"And so the hour passed pleasantly until the carriage returned, and the hero drove off with his companions, leaving a delightful impression upon all who had met him. These may seem trifling incidents, but they picture the defender of the Republic as he appeared in familiar intercourse toward the close of his remarkable career. Only a month before his death I received a note written in his neat chirography apologizing for his failure to attend the annual dinner of the Twilight Club, to which he had been especially invited. There is a certain quaintness in the abbreviations and a stately sweep in the signature which suggests Washington's letters. It is a model of easy courtesy:
"'Dear Sir: I thank you for your kind remembrance and invitation for the 8th inst. of your Twilight Club, and regret that during my two weeks' absence at Washington and Phila., from which I have just returned, my factotum has committed me to more engagements next week than I can fulfil. With best compliments to Yr. brother, I am sincerely yours,
Wm. T. Sherman.'
"Other and far less occupied men will ignore or forget such matters, but General Sherman was punctilious in the performance of the smallest duty."
Some interesting personal reminiscences of Sherman, beginning at the end of the war, were given by a writer in the New York Evening Post. "The first time I remember seeing Sherman near at hand," he said, "was at the grand review at Washington in May, 1865, when, dismounting from his horse at the grand stand as his army marched by, he ascended the steps to meet the President and Cabinet. My seat was close by, so that I could almost touch him as he passed up, and I can never forget his firm, vigorous step, still less the nervous quivering of his lip and the bristling up of his tawny moustache as he met Secretary Stanton, who had treated him so roughly about Johnston's capitulation. He drew back as Stanton stood ready to extend his hand and, bowing slightly, took his seat. It reminded me of a tiger-cat or lion meeting an enemy and ready to spring at his throat. There is no question that Sherman, though a generous enemy, was a good hater.
"The next occasion which brings him to mind is my return from Florida in 1870, when I met an ante-bellum acquaintance, Col. Archie Cole. He had been on Lieut.-Gen. Joe Johnston's staff, and told me, in grandiloquent language, of the plans they had concocted for trapping and destroying Sherman at Atlanta, which he said would have changed the whole result of the war. These plans, he boasted, were only disturbed by Jefferson Davis's appointment of Hood in the place of Johnston. I heard the story without much accepting it, but did accept Col. Cole's invitation to meet Gen. Joe Johnston at his rooms at a Savannah hotel, where, accordingly, I encountered the great rebel, and got from him a pretty strong confirmation of the idea, then prevailing among Gen. McClellan's friends, that he (McClellan), having the ironclad Merrimac on his flank at Norfolk, was fully justified by military axioms in going to Yorktown instead of taking the James River base before the wonderful Monitor met and repulsed the Confederate ram.
"I did not ask Johnston about his proposed capture of Sherman, but on my way North met and sat by the latter at Wm. H. Aspinwall's dinner party, in New York, given to General Sherman, two or three days after I had seen Johnston and his staff officer at Savannah. Among others, there was present a rebel, from Richmond, perhaps a Major-General, who was then making iron at the Tredegar Works. In a pause in the conversation I said to General Sherman: 'I have just been South, where I saw your old opponent, Joe Johnston, and had a talk with him and one of his staff officers; the latter thought you were in a very tight place at Atlanta, and that Johnston's removal changed the whole history of the war. I suppose when General Johnston was removed by Jeff. Davis, you must have been mighty glad to see him replaced by an inferior, mad-cap soldier like Hood? How was it?' 'Well,' said the General, with his usual frankness, 'of course I was glad to lose Johnston from my front, but it really made no great difference in the long run, and one day, when Johnston (who had been at West Point with me) and I were sitting under a shade tree in North Carolina, waiting to hear whether his terms of capitulation were ratified by Grant, I said, "Tell me, Joe, did it make any difference, except a few days, more or less in time, and some bloodshed? We had beaten you then, and, with the pick of the Northern armies at my elbow, you could not long have stopped our march." Johnston readily acceded to that,' said Sherman, 'and that was the simple truth and all there was to it.'
"Finding him ready, as usual, to speak out, notwithstanding his having the rebel Major-General sitting opposite, I said, 'I saw too, General, what they call down there "Sherman's monuments"—blackened chimneys and ruins—painting you as quite a monster of cruelty.' The General's face grew grave, and he tersely said, the company all attention now, 'I'll just tell you the only case when I hesitated to push discipline and punish my officers for wilful destruction. Of course marauders and camp-followers burned, robbed, and committed outrages we could not always reach, but the one other case was this. One day Colonel ---- of the —— th Ohio, was brought to headquarters under arrest for burning a plantation house. On being questioned he said:
"'Well, General, I have no defence to make; shoot me, but hear my story first. (He was not a literary fellow, and did not put into Latin "Strike but hear.") Escaping from prison some time ago, I was caught by bloodhounds and d—— d rebels, and brought to this plantation house; while I lay there, torn and bleeding, the owner came out and kicked and cursed me, and I swore if I lived I would pay him off. I have gone and done it, and am now ready for a file of men and muskets to square my accounts.'
"'What,' said Sherman, 'could I do? I had to pass it by quietly; but that was the only case when I forgave such a breach of the orders only to burn buildings under certain exigencies of war.' All this was said earnestly, but without exaggeration, and I shall not soon forget his face and the withering look he cast at our vis-á-vis rebel, who sat and took the medicine like a good enough fellow, as he really was.
"The last time I saw General Sherman was when Porter brought him, in the Tallapoosa, to Cape Cod and stood next to him at a deer hunt. The General was brimming over with the enjoyment of his holiday, and when at night the boys and girls sang his old war songs, I thought they would never get him back to the ship."