dinners, and in studying closely his mental methods and habits of speech, have come to regard him as the readiest and most original talker in the United States. I don't believe that he ever made the slightest preparation, but he absorbed apparently while thinking and while carrying on a miscellaneous conversation with those about him, the spirit of the occasion, and his speech, when he finished, seemed to be as much of a surprise to himself as it was to the audience, and the work of a superior and exceedingly active intelligence which included him as well as the rest among its auditors.

"Most men, and I have met several, who had this faculty, were cans of dynamite, whose explosion was almost certain to produce most disastrous results. But General Sherman rarely failed in striking out a line of thought different from and more original than any other speaker, and in sometimes giving utterance to the boldest thought, yet always in harmony with the occasion.

"I recall the last two times that I met him as especially significant of his conversational talent and power of public speech on a sudden call. I sat near him at the dinner given in his honor by ex-Chief Justice Daly about a month ago. General Sherman rarely talked about himself, but on this occasion he became reminiscent and entertained us for more than an hour with free-hand sketches of his adventures on the plains in early days, and of the original people whom he met among the early settlers. These recollections if taken down at the moment would have proved an invaluable contribution to the history of the period covering the growth of transportation on the plains, from the wagon to the railroad, and the story of the bold and adventurous spirits who were the pioneers of Western civilization, many of whom he knew personally.

"The last time I met him he promised, after a dinner to which he was engaged, to do me the favor, though he said it was asking a good deal at his time of life, to come into the Yale Alumni Association dinner and say a word to the guests. His appearance there, about half-past 11, was an event which the alumni of Yale who were present, most of whom were young men who had never seen him before, will remember as long as they live.

"I have felt for many years that, in the interests of the period during which he was one of the most conspicuous actors, and with one exception the most conspicuous, he ought always to have been accompanied by a stenographer.

"I have known most of the men who have been famous in the country, in every walk of life, in the last twenty-five years sufficiently well to hear them frequently talk in a free and confidential way. General Sherman is one of the few who never bore you, whose conversation is always interesting, and no matter how long he talks, he leaves you eager and hungry for more. I was with him at the time I delivered the oration before the Army of the Potomac at Saratoga. I was with him from 10 o'clock in the morning until 6 in the afternoon, and he talked without cessation for the whole period. It was a test that few men could have stood, and the three others who were with him in the carriage only regretted that day was limited by the light."