SHERIDAN'S RIDE TO THE FRONT.

Personal Recollections
OF
DISTINGUISHED GENERALS.

BY

WILLIAM F. G. SHANKS.

NEW YORK:
HARPER & BROTHERS, PUBLISHERS,
FRANKLIN SQUARE.
1866.

Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year one thousand
eight hundred and sixty-six, by
Harper & Brothers,
In the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the Southern District
of New York.

PREFACE.

The purpose of this volume is to make more familiar to the general public the actual characters of some of our great military leaders during the late war. I have attempted to portray them not as on parade, but in undress uniform, and to illustrate not only their great military qualities, but more particularly their mental peculiarities and characteristics. These pages will be found to contain many facts about some of the great battles which official reports have left untold, with such recollections of our generals as history proper will not perhaps condescend to record, and to embrace singular facts about great campaigns and strange stories of great men. The portraits are freely drawn. They are made from actual studies, if not special sittings, and while taking care to give every beauty, I have omitted none of the deformities or blemishes of my subjects, though I have told in full detail their virtues, and have touched on their faults and vices lightly. I have avoided alike extreme extravagance in praise or censure. Still there is enough shadow to the pictures to give the necessary, if not agreeable contrast to the lights. The reader must not, however, mistake the stand-point from which I have written. Distance, unfortunately for truth, lends enchantment not only to objects, but to men. The atmosphere of Olympus produces many phantasmagoria, and the great at a distance exist to our eyes in a sort of mirage. The philosophy of perspective as applied to natural objects is reversed when applied to mankind, and there are very few men who do not grow smaller as one approaches them. Most men are pyramidal in shape only, not proportions. "No man is a hero to his valet." Even Jupiter was ridiculous at times to Homer. Very few generals have appeared great to the war correspondents; and though very few of the latter can claim to be descendants of Diogenes, they can assert, with equal positiveness, that very few of the generals have been Alexanders, and that "the very sun shines through them." I have written under the disadvantage of being too near the objects drawn; and those who do not know the subjects as well may imagine I have made them undeservedly Liliputian in dimensions.

Writing contemporaneous history is the most thankless of tasks, and I discover also one of the least independent of labors. Still I have not written with a goose-quill, and there has been some gall in my ink, yet I do not think I have any thing in the ensuing chapters to blot. I do not think I have done any man injustice. I have written many sentences and made many assertions which will doubtless be termed strong, but in writing these I am only the amanuensis of truth; and I write with the firm belief that "historical truth should be only less sacred than religious truth."

I have no doubt, however, that others will think differently after perusing the book. When publishing in Harper's Magazine I was told that the language of some of these sketches offended the subjects, but I have been unable to find any fact that ought to be stated otherwise. I think it best to say, for the benefit of all who may choose to object or condemn the volume as now published, that I have written nothing that I do not believe to be true—I trust not one sentence that, dying, I would wish to blot, and certainly not one word that, living, I intend to retract.

New York, Sept., 1866.

CONTENTS.

ILLUSTRATIONS.

WILLIAM TECUMSEH SHERMAN.

PERSONAL RECOLLECTIONS
OF
DISTINGUISHED GENERALS.

CHAPTER I.

SHERMAN AS A STRATEGIST.

Of the few really great men who have been developed by the late war in this country, and who will leave a lasting impression on the minds of the people, William Tecumseh Sherman may be regarded as the most original. His name has been made more widely prominent, and his character more universally popular, than that of any other of our heroes; but it has been less in consequence of his brilliant success as a leader than by reason of his strongly-marked characteristics of person and mind. He is, without doubt, the most original and eccentric, though not the most powerful—the most interesting, though not the most impressive character developed by the rebellion. He is by far our most brilliant general, but not by any means the most reliable; the most fascinating, but not the most elegant; the quickest, but not the safest; the first to resolve, but not the most resolute. As a man he is always generous, but not uniformly just; affectionate by nature, but not at all times kind in demonstration; confiding, and yet suspicious; obstinate, yet vacillating; decided, but not tenacious—a mass of contradictions so loosely and yet so happily thrown together as to produce the most interesting combination imaginable. General Sherman's character has many beauties and virtues, but also many glaring defects and faults. His picture, as I have seen and studied it, possesses what the artists call "great breadth of light and shade," and is full of contrasts alternately pleasing and offensive, and which, in order to properly analyze the character, should be portrayed and described with equal force and impartiality. He is a character without a parallel among his contemporaries, though not without a contrast; and it is for the latter reason that I have chosen his character as the one upon which to base, as it were, the following estimates of the characters of his fellow-officers of the United States army, and not because I think, as may be supposed, that he deserves the first place in the rank of our great captains. The war lasted long enough to give the leaders, if not their proper places in popular estimation, at least their true linear rank in the army. General Sherman may be considered as first among the strategists of the war; General George H. Thomas as first among the tacticians; but Grant, combining the qualities of both tactician and strategist, must always be ranked as greatly the superior of both Thomas and Sherman.

General Sherman may be described as a bundle of nerves all strung to their greatest tension. No woman was ever more painfully nervous; but there is nothing of the woman's weakness in Sherman's restlessness. It is not, as with others, a defect of the organization; it is really Sherman's greatest strength, for from it results the brilliancy of conception and design which has characterized his strategic movements, the originality which has appeared in his views on political economy and the policy of war, and the overwhelming energy which is "his all in all," the secret and cause of his great success. From his extreme nervousness results the most striking feature of his character—a peculiar nervous energy which knows no cessation, and is resistless. It is not merely that energy and quickness of movement which naturally belongs to nervous organizations, but intensified a hundred fold. At the same time, it is energy without system, and oftentimes without judgment, but nevertheless always effective. General Sherman is the engine, but he is not always the engineer. He furnishes the motive power, but he frequently requires some person or thing to keep him to the track; in fact, he requires to be controlled and directed. He is untiring in his efforts; you can never dismay him with the amount or frighten him with the dangers of a task; and he hesitates at nothing, matters great and small receiving his attention. He is no believer in that too common fallacy that labor is a wearisome waste of the physical and vital powers; a punishment, not a privilege; and degrading, not elevating. Work is necessary to his existence, and hard, earnest work at that. Always a hard, earnest worker, he devoted, during the continuance of the war, but little time to sleep, and that little sleep was never sound. His active mind, I once heard him say to a fellow-officer, delights in preposterous dreams and impossible fancies, and, waking or sleeping, continues ever active in planning and executing.

A few anecdotes will perhaps better illustrate the nature of this nervous energy. The most remarkable instance of this characteristic which I can now recall occurred at Nashville, Tennessee. When Sherman assumed command there in March, 1864, the great difficulty in the way of an advance from Chattanooga upon the enemy, then covering Atlanta and the Georgia railroads, was the lack of provisions at Chattanooga and Knoxville. The military agent of the railroads from Nashville to Chattanooga was running through to the army at the latter point about ninety car-loads of rations per day. This merely served to feed the army then gathered there; nothing was accumulating for the spring campaign. General Sherman demanded the cause of this insufficient supply of rations. The agent reported that he needed both cars and locomotives, and added it was impossible to obtain them. General Sherman answered that nothing was impossible, and immediately began to devise means by which to remedy the evil. After a short deliberation, he decided to seize a sufficiency of cars and locomotives in Indiana, Ohio, and Illinois, and at once went to work to do so. In an incredibly short space of time he extended the northern terminus of the Louisville and Nashville Railroad through the former city, a distance of three miles, to the Ohio River. On the levee, or wharf, he built an inclined plane to the water's edge. One of the ferry-boats which plied between Louisville and Jeffersonville was seized, and especially prepared by the laying of rails across its bow and stern to carry cars and locomotives. On the Indiana side of the river he extended the Jeffersonville Railroad through that town to the Ohio River, and built another inclined plane from the bluff on which the town is situated down the steep wharf to the water's edge. At the same time he ordered the impressment of the necessary cars and locomotives from the various northwestern railroads, taking them off routes as far north as Chicago, and rushed them off to Nashville, crossing the Ohio by the means he had provided. The effect was soon visible. In a month after this movement began the railroad agents reported that they were running two hundred and seventy cars per day through to Chattanooga. By the 20th of April, the day Sherman left Nashville to begin his Atlanta campaign, he had accumulated at Knoxville eighteen, and at Chattanooga thirteen days' rations for his whole army of 120,000 men. The energy which inspired the railroad agents was communicated to the quarter-masters located at Nashville, and the result was the increase of the laboring force of this department from four or five thousand to nearly sixteen thousand men. During the progress of this work General Sherman required the railroad agents and quarter-masters to report progress daily. I happened to be in his office one morning when assistant quarter-master General James L. Donnalson reported a small increase in the number of cars forwarded on that day over the supply of the day before. General Sherman received the announcement with more evidences of gratification than he would have shown on hearing of a heavy re-enforcement of his numbers, for at this time he had more men than he well knew what to do with. "That's good!" he exclaimed—"that's good, Donnalson; we'll be ready for the start;" and then he hastily resumed his seat, and made a rapid calculation of some sort, which he showed with much apparent delight to Generals Donnalson and Webster, the latter his chief of staff. He could not have been more delighted if he had heard the news of a great victory. A moment afterward he turned to me to deny, in a very gruff way—he was always gruff to newspaper correspondents—my application for a pass over the military railroad to Chattanooga. "You see," he said, "I have as much as I can do to feed my soldiers," with a very ungracious emphasis on the word soldiers. As I had Lieutenant General Grant's pass to any point and by any route in my pocket, and had only submitted the question to General Sherman through deference to him as the immediate commander of the department, I could afford to smile at the slur conveyed in his emphasis, and turned away enriched with a reminiscence, and with increased admiration of the man.

Some former experience with, or, rather, observation of the general, had given me somewhat of the same opinion of his energy and earnestness. When he first assumed command at Louisville, Kentucky, in 1861, the agents of the New York Associated Press throughout the country were employed by the government in transmitting its cipher or secret messages, and correspondence between the various military commanders, by telegraph. In consequence of this arrangement, General Sherman frequented the office of the Louisville agency, in which I was at the time employed. He was always at this office during the evening, often remaining until three o'clock in the morning, when the closing of the office would force him to retire to his rooms at the hotel. During these hours he would pace the floor of the room apparently absorbed in thought, and heedless of all that was going on around him. He would occasionally sit at the table to jot down a memorandum or compose a telegram. He would sometimes stop to listen to any remark addressed to him by other occupants of the room, but would seldom reply, even though the remark had been a direct question, and would appear and act as if the interruption had but momentarily disturbed his train of thought.

In July, 1864, while besieging the enemy's position at Kenesaw Mountain, an incident occurred which may be given as illustrative of Sherman's energy. When the campaign opened he had published an order informing the army, in terms which were laughed at at the time as rather bombastic and slightly egotistical, that "the commanding general intended making the campaign without a tent," and during the greater part of the march his head-quarters actually consisted of nothing more than a tent-fly for the use of his adjutant general. He generally slept under a tree during dry weather, and in very wet weather in any convenient house. When the army was concentrated in the gorge of Snake Creek Gap, in which there was not a house of any character, General Logan "raised the laugh" on Sherman by sending him a tent to protect him from the rain, and which, owing to the terrible state of the weather, Sherman was compelled to use. But the greater part of the campaign was actually passed by Sherman without any other quarters than I have described as for the convenience of his adjutant general. Early one morning a regiment of troops passed his bivouac near Kenesaw Mountain, Georgia, and saw him lying under a tree near the roadside. One of the men, not knowing the general, and supposing him, from his jaded, weary, and generally dilapidated appearance, to be drunk, remarked aloud, "That is the way we are commanded, officered by drunken generals." Sherman heard the remark and instantly arose. "Not drunk, my boy," he said good-humoredly, "but I was up all night looking after your rations, and am very tired and sleepy." He soon after broke up head-quarters, and, passing the same regiment on the march, was received with loud and hearty cheers.

He makes his subordinates work, too, with the same zeal. When the rebels, in evacuating Resaca, succeeded in burning the railroad bridge over the Oostenaula River, he turned to Colonel Wright, his engineer in charge of railroads, and asked him how long it would take him to replace that bridge. Colonel Wright replied after a short calculation, during which Sherman showed his impatience at the delay in the answer, that he could rebuild it in four days.

"Sir," exclaimed the general, hastily, "I give you forty-eight hours, or a position in the front ranks."

The bridge was forthcoming at the proper time.

This nervousness of Sherman's organization has naturally produced a peculiar restlessness of manner and admirable vigor of expression. He talks with great rapidity, often in his haste mingling his sentences in a most surprising manner, and accompanying his conversation by strange, quick, and ungraceful gestures, the most common of which is the knocking of the ashes from his cigar with the little finger of his left hand, frequently knocking at it until ashes and light too are gone.

In a conversation of importance, and particularly on a battle-field, he seldom gives a person time to finish his remarks or reports. He replies as soon as he has heard enough to convey the idea, never waiting its elaboration. In giving his instructions and orders, he will take a person by the shoulder and push him off as he talks, following him to the door, all the time talking and urging him away. His quick, restless manner almost invariably results in the confusion of the person whom he is thus instructing, but Sherman himself never gets confused. At the same time, he never gets composed. Under all circumstances, he is thus restlessly, never timidly nervous. In danger the restlessness is not so visible, and hence it is apparent that there is nothing of timidity in it. On the battle-field where he commands Sherman's nervous manner is toned down. He grates his teeth, and his lips are closed more firmly, giving an expression of greater determination to his countenance. His eyes are somewhat closed, as if endeavoring to see the furthermost limits of the battle-field, and, as it were, peer into the future and see the result. His cigar is always kept firmly between his lips, but he suffers its fire occasionally to die out. He is less restless of body; his arms are more confined to their proper limits; and he is content to stay in one spot. He talks less at such moments than at calmer ones. On light occasions, however, he is invariably ill at ease. His fingers nervously twitch his red whiskers—his coat buttons—play a tattoo on his table or chair, or run through his hair. One moment his legs are crossed, and the next both are on the floor. He sits a moment, and then rises and paces the floor. He must talk, quick, sharp, and yet not harshly, all the time making his odd gestures, which, no less than the intonation of his voice, serve to emphasize his language. He can not bear a clog upon his thoughts nor an interruption to his language. He admits of no opposition. He overrides every thing. He never hesitates at interrupting any one, but can not bear to be interrupted himself. He is very well aware, and candidly admits that his temper is uncommonly bad, and, what is worse, he makes no attempt to control or correct it. In speaking of the late General McPherson, of the Army of Tennessee, he once remarked, "He is as good an officer as I am—is younger, and has a better temper." Grant, once speaking of Sherman's peevishness, said, "Sherman is impetuous and faulty, but he sees his faults as soon as any man." The fact is, if Sherman's faults alone could be given to another, they would serve to distinguish him from the common herd.

The idea generally prevails that commanding generals are very didactic on the battle-field, and give their orders in precise language and stentorian voice. A little familiarity with actual war will soon dispel this false impression, particularly if you meet Sherman on the battle-field, for there is less of dignity, display, and grandiloquence in him than any other general whom I have met during the war. At the battle of Chattanooga he gave his orders for the advance of his troops against the enemy's strongly fortified position to his brother in law, General Hugh Ewing, in the words uttered between two puffs at a bad cigar: "I guess, Ewing, if you are ready, you may as well go ahead." Ewing asked a few questions in regard to retaining the échelon formation of his command as then marshaled for the advance. Sherman replied, "I want you to keep the left well toward the river (the Chickamauga), and keep up the formation four hundred yards distance, until you get to the foot of the hill."

"And shall we keep it after that?" asked Ewing.

"Oh, you may go up the hill as you like," said Sherman; and then he added, sotto voce, with a smile and a wink to his aid, and General Ewing's brother, Charley Ewing, who stood near by, "if you can." As General Ewing was mounting his horse and about to leave, Sherman called out to him,

"I say, Ewing, don't call for help until you actually need it." General Frank Blair, and others of the Army of the Tennessee who were standing near Sherman, laughed at this in such a manner as left the impression on the minds of others, as well as myself, that on some former occasion General Ewing had called for help before General Sherman thought that he really needed it.

It is recorded of Sherman that, on witnessing from the top of a rice-mill on the Ogeechee River the capture of Fort McAllister by General Hazen's forces, and the successful termination by that capture of the "march to the sea," he exclaimed, imitating the voice of a negro, "Dis chile don't sleep dis night," and hurried off to meet General Foster and complete the junction of the two armies.

His nervousness is not less perceptible in his writings than in his conversation and manners. His writings lack in elegance, but not in force. Some of his letters, remarkable for absence of grace and presence of vigor, are already accepted as among the model documents of the war, not only as to style, but as to argument. His speeches, letters, and orders are seldom more than skeletons, framed of sharp, pointed, but disjointed sentences, from which the ideas to be conveyed protrude so prominently as to be comprehensible when the sentence is but half conveyed. His ideas are never elaborated in his letters, though given more fully than in his conversations, but you never have to finish the sentence to discover its meaning. There are several specimens which every reader will naturally think of in this connection. His letter to the rebel General Hood on the proposed depopulation of Atlanta is a curious document, an impromptu reply, thrown off-hand from his pen, and it reads as if it were Sherman talking. He begins this letter by acknowledging the receipt of a communication at the hands of "Messrs. Bull and crew." The bearers, who were designated by this undignified title, were members of the Common Council of Atlanta, for whom Sherman does not appear to have entertained the most profound respect. The letter ends by advising Hood to tell his tale of oppression "to the marines," as he (Sherman) is not to be imposed upon. In the same correspondence he indicates his action in depopulating Atlanta, and gives his peculiar "theory of suppression." Sherman's whole theory, in which, by the way, he has been consistent from the first, is embraced in the proposition to "fight the devil with fire." He was for vigorous war all the time—hard blows at the organized armies, frequent and oft repeated. He has none of the elements of Fabian in him. He writes in defense of the action at Atlanta alluded to: "We must have peace, not only in Atlanta, but in all America. To secure this, we must stop the war that now desolates our once happy and favored country. To stop war, we must defeat the rebel armies that are arrayed against the laws and Constitution, which all must respect and obey. To defeat these armies, we must prepare the way to reach them in their recesses provided with the arms and instruments which enable us to accomplish our purpose." His expression in the same letter, "War is cruelty—you can not refine it," is a sharp, terse rendition of an undisputed truth, to the illustration of which whole chapters have been less successfully devoted by more distinguished writers.

While endeavoring to fill up his dépôts at Chattanooga and Knoxville preparatory to the campaign against Atlanta, Sherman was asked by members of the United States Christian Commission for transportation for their delegates, books, tracts, etc., for the army. His reply is very characteristic of the man: "Certainly not," he wrote; "crackers and oats are more necessary to my army than any moral or religious agency." As this incident shows, Sherman is not a very firm believer in the utility of Christian or Sanitary Commissions, or aid societies generally. He thinks female nurses about a hospital or an army a great nuisance. He once alluded contemptuously to the efforts of a large number of ladies at Louisville, Kentucky, to send clothing, lint, sweetmeats, etc., to his troops, but was induced, in lieu of discouraging their efforts, to take steps to properly direct them. He met the ladies by agreement in one of the public halls at Louisville, now known as Wood's Theatre, and made an address to them. He went among the lambs with all the boldness and dignity of a lion; but the rough, uncouth manner of him who had frowned on thousands of men melted in the presence of a few hundred ladies. They found that, though "he was no orator as Brutus is," he could talk very tenderly of the soldier's wants, very graphically of the soldier's life and sufferings, and very gallantly of woman and her divine mission of soothing and comforting.

During the campaign of Atlanta communication with the rear was very much obstructed, the news correspondents found many difficulties in forwarding information, and telegrams to the press seldom reached New York. During the movement around Atlanta Sherman was applied to directly by the news agent at Louisville for the details of the movement. In reply the general telegraphed, "Atlanta is ours, and fairly won;" following up the expression, which has already passed into song, with a brief and graphic report of the flank movement around Atlanta and the battle of Jonesborough. This report is one of the most admirable narratives I remember to have ever read, and at the time of its publication I wrote for the Herald, of which I was then a correspondent, a long criticism of it. The letter never appeared, however, for the reason that I endeavored to show that, successful as he had been, Sherman had mistaken his vocation as a general, and ought to have been a war correspondent. I suppose Sherman would have been mortally offended at such language, particularly as he affected to hold correspondents and editors in contempt; but undoubtedly he would have been invaluable to the New York Herald or London Times in such a capacity, and could have made more money, if not more reputation, in that capacity than as a major general. He has lately declared that he does not believe he will ever have occasion to lead men again, and I advise him by all means to go into the newspaper business. Any of the principal papers of New York will be glad to give him double the pay of a major general to act in the capacity of war correspondent.

Until Sherman had developed his practicability, this peculiarity of expression and manner were accepted as evidences of a badly-balanced mind. It will be remembered that in his early career a report was widely circulated to the effect that he was a lunatic; but the origin of this story, if properly stated, will redound to his credit, as evincing admirable foresight and sagacity. The true origin of this report is as follows: Sherman succeeded General Robert Anderson in command of the Department of the Ohio on October 13, 1861. Up to that time about ten thousand United States troops had been pushed into Kentucky. The Western governors were under a promise to send as many more, but were slow in doing so. General A. Sidney Johnston, the rebel commander at Bowling Green, was endeavoring to create the impression that he had about seventy-five thousand men, when he really had only about twenty-eight thousand. In this he succeeded so far as to cause it to be supposed that his force largely exceeded Sherman's. Sherman urged upon the government the rapid re-enforcement of his army, but with little effect. The troops did not come, for the reason that the government did not credit the statements of the perilous condition of Sherman's army. So repeated and urgent were Sherman's demands for re-enforcements, that at last the Secretary of War, Mr. Cameron, visited Louisville in order to look into the situation of affairs. An interview took place at the Galt House at Louisville, Sherman, Cameron, and Adjutant General Thomas being present. Sherman briefly explained the situation of affairs, stated his own force and that of the enemy, and argued that re-enforcements were necessary to hold Kentucky, to say nothing of an advance. "My forces are too small for an advance," he said—"too small to hold the important positions in the state against an advance of the enemy, and altogether too large to be sacrificed in detail." On being asked how many men were required to drive the enemy out of the state, he answered, without hesitation, "Two hundred thousand." The answer was a surprise to the two officers, which they did not attempt to conceal. They even ridiculed the idea, and laughed at the calculation. It was declared impossible to furnish the number of men named. Sherman then argued that the positions in Kentucky ought to be abandoned, and the army no longer endangered by being scattered. This was treated more seriously, and vigorously opposed by Cameron and Thomas. They declared the abandonment of Kentucky was a step to which they could not consent. Subsequently they broached a plan which had been devised for dividing the Department and Army of the Ohio into two; one column to operate under Mitchell from Cincinnati as a base against Knoxville, and the other from Louisville against Nashville. To this Sherman was strongly opposed. Satisfied by the persistence of Cameron on this point that the government was not disposed to second his views of conducting the affairs of the Department, Sherman asked to be relieved and ordered to duty in the field. Cameron gladly acquiesced in his wishes, and he was relieved by Buell, November 30, 1861.

On the same evening of the famous interview between Cameron and Sherman, the latter paid his customary visit to the Associated Press-rooms at Louisville. Here, while still in a bad humor over the result of the interview, he was approached by a man who introduced himself as an attache of a New York paper, and asked permission to pass through the lines to the South in the capacity of a correspondent. Sherman replied that he could not pass. The correspondent, with unwarrantable impertinence, replied that Secretary Cameron was in the city, and he would get a pass from him. Sherman at once ordered him out of his department, telling him that he would give him two hours to make his escape; if found in his lines after that hour he "would hang him as a spy." The fellow left the city immediately, and on reaching Cincinnati very freely expressed his opinion that the general was crazy. A paper published in that city, on learning the story of the interview between Cameron and Sherman, which soon became public, employed the fellow to write up the report which was thus first circulated of Sherman's lunacy. His opinion that two hundred thousand men were required to clear Kentucky of rebels was quoted as proof of it by this man, and thus the story came into existence.

Subsequent events revealed the fact that Sherman did not much exaggerate the force necessary to carry on the war in the central zone of the field of military operations. Although we have never had a single army numbering two hundred thousand men in the West, much larger armies have been necessary to the accomplishment of the campaign of the Mississippi and Tennessee Rivers than any person other than Sherman thus early in the war imagined. The army of Grant at Fort Donelson and Shiloh, combined with that of Buell, was not over eighty thousand men. That of Halleck before Corinth numbered exactly one hundred and two thousand. Sherman left Chattanooga in May, 1864, with one hundred and twenty thousand men, the largest army ever gathered in one body in the West. At the same time, he had under his command at different points on the Mississippi River and in Kentucky an additional force of about fifty thousand, while the forces operating under other commanders in the West would, if added to his, make a grand total of two hundred and fifty thousand men operating on the Mississippi River, every one of whom was necessary to the conquest and retention of the Mississippi Valley.

Sherman may have been at one time crazy, but his madness, like Hamlet's, certainly had marvelous method in it. Such lunatics as he have existed in all ages, and have, when as successful as himself, been designated by the distinctive title of "genius," in contradistinction to men of medium abilities. Not only Shakspeare, but Dryden, seems to have encountered such madness as Sherman's, and to have appreciated the truth that

"Great wits are sure to madness near allied,

And thin partitions do their bounds divide."

Doubtless the same author had such a genius or madman as Sherman in his mind when he described one of his characters as

"A fiery soul, which, working out its way,

Fretted the pigmy body to decay."

The peculiar formation of Sherman's head shows his great development of brain. His forehead is broad, high, and full, while the lower half of his face and head are of very diminutive proportions. In a person of less physical strength and vitality, this great preponderance of the mental over the physical powers would have produced perhaps actual lunacy. The head of Sherman is of the shape peculiar to lunatics predisposed to fanciful conceptions. There is too much brain, and in Sherman it is balanced and regulated only by his great physical development. Sherman's brain, combined with bad health, would have produced lunacy; his brain and sinewy strength combined produced his peculiar mental and physical nervousness. Had he been a sedentary student instead of an active soldier, the last line of Dryden's poem might also have applied to him, and we should know of him only as an "o'er informed tenement of clay." [1]

When this report of his lunacy was first circulated, Sherman was much chagrined at it, and often referred to

it in bitter terms. Time and success have enabled him to frown it down, and justified him in laughing at it. He once laughingly referred to this report about himself, and the rumor which simultaneously prevailed regarding Grant's drunkenness during the battle of Shiloh as illustrative of the friendship existing between them. "You see," he said to a gentleman, "Grant stood by me when I was crazy, and I stood by him when he was drunk."

During the siege of Corinth he commanded the right wing of Thomas's corps, while T. W. Sherman, of Port Royal memory, commanded the left. The latter was very unpopular with his division on account of a painfully nervous manner and fretful disposition, and the officers of the command discussed him critically with great freedom, many condemning his manner as offensive. One day General W. T. Sherman was visiting General Steedman—then a brigade commander in T. W. Sherman's division—and the latter's name was brought up, Steedman giving a very ludicrous account of Sherman's conduct.

"Oh!" said William Tecumseh, "this is the crazy Sherman, is it?"

Great difficulty was found during the operations before Corinth in distinguishing the two Shermans. The soldiers solved the problem by giving each Sherman a nickname. T. W. Sherman was called "Port Royal Sherman," in allusion to his services in South Carolina, while W. T. Sherman was known by the somewhat inappropriate title of "Steady-old-nerves," in contradistinction to the other, who, as before stated, was more timidly nervous. Mr. Lincoln, with some recollection of this coincidence of names on his mind, asked General Grant, on being introduced to General Sherman, if he was W. T. or T. W., and laughed with boyish glee at the "joke on Sherman."

As another natural result of Sherman's nervous energy, he has acquired the habit of decision in the most perfect degree, and his peculiar organization has tended to make him practical as well as petulant. He never seems to reason, but decides by intuition, and, in this respect, has something of the mental as well as bodily peculiarities of the gentler sex, who are said to decide intuitively. But Sherman is by no means a woman—he would have been a shrew had he been—and possesses not one particle of the sex's beauty or gentleness. Sherman jumps at conclusions with tremendous logical springs; and, though his decisions are not always final, they are in effect so, for, if he is forced to retire an inch, his next jump will probably carry him forward an ell. Facts are the only argument which prevail with him, and the best arguments of wise men are wasted in endeavoring to convince him without undeniable facts at hand. Obstinate, and vain, and opinionated as he is, and indisposed as he may be to listen to or heed the arguments of equals or inferiors, he never hesitates to sink all opposition before the orders of his superiors, and pay the strictest deference to their views when expressed authoritatively.

I have before said this nervousness of mental and bodily organization was the main-spring of Sherman's character. From it result not only his virtues, but his faults, and as man and commander he has many. He is as petulant as a dyspeptic; excessively gruff, and unreasonably passionate. His petulance does not, however, prevent his being pleasant when he is disposed; his gruffness does not destroy all his generosity, and his passionate moods are usually followed by penitence. His fits of passion are frequent but not persistent, and, though violent, are soon appeased.

His gruffness often amounts to positive rudeness. While in command at Louisville in 1861, the wife of the rebel commander Ingraham passed through the city en route to the South. The lady, who was rebelliously inclined, pleaded consumption as her excuse for wishing to inhale the Southern air. Sherman gruffly advised her to "shut herself up in a room and keep up a good fire—it would do her just as much good." He often replies in this petulant tone to both sexes, particularly if the person addressed has no business of importance.

He once took great offense at having his manners, and particularly this habit of gruffness, compared to the manners of a Pawnee Indian, and expressed his contempt for the author of the slur in a public manner. He was much chagrined shortly after to find that the correspondent who had been guilty of the offensive comparison had heard of his contemptuous criticism, and had amended it by publicly apologizing to the whole race of Pawnees!

During the battle of Bull Run, where General Sherman commanded a brigade, he was approached by a civilian, who, seeing him make some observations without the aid of a field-glass, proffered him the use of his own. Sherman turned to the gentleman and gruffly demanded,

"Who are you, sir?"

"My name is Owen Lovejoy, and I am a member of Congress."

"What are you doing here? Get out of my lines, sir—get out of my lines."

Nothing satisfied Sherman but the immediate retreat of the member of Congress to the rear.

I have heard that Sherman's bad temper was the cause of his leaving his chosen profession of the law. After resigning his commission in the army in 1853, he became, after several changes, a consulting lawyer in the firm of his brothers-in-law, the Ewings, at Leavenworth, Kansas. He had entered into the copartnership with the distinct understanding that he was not to be called upon to plead in the courts; for, though possessing a thorough knowledge of legal principles, a clear, logical perception of the equity involved in all cases, and though perfectly au fait in the authorities, he had no confidence in his oratorical powers. He was not then the orator he has latterly become, and utterly refused to take any part in legal debate or pleadings. One day a case came up in the Probate Court of Kansas requiring immediate attention. Tom and Hugh Ewing were busy; McCook was absent, and Sherman was forced, nolens volens, to go into court. He carefully mapped out his course until it looked like plain sailing; laid down his plan of procedure, as he used subsequently to do his plans of marches; but he was destined to be driven from his chosen route, not by a Joe Johnston or "foeman worthy of his steel," but by a contemptible, pettifogging lawyer, with more shrewdness than honesty, and more respect for the end to be attained than the means to be used. In the debate which the trial involved, Sherman lost his temper, and, consequently, his case. He returned to his office in a towering rage, dissolved the partnership with his brothers-in-law, and, without farther hesitation, accepted the presidency of the Louisiana Military Academy, the proffer of which he had received a day or two before.

General Sherman's violent temper greatly endangered his reputation toward the close of the war, and he came near sacrificing, in an evil hour of passion, all that he had won before. His passion was to him as the unarmored heel was to Achilles, and the vulnerable point of his character came near costing him even more dearly than did the vulnerable part of the Grecian warrior's body. His diplomatic feat with Joe Johnston was generally denounced as a blunder, but it was not the blunder which came near costing him so dearly. That piece of diplomacy took the shape of a blunder in consequence of the unfortunate and unforeseen circumstances and disasters which occurred simultaneously with it. Had Mr. Lincoln lived, General Sherman would to-day have borne a brilliant reputation as a diplomatist, and his agreement with Johnston would have been at once, as it was eventually, accepted as the basis for the political reconstruction of the country. That agreement was repudiated by the people and President Johnson in an hour of frenzied passion, though the latter has since modeled his plan upon it; and Sherman lost his chance for becoming a great diplomatist. But he, and he only, was to blame for the grave blunder which immediately afterward nearly cost him his fame and position as a soldier. Sullen at the repudiation of his agreement with Johnston, angry at the interference of General Halleck with the co-operative movements of himself and Sheridan, and furious at the countermanding of his orders to his subordinates by the Secretary of War, Sherman forgot himself, and marched to Washington with his army, breathing vengeance upon Halleck, and hate and contempt for Stanton. Fortunately for Sherman, history will not record the scene. History never yet recorded—no nation ever before safely witnessed such a spectacle as that of a victorious general, at the head of eighty thousand men devoted to him and jealous of his fame as a part of their own, marching to the capital of the country with threats against his military superiors breathing from his lips and flowing from his pen. For days Sherman raved around Washington, expressing his contempt for Halleck and Stanton in his strongest terms, and denouncing them as "mere non-combatants" whom he despised. More than this, he wrote to his friends, and through them to the public, comparing Stanton and Halleck to "cowardly Falstaffs," seeking to win applause and honor for the deeds he had done; accusing the Secretary of War of suppressing his reports, and endeavoring to slander him before the American public in official bulletins. For days his army roamed the streets of the capital with the same freedom with which they had roamed through the fields of Georgia and the swamps of the Carolinas, and no man dared to raise his voice in condemnation of their leader, or approval of the superiors who had opposed him. No republic ever before survived such a condition of affairs; this republic never was in such danger before, and yet the danger was hardly suspected. The spectacle is one which Sherman will ever regret, but every true American, and every lover of republican liberty, can point to it with pride as a remarkable illustration of the stability of republican institutions. Powerful as Sherman was against Stanton and Halleck (and a word from him would have destroyed them), he was powerless against the nation, and not one man of his mighty host would have followed him in an attempt upon its existence. It is, perhaps, a still greater proof of the power of republican principles that, in the midst of his furious rage, such a thought as the injury of the government never for a passing second entered the brain of the leader of these men. He has reason to be thankful that the nation was as generous as he was honest; and that the people made no record against him for the offense against discipline which in any other country would have cost him not merely his position, but his reputation, and in any other army his head. At the same time, the nation must and will cherish the honest man who, thus tried and tempted, never for a single second forgot his allegiance to the principles for which he had fought and the country which he had served.

General Sherman's reputation as a soldier must rest entirely on his strategic abilities. His successes were those of strategy only—not of tactics. His faults as a commander are glaring as his faults of character. As an organizer of armies for the field, and as a tactician in battle, he was an utter failure. He never commanded a well-organized army whose discipline did not become relax under his administration, and he was never commander-in-chief in any battle which was not a failure. Instead of being an organizer, Sherman was a disorganizer; he was always chief among the "Bummers" which he made his soldiers, and by which name they were eventually designated. His whole career shows him to have been solely a strategist, absolutely incapacitated by mental organization for disciplining and fighting an army. His attempt to organize the army in Kentucky in 1861 was a most egregious failure. He gave it up in despair to General Buell, who, on assuming command, found it a mob without head or front, or appropriate parts. Buell, in contradistinction to Sherman, was great as an organizer and disciplinarian, and he soon made a fine army out of Sherman's unorganized mob. General Sherman shortly afterward went into the battle of Shiloh with a division of troops who were also unorganized, and only escaped annihilation by the timely appearance of Buell and the now thoroughly disciplined troops which Sherman had originally commanded. When Buell's troops on this occasion made their appearance on the small plateau which is called Pittsburg Landing, the great numbers of Sherman's demoralized new recruits who were there huddled together welcomed them as veterans. "Buell! Buell!" was their cry; "here come Buell's veterans." One can not but smile when he remembers that the men thus hailed as veterans had never been engaged in even so much as a skirmish. Their conduct in the desperate battle which followed on the day after their arrival proved them to be worthy of the name. One year's thorough discipline had made them veterans without having fought a battle.

Throughout Sherman's career his troops were noted for their lack of discipline. When he assumed command of the Army of Tennessee on the promotion of General Grant in 1863, he found it one of the best disciplined armies in the country, though not the best provided. I doubt if there was ever a division, brigade, or even regimental drill in that army after Sherman took command. He subsequently became indirectly in command of the Army of the Cumberland, which, though directly commanded by that strict disciplinarian, General George H. Thomas, soon felt the effect of Sherman's presence and control, and became very relaxed in discipline. Subsequently, on the march to the sea and through the Carolinas under Sherman, the discipline of the formerly model armies became still more relaxed, and gradually the whole army became regular "Bummers," a term which is not generally understood in its proper sense of reproach. The people to this day only half know what a "bummer" is, from having a general idea of the character of Sherman as the chief of bummers. The veil of romance which surrounded Sherman's army has never been entirely torn away. Its pilgrimages are still romances. It has always been viewed in that dim and distant perspective which adds a charm to beauty, and hides internal troubles and blemishes, and the evils it did and the outrages it committed have never been made public. But the friends of Sherman might reasonably claim even the want of this special tact for organizing and disciplining troops as a virtue. It can not really be said to have detracted from Sherman's ability as a soldier. What was lost thereby to the army in discipline was made up in mobility. If its morale was bad, the marching was good, and that satisfied Sherman. If he did not teach his soldiers how to fight, he gave them the mobility which the execution of his strategic designs required of them, and thus the end aimed at was gained, and the country was satisfied. He merely changed his men from heavy to light infantry. Success justifies all means, and thus Sherman became—and justly became—a great general without ever having won a battle.

It is very strong language, I admit, to say that Sherman never won a battle, but considerately so, for if the purely tactical operations of General Sherman be critically examined, it will be found that they were almost invariably failures. He was the chief in command, the central and controlling power, in the battles of Chickasaw Bayou, Resaca, Kenesaw Mountain, and Jonesboro, all of which, with the bare exception of the latter, where his overpowering force and strategic march of the night before insured victory, were tactically great failures. The failure of the co-operative movements of Grant at Chickasaw Bayou doubtless caused Sherman's defeat at that point—at least it has served to explain it away, and stands as the excuse for it; but all will remember how signal a failure it was. The battle of Resaca was a still greater failure. Doubt, delay, and inaction lost Sherman the great advantage which his strategic march through Snake Creek Gap had given him in placing him in the rear of the enemy's position, and he ought to have captured every gun and wagon of the enemy, and dispersed the army which subsequently retarded his advance in Atlanta; but the battle was begun too late and pushed too feebly. Sherman's strategy had at one time rendered a battle unnecessary, and it was forced on him through another's indecision (I believe that General McPherson admitted before his death that that fault was his), but certainly it was the fault of Sherman that the battle, when fought, was indecisive. Every body will remember the Kenesaw Mountain battle and its useless sacrifices, and every body will remember, too, the candor with which Sherman wrote that it was a failure, and that the fault was his. All the minor engagements of his great campaign against Atlanta were either positive defeats or negative advantages, and yet that wonderful campaign was won, and all the advantages which could have under any circumstances accrued from it were gained to us without the losses which a great battle would have caused. The strategic marches executed during that campaign are now chapters in the theory and history of war, and the close student of the art will see more to admire in the passage of the Chattahoochee River, the march through the gorge of Snake Creek Gap, and across the Allatoona Mountains, and the flank movements around Kenesaw and Atlanta, than in the more dashing but less skillful marches through Georgia and the Carolinas. The campaign of Atlanta was made in the face of the enemy commanded by their most skillful general, while during the other and more famous marches no enemy was met. The campaign through Georgia was merely extensive; that against Atlanta was both grand in conception and difficult in execution. One was accomplished at a stride, the other step by step. The campaign of Atlanta gave rise not only to a new system of warfare, but even to a new system of tactics. Never before in the history of war had an army been known to be constantly under fire for one hundred consecutive days. Men whom three years of service had made veterans learned during that campaign a system of fighting they had never heard of before. The whole army became at once from necessity pioneers and sharp-shooters. The opposing armies lay so close to each other that not only pickets, but whole corps were within musket range of each other, and every camp had to be intrenched. As a singular fact, showing the impression made on the minds of the men by the changed tactics which this campaign rendered necessary, I may mention that the soldiers called each other "gophers" and "beavers;" and "gopher holes" were more common in the armies' track than were camp-fires. It used to be laughingly said of the men that, instead of "souring onto," i.e. taking without leave each other's rations, they were in the habit, during the Atlanta campaign, of purloining each other's pick-axes and spades with which to dig their "gopher holes" or trenches for their protection from the enemy's sharp-shooters. I imagine it is on this campaign and its results, rather than on that from Atlanta to the sea, and from thence to Goldsboro', that General Sherman would prefer to rest his reputation in the future. [2] We of to-day study the holiday marches from a very different stand-point from that which the generations which follow us will view them. When all things come to be critically examined and carefully summed up, it will be decided and adjudged that the battles which made the campaign to the sea and through the Carolinas successes were fought on the hills around Nashville by General Thomas, not by General Sherman. Yet they are not without their great merit. Undertaken with deliberation and after elaborate preparation, they were not wanting in boldness and originality of design, but they do not serve to illustrate strategy: it is only the logistics which are so admirable.

A great deal has been said and written about General Sherman's dislike for the newspapers and for that class of necessary nuisances which were with every army, the war correspondents; but it was a dislike that was in a great measure affected. All men are egotists, Grant and Sherman among the rest, and both like to be well spoken of and written about; they would hardly be human if they did not. In fact, if Sherman can not find somebody to write about him, he does it himself. One of the instances in which he has complimented himself is destined to give every student of the art of war a knowledge of this weak point of his character. Shortly after the successful passage of the Chattahoochee River in the face of the enemy, an operation which was among the finest accomplishments of the campaign of Atlanta, Sherman published an address to his troops, in which he said, with pardonable egotism, "The crossing of the Chattahoochee and breaking of the Augusta Road was most handsomely executed by us, and will be studied as an example in the art of war." A still greater piece of egotism from his pen is not less amusing. It is that letter in which he refers to his having been a scourge to the South, and in which he adds, "Think how much better that it was I than Ben Butler or some other of that school." This, to say the least, must have been pleasant to "Ben" and "others of that school," if not modest in General Sherman.

This egotism led to an affectation of simplicity in style and carelessness in habits which produced a very pleasant incident at Nashville in 1864. Sherman was very fond of the theatre, and would go as often as he found time. When he first arrived in the "City of Rocks," the manager of the "New Nashville Theatre" waited on him with the tender of a private box. The general declined it, and instead of appearing in a private box, would be found very frequently sitting in the pit of the theatre surrounded by his "boys in blue," and laughing at the comicalities or applauding the "points" with as much gusto as any of the audience. This affectation of the republican in manners gained him more notice than if he had sat in a private box, and every body enjoyed seeing him there except the manager, who complained that it was injuring his business. No officer dared to sit in a private box with Sherman present in the pit, and these places became, during Sherman's stay, "a beggarly account of empty boxes" indeed.

I once had a long conversation with General Sherman on the subject of the press and war correspondents, from which I learned very little more than that he was very much disposed to underrate the advantages of the one and the abilities of the other, but very willing to accept, though with an affected ill grace, the praises of either. He declared in that conversation that the government could well afford to purchase all the printing-presses in the country at the price of diamonds, and then destroy them, and that all the war correspondents should be hung as spies. Sherman, with all his affected contempt for the press, is more indebted to it than any other officer in the army.

From time immemorial—at least from the days of Suwarrow and of "Old Fritz"—Frederick the Great—troops have always given nicknames to the commanders they adored. The veteran soldier is an affectionate creature, and he evinces his lovable disposition pretty much as the women do, by the use of pet names and expressive adjectives. The veterans had a slang of their own, as expressive to the initiated and as incomprehensible to the ignorant as the more systematically arranged jargon of the showman, gambler, or peddler. Increasing affection for a popular leader was evinced by an increase in the intensity of the adjective or pronoun applied to the person. A popular leader may have at one time been only "Colonel," but as his popularity increased and he won the affection of his men, he was called "The Colonel," "Our Colonel," and "Our Bully Colonel." At the height of McClellan's popularity his soldiers invariably called him "Little Mac." Sheridan was always "Little Phil," John A. Logan always "Black Jack," and Thomas has successively been known as "Old Slow Trot," "Uncle George," and "Old Pap," the latter being the superlative form of expression.

Sherman has not entirely escaped "nicknames," though he has been more fortunate in this respect than some other commanders. In 1861 the Home Guards of Louisville gave him a name which has never been used by any other body of troops. It was under the following circumstances: The Home Guard marched under Sherman's leadership from Louisville to meet the invasion of Buckner. While moving to Lebanon Junction the general spoke to the men, telling them of the necessity which had arisen for their services, and proposed to muster them into the United States service for thirty days. Few of them had blankets, none had haversacks, and no tents were at the time on hand. The men were really not prepared to remain long in the field, and some demurred at the length of time mentioned. Sherman grew very angry at this, and spoke very harshly, intimating that he considered the Home Guards a "paltry set of fellows." The men were chagrined at this, and much embittered against him, and on the spot voted him "a gruff old cock." They soon found, however, that they had to accept him as a commander, when one of them remarked, "It was a bitter pill." Out of this grew the title of "Old Pills," which was at once fastened upon the general. The men consented to be mustered for fifteen days. This put Sherman in an excellent humor again, and he promised them tents, blankets, etc., immediately. This, in turn, put the Guards in a high glee, and one of them suggesting that "Old Pills" was sugar-coated, the nickname was modified, and he was known ever after as "Old Sugar-coated Pill."

Later in the war his troops fixed upon one title of endearment for Sherman which will doubtless stick to him to the last. It expressed no peculiarity, was not properly a nickname, but simply an expression of affection. He will always be known to his veterans as "Old Billy." His veterans of 1861 and 1862 called him "Old Sherman," and few will forget it who heard General Rousseau's brigade hail him by that title during the battle of Shiloh. On the day of that battle, while hotly engaged near the log church which gave its name to the field, Sherman met a brigade of Buell's fresh troops moving forward to his support, and hastily asked whose troops they were. General Rousseau, who commanded the brigade, rode hastily through the line to meet Sherman, who had been dismounted for the third time by the fire of the enemy, and had one wounded arm in a sling, while his face was blackened by the fire of his own artillery.

"Rousseau's brigade," said that officer—"your old troops, General Sherman."

At the mention of Sherman's name, Rousseau's men, who had made their first campaign under Sherman, recognized him. "There's old Sherman," ran along their lines, and in an instant more there broke above the din of the battle three loud ringing cheers for "Old Sherman." Sherman took no notice of the cheers at the time, but his subsequent report of the battle showed that he was not oblivious to the compliment. At the moment he simply ordered the brigade forward. It was about the time the rebels began falling back, and soon the advance thus ordered became a pursuit of the foe.

Sherman is an inveterate smoker. He smokes, as he does every thing else, with an energy which it would be supposed would deprive him of all the pleasure of smoking. He is fully as great a smoker as Grant, whose propensity in that line is well known, but he is very unlike him in his style of smoking. Grant smokes as if he enjoyed his cigar. Sherman smokes as if it were a duty to be finished in the shortest imaginable time. Grant will smoke lying back in his chair, his body and mind evidently in repose, his countenance calm and settled. He blows the smoke slowly from his mouth, and builds his plans and thoughts in the clouds which are formed by it about his head. He smokes his tobacco as the Chinese do their opium, and with that certain sort of oblivious disregard for every thing else which it is said characterizes the opium smoker. He enjoys his mild Havana in quiet dignity, half-smoking, half-chewing it. Sherman puffs furiously, as if his cigar was of the worst character of "penny grabs" and would not "draw." He snatches it frequently, and, one might say, furiously, from his mouth, brushing the ashes off with his little finger. He continually paces the floor while smoking, generally deep in thought of important matters, doubtless; but a looker-on would imagine that he was endeavoring to solve the question of how to draw smoke through his cigar. He seldom or never finishes it, leaving at least one half of it a stump. When he used to frequent the Associated Press-rooms at Louisville in 1861, he would often accumulate and leave upon the agent's table as many as eight or ten of these stumps, which the porter of the rooms used to call "Sherman's old soldiers." Even until long after Anderson's assumption of command at Louisville the agent of the New Orleans papers continued sending his telegrams for the rebel papers to New Orleans. This man was a rabid secessionist, and disliked Sherman exceedingly. He used to say of him that he smoked as some men whistled—"for want of thought." This is undoubtedly a mistake; for close observers say that, while smoking, Sherman is deepest absorbed in thought.

He is certainly, when smoking, almost totally oblivious to what is going on around him. This peculiar absence of mind had an excellent illustration in a circumstance which occurred at Lebanon Junction, Kentucky, when first occupied by Sherman and the Home Guards. While walking up and down the railroad platform at that place, awaiting the repair of the telegraph line to Louisville, Sherman's cigar gave out. He immediately took another from his pocket, and, approaching the orderly-sergeant of the "Marion Zouaves"—one of the Home Guard companies—asked for a light. The sergeant had only a moment before lighted his cigar, and, taking a puff or two to improve the fire, he handed it, with a bow, to the general. Sherman carefully lighted his weed, took a puff or two to assure himself, and, having again lapsed into his train of thought, abstractedly threw away the sergeant's cigar. General Rousseau and several other officers were standing by at the time, and laughed heartily at the incident; but Sherman was too deeply buried in thought to notice the laughter or mishap. Three years subsequently, at his head-quarters in Nashville, Rousseau endeavored to recall this occurrence to Sherman's mind. He could not recollect it, and replied, "I was thinking of something else. It won't do to let to-morrow take care of itself. Your good merchant don't think of the ships that are in, but those that are to come in. The evil of to-day is irreparable. Look ahead to avoid breakers. You can't when your ship is on them. All you can then do is to save yourself and retrieve disaster. I was thinking of something else when I threw the sergeant's cigar away." And then he added, laughing, "Did I do that, really?"

With the personal appearance of General Sherman the public are but little acquainted. Very few full-length pictures of him have been made. Of the numerous engravings and photographs which have been published since he became famous very few are good likenesses, and none convey a proper idea of his general appearance. The best picture which I have seen is the one from which the accompanying engraving is made. The outlines of the features are given with great accuracy, and any one familiar with the general's physiognomy will pronounce it a faithful likeness, though the position in which the subject sat serves to conceal the extreme Romanism of his nose. There is a scowl on the face, and yet the expression is that of Sherman in a good humor. He seldom has such a self-satisfied air. A critical observer of the picture in question would remark that Sherman has done in this case what he seldom takes time or has inclination to do, and has given the artist a special sitting. He has "made himself up" for the occasion. If the critic were one of Sherman's soldiers, he would notice the absence from his lips of the inevitable cigar. The coat, it will be observed, is buttoned across the breast, and is the chief fault of the engraving, for Sherman seldom or never buttons his coat either across his breast or around his waist. His vest is always buttoned by the lower button only, and, fitting close around his waist, adds to his appearance of leanness. It is doubtful if at this time any one can be found, except the general's tailor, who can tell when his coat was new. He appears to have an aversion to new clothes, and has never been seen in a complete new suit or heard in creaking boots. It may be said that he never conforms to the regulations in respect to the color of his suit; for the uniform he generally wears has lost its original color, and is of that dusty and rusty tinge, and with that lack of gloss which follows constant use. One would readily imagine, judging by its appearance, that he purchased his uniform second-hand. The hat which he generally wears is of the same order of faded "regulation," with the crown invariably puffed out instead of being pushed in, in the "Burnside style." The regulation cord and tassel he does not recognize at all.

With the exception of his eyes, none of the features of Sherman's countenance are indicative of his character. Altogether he is commonplace in appearance, neither excessively handsome nor painfully repulsive. At the same time, divest him of his regulations, and in a crowd his face would attract attention and afford a study. His eyes, conforming to his general character, are as restless as his body or mind. They are rather of a dull though light color, their restlessness giving them whatever they possess of brilliancy and animation. His lips close firmly and closely, and with the deep lines running from his nostrils to either corner of his mouth, give to the lower half of his face an air of decision indicative of his character. His hands are long, slender, and tapering, like those of a woman, and are in admirable keeping with his figure. His short, crisp whiskers, which grow unshaven, and which appear to be stunted in growth, are of a dingy red, or what is commonly called "sandy" color. He takes very little care of his whiskers and hair, each having to be content, with one careless brushing a day. He has, perhaps, as great a disregard for his personal appearance as he pretends to have for what others may say or think of him.

FOOTNOTES:

[1]

"A fiery soul, which, working out its way,

Fretted the pigmy body to decay,

And o'er informed the tenement of clay."

[2] A more laborious campaign than that of Atlanta was never undertaken, and it is difficult to say which soldier deserves the most credit for the movements, Sherman or Joe Johnston. The retreats of the latter were not less admirable than the flank marches of the former, and Johnston showed as clean heels as Sherman did a fully guarded front. His camps were left barren; Sherman found only Johnston's smoking camp-fires, but no spoils left behind him. It was looked upon by the officers of Sherman's army as the "cleanest retreat of the war," and it is very evident now that, had Johnston remained in command, and been allowed to continue his Fabian policy, Sherman could never have made his march to the sea, and the capture of Atlanta would have been a Cadmean victory to him. Johnston proved himself a very superior soldier—in fact, the superior general of the Southern armies. If it could be said of any of the rebels, it could be said of Johnston that, in fact, he was

"The noblest Roman of them all:

All the conspirators, save only he,

Did that they did in envy of great Cæsar.

He only, in a generous, honest thought,

And common good to all, made one of them."

CHAPTER II.

THOMAS AS A TACTICIAN.

While General Sherman was pursuing Hood, when that gallant but not very sagacious rebel was making his ill-judged and ill-advised but bold march northward, leaving Atlanta and our armies in his rear, some exigency arose which made General Sherman regret the absence of General George H. Thomas, who had been sent to Nashville. I do not now distinctly remember what the exigency was other than that it related to some important movement—perhaps the movement to the sea—but, at any rate, so undecided and troubled was Sherman in coming to a decision, that he suddenly broke a long silence, during which he had been seriously meditative, by exclaiming to one of his aids,

"I wish old Thom was here! He's my off-wheel-horse, and knows how to pull with me, though he don't pull in the same way."

GEORGE H. THOMAS.

There was never a truer word uttered in jest, and describing Thomas as the "match horse" of Sherman is a comparison by no means as inaccurate as it is rude. In the chapter which precedes this I have endeavored to show that the distinctive feature of Sherman's character is a certain nervousness of thought and action, inspiring a restless and resistless energy. The best idea of General Thomas is obtained by contrasting him with Sherman, and illustrating Sherman as a great strategist, Thomas as a great tactician. Sherman is not merely a theoretical strategist as Halleck is, as McPherson was, but one of great practicability, and an energy which has given practical solutions to his strategic problems. Thomas is not merely a theoretical tactician, with a thorough knowledge of the rules, but one who has illustrated the art on extensive battle-fields, and always with success. The two appear in every respect in contrast, and possess no similarities. One may be called a nervous man, and the other a man of nerve. Sherman derives his strength from the momentum resulting from the rapidity with which he moves; Thomas moves slowly, but with equally resistless power, and accomplishes his purposes by sheer strength. Sherman is naturally the dashing leader of light, flying battalions; Thomas the director of heavily-massed columns. He may be called heavy ordnance in contradistinction to Sherman, who may be likened to a whole battery of light rifle-guns; or, in the language of the prize-ring, Sherman is a light-weight and quick fighter, while Thomas is a heavy, ponderous pugilist, whose every blow is deadly. Sherman's plans are odd, if not original. Though I have heard learned military critics deny that they embraced new rules of war, still it can not be denied that his campaigns have been out of the general order of military exploits. Thomas, on the other hand, originates nothing, but most skillfully directs his army on well-defined principles of the art. Sherman jumps at conclusions; Thomas's mind and body act with equal deliberation, his conclusions being arrived at after long and mature reflection. Sherman never takes thought of unexpected contingencies or failure. There is always a remedy for any failure of a part of Thomas's plans, or for the delinquencies of subordinates. Sherman never hesitates to answer; Thomas is slow to reply. One is quick and positive; the other is slow, but equally positive. Thomas thinks twice before speaking once; and when he speaks, his sentences are arranged so compactly, and, as it were, so economically, that they convey his idea at once. It is given as advice, but men receive it as an order, and obey it implicitly.

The habits of the two men are radically different. Sherman is an innovator on the customs not only of the army, but every phase of social life, and is at least one generation ahead of the American people, fast as it imagines itself. Thomas belongs to a past generation, and his exceedingly regular habits belong to the "good old time." He has been confirmed by long service in the habits of camp, and appears never to be satisfied unless living as is customary in camps. In September, 1862, his division of Buell's army was encamped at Louisville, Kentucky, his quarters being in the outskirts of the city. While encamped here, Colonel Joe McKibbon, then a member of General Halleck's staff, arrived from Washington City and delivered to Thomas an order to relieve Buell, and assume command of the Army of the Ohio. In order to put himself in communication with the commander-in-chief, Thomas was compelled to ride into the city and take rooms at the hotel nearest the telegraph office. He employed the day in communicating with General Halleck, urging the retention of Buell, and in declining the proposed promotion. Late at night he retired to his bed. But the change from a camp-cot to clean feathers was too much for the general. He found it impossible to sleep, and at a late hour in the night he was compelled to send Captain Jacob Brown, his provost-marshal, to his head-quarters for his camp-cot. The reorganization of the army, the murder of General Nelson by Jeff. C. Davis, and other events occurring about the same time, conspired to keep the general a guest or prisoner at the hotel for a week. During all that time he slept as usual on his cot, banished the chamber-maids from his room, and depended for such duty as they usually performed on the old colored body-servant who had attended him for many years.

System and method are absolutely necessary to Thomas's existence, and nothing ruffles or excites him so much as innovations on his habits or changes in his customs. He discards an old coat with great reluctance; and during the earlier part of the war, when his promotions came to him faster than he could wear out his uniforms, it was almost impossible to find him donning the proper dress of his rank. He wore the uniform of a colonel for several months after he had been confirmed a brigadier general, and only donned the proper uniform when going into battle at Mill Spring. He was confirmed a major general in June, 1862, but did not mount the twin stars until after the battle of Stone River, fought on the last day of the same year, and then they found their way to his shoulders only by a trick to which his body-servant had been incited by his aids. This methodical and systematic feature of his character found an admirable illustration in an incident to which I was a witness during the battle of Chickamauga. After the rout of the principal part of the corps of McCook and Crittenden, Thomas was left to fight the entire rebel army with a single corps of less than twenty thousand men. The enemy, desirous of capturing this force, moved in heavy columns on both its flanks. His artillery opened upon Thomas's troops from front and both flanks; but still they held their ground until Steedman, of Granger's corps, reached them with re-enforcements. I was sitting on my horse near General Thomas when General Steedman came up and saluted him.

"I am very glad to see you, general," said Thomas in welcoming him. General Steedman made some inquiries as to how the battle was going, when General Thomas, in a vexed manner, replied,

"The damned scoundrels are fighting without any system."

Steedman thereupon suggested that he should pay the enemy back in his own coin. Thomas followed his suggestion. As soon as Granger came up with the rest of his corps, he assumed the offensive; and while Bragg continued to move on his flanks, he pushed forward against the rebel centre, so scattering it by a vigorous blow that, fearful of having his army severed in two, the rebel abandoned his flank movement in order to restore his centre. This delayed the resumption of the battle until nearly sunset, and Thomas was enabled to hold his position until nightfall covered the retirement to Rossville Gap.

Thomas is not easily ruffled. It is difficult alike to provoke his anger or enlist his enthusiasm. He is by no means blind to the gallantry of his men, and never fails to notice and appreciate their deeds, but they never win from him any other than the coldest words in the coldest, but, at the same time, kindest of commendatory tones. He grows really enthusiastic over nothing, though occasionally his anger may be aroused. When it is, his rage is terrible. During the campaign in Kentucky, in pursuit of Bragg in 1862, Thomas was second in command of the army under Buell. The new recruits committed many depredations upon the loyal Kentuckians. While the army was passing a small stream near Bardstown, called "Floyd's Fork of Salt River," Thomas was approached by a farmer whom he knew to be a good Union man, and who made complaint that one of the general's staff officers had carried off the only horse left on his farm. The general turned black with anger at such an accusation against one of his staff officers, and demanded to know who and where the offender was. The farmer pointed to a mounted infantry officer, who was attached to one of the regiments and not to the general's staff. The general rode up to him and demanded to know where he had obtained the horse which he rode. The officer replied that he had "impressed" him. The general knew the man had no authority to impress horses, and, choking with rage, he poured on the devoted head of the delinquent a torrent of invective. He drew his sword, and, putting the point under the shoulder-straps of the officer, ripped them off, and then compelled him to dismount and lead the animal to the place whence he had stolen him. He also required him to pay the farmer for his trouble and the loss of service of the animal.

When the battle of Mill Spring began it found Thomas in a bad humor, and on the first opportunity he had for "pitching into" any one he did not fail to take advantage of it. The victim was Colonel Mahlon D. Manson, a rough, excitable, but gallant old Indianian, who was acting brigadier in command of his own and two or three other regiments. Under the old organization of the volunteer army no adequate provision for aids for acting generals had been made, and Manson's only aid, his regimental adjutant, happened to be out of the way; so, when the battle opened, and he had posted his regiments to receive the attack, he hastily rode back to General Thomas to report in person the disposition he had made of his forces. It happened that in doing this Manson lost his hat, and he made his appearance before Thomas hatless, with disheveled hair, unwashed face, and incomplete toilet, and Thomas's pent-up rage vented itself on him. He had no sooner begun to state his position to Thomas than that officer interrupted him with,

"Damn you, sir, go back to your command and fight it."

Excited as Manson was, he caught the full meaning, and the perhaps unmeant insinuation of the general's words, and returned to his command much chagrined. Thomas's anger did not last long after finding this vent. He grew pleasanter before the day was over, was in spirits long before Zollicoffer's rout was complete, and when he came to write his report a week afterward, spoke very highly of Manson.

The self-control and coolness of Thomas under fire, and amid the excitement and dangers of battle, is absolutely surprising, and, until I had seen at Chickamauga repeated instances of his imperturbation, I did not believe that human nature was capable of it. In relating one of the episodes of the battle, an account of which I published at the time, I alluded, I thought then, and think now, very happily to the general as the "Statue Thomas." During that terrible conflict the statue warmed into life but twice. At daylight on the second day, before the battle had been resumed, General Rosecrans rode along the line of battle, examining the position which the troops of McCook and Crittenden had taken as best they could, without other guide than the sound of cannon or other director than stern necessity. He rode up to Thomas's quarters near the left centre of the field and asked him several questions regarding the battle of the day before. Thomas alluded briefly to the events of the fight, and in speaking of his brilliant charge exclaimed rather warmly, "Whenever I touched their flanks they broke, general, they broke," repeating the last words with unusual zest and evident satisfaction. I was listening with great eagerness and looking squarely at the general, when he caught my eye, and, as if ashamed of his momentary enthusiasm, the blood mounted to his cheeks and he blushed like a woman. His eyes were bent immediately on the ground, and the rest of his remarks were confined to a few brief replies to the questions addressed to him.

The other instance to which I was a witness occurred during the afternoon of the second day's battle, and in the midst of a lull which had followed the retreat of McCook and Crittenden and the falling back of Thomas's right division. The general was sitting in the rear of the line of battle of his right as re-formed, engaged in watching a heavy cloud of dust in the distance, and in such a direction that it might be the enemy, or it might be the reserve forces of Gordon Granger, which had been posted some distance in rear of the battle-field at Rossville, and which it was hoped would march to the aid of the army. The doubt under which he labored cast a visible cloud over the general's spirits, and excited his nerves to an unusual degree. He had no disposition to resume the fight, and, fearful of the result of the next attack of the rebels, was anxious to avoid a resumption of the battle. He consequently watched the development of the cloud of dust in the distance with painful anxiety. If it dissolved to reveal friends, then they were doubly welcome, for fresh friends insured the safe retirement of that fraction of the army which still held its ground. If it disclosed the enemy, then the day and army were lost, and it became the duty of those who formed this "last square" at Chickamauga to throw into the teeth of the victorious enemy a defiance as grandly contemptuous as that of Cambronne, and die. There was no escape if the troops advancing from the rear were, as it was feared, the cavalry of the enemy. General Tom Wood, hearing some one express himself to this effect, threw in a word of encouragement by saying that it was evident it was not cavalry, "for," said he, "don't you see the dust rising above them ascends in thick misty clouds, not in spiral columns, as it would if the force was cavalry," a remark which indicated the close observation of General Wood. The anxiety of General Thomas increased with every moment of delay in the development of the character of the advancing columns. At one time he said nervously to his staff, "Take my glass, some of you whose horse stands steady—tell me what you can see." I was standing near him at the moment looking through a field-glass, and remarked that I felt sure that I could see the United States flag.

"Do you think so? do you think so?" asked the general, nervously.

Shortly after, Captain G. M. L. Johnston, of General Negley's staff, reported to Thomas for duty, and the general requested him to venture toward the advancing force, and learn, if possible, to which army it belonged. Johnston was gone for some time, running the gauntlet of the rebel sharp-shooters, who were fast enveloping Thomas's left wing. During his absence the anxiety of Thomas increased until it grew painful to the observer, and the relaxation which followed the revelation of the fact that the coming force were friends was a positive relief to the by-standers. As Johnston returned with General Steedman the nerves of Thomas calmed down, and his excitement was hardly visible save in the petulant tone and manner in which he cursed Bragg for fighting without any system. During the fight which ensued he remained as passive and apparently as unconcerned as if he were in the safest place imaginable.

During the morning of the second day of the same battle I was again near General Thomas when the rebels made a vigorous attack on his breast-works. He and a single staff officer were sitting a little in the rear of the centre of the line, and just in range of the shells which the enemy was throwing with great vigor and rapidity. While thus exposed, a shell passed between the general and his aid, causing them to look at each other with a quiet smile. A moment afterward another shell took the same route. The general, instead of smiling this time, turned to his aid and said,

"Major, I think we had better retire a little," and fell back a few yards to a small wood.

On the night after this battle, and when the troops had retired to Rossville, General Thomas was asked by Colonel B. F. Scribner to take a cup of coffee at his camp-fire, and did so. Scribner had been slightly wounded in the head, and the clotted blood still stood upon his face, left there in order to prevent the wound from continuing to bleed. Thomas sat down by Scribner, drank his coffee, saw the wound of Scribner, talked of commonplace matters for half an hour, but never by word or act alluded in the slightest way to the fact that he had just fought one of the most important battles of the war, and saved the army from annihilation. No one could have known from Thomas's remarks that a battle had been raging, or that his host had been wounded.

One of the great faults of Thomas's character is due to this extreme solidity of his nervous system. Without rendering him exactly selfish or acrimonious, it has made him cold and undemonstrative in manner, and rather insensible to the emotions. He is generous without being enthusiastic, and kind without being at all demonstrative. He has been compared to Washington, but the comparison was made by General Rosecrans, who, by the way, knew nothing whatever of human nature, and could not read it even with the best spectacles of saddest experience; and the comparison holds good only thus far, that Thomas, as Washington was, is portly of person and dignified of manner. His undemonstrative manner has given to many the idea that he was incapable of strong affections, firm friendships, or noble emotions; and the only enemies whom he had were men with whom he had been on terms of friendship, and who, falling under disfavor, looked in vain to him for some demonstration of aid. There are two or three instances, not proper to relate in detail, which have given Thomas's fellow-officers the idea that he was selfishly cold; but I do not think such to be the case, for, though cold and undemonstrative, Thomas has never revealed aught of the selfish or envious in his character. His blood ran as sluggishly as oil upon water, but it was from principle, if such a thing could be, and I think it was in this case. One of the subordinate commanders of Thomas's army, who distinguished himself at Stone River and Chickamauga, was an Indiana colonel named Ben F. Scribner, a brave officer, who, from his action at the battle of Perryville, Kentucky, went by the name of "gallant little Scrib"—a sobriquet bestowed upon him by General Lovell H. Rousseau, his immediate commander. After the battle of Chickamauga, Scribner was not treated fairly in the reorganization of the army by Rosecrans, and complained to General Thomas, his corps commander, of the injustice done him. During the conversation Colonel Scribner used the expression that he could not but feel that a serious wrong had been done him, when Thomas slowly and sadly said,

"Colonel, I have taken a great deal of pains to educate myself not to feel."

This remark gives a wonderful insight into Thomas's nature, and will explain much in his manner that is a mystery to thousands who have studied his character.

General Garfield used to relate a story which gave rather a comical turn to the general's undemonstrative style, and one which I do not remember to have ever seen in print. In fact, it has been a somewhat doubtful question with me as to whether I should be justified in relating it, and only do so with the warning, "Honi soit qui mal y pense." When General Thomas relieved Rosecrans at Chattanooga in 1863, General Garfield remained with him for a time as chief of staff. One morning the two officers were riding around the town, examining the defenses which were then being built, when they heard some one hailing with the cry,

"Hello, mister! you! I want to speak with you."

On looking around, General Thomas discovered that he was the "mister" wanted, and that the person who had hailed him was one of those East Tennessee soldiers who were always easily distinguishable from the Northern soldiers by their peculiar rough, uncouth, and backwoods appearance. He stopped, and the man approached him and began,

"Mister, I want to get a furlough."

"On what grounds do you want a furlough, my man?" asked the general.

"I want to go home and see my wife," replied the East Tennesseean.

"How long since you saw your wife?" asked the general.

"Ever since I enlisted—nigh on to three months."

"Three months!" exclaimed the general, good-naturedly. "Why, my good man, I haven't seen my wife for three years."

The East Tennesseean stopped whittling the stick which he had in his hand, and stared for a moment incredulously at the general.

"Wall, you see," he said at length, with a sheepish smile, "me and my wife ain't that kind."

Shaking all over with laughter, the general put spurs to his horse and galloped away, leaving the astonished soldier unanswered.

I should have enjoyed hugely hearing Thomas laugh aloud. During the three years in which I saw him almost daily, and under all sorts of circumstances, I never saw him smile but once, and that was under circumstances so peculiarly ridiculous that it would have provoked laughter from Patience on a monument, or even the grief that she smiled at. A low comedian, named Alf. Burnett, from one of the Cincinnati theatres, essayed to become a war correspondent, and during the summer of 1863 made his appearance in the camp of General Rosecrans, quartering himself at Triune with Colonel James Brownlow, son of the famous Parson Brownlow, and at that time in command of an East Tennessee regiment. Burnett was very good as a mimic, and particularly excelled in his delivery of a burlesque sermon in which the sentence "He played upon a harp of a thousand strings, spirits of just men made perfect," frequently occurred as a refrain. Colonel Brownlow on one occasion invited Burnett to deliver this sermon before his regiment, and, as a joke upon the chaplain of the command, that worthy was requested to announce the occasion of its delivery, and when the time arrived to open the services with a hymn. Burnett began his burlesque sermon, and had gone through a considerable portion of it before the chaplain and the soldiers began to suspect how much they had been outraged. As soon as he perceived the nature of the performance, the chaplain approached Burnett, took him by the back of the neck, marched him to the camp limits, and with the injunction to "go and sin no more," kicked him out of the camp. The facts were at the same time represented to Rosecrans, who expelled Burnett from the department, but, at the solicitations of some friends, the mimic was allowed to return to make his explanations. After hearing Burnett's explanations, Rosecrans insisted on hearing the "Hard-shell Baptist sermon," and Burnett gave it in his best style. Rosecrans was delighted, declared it was inimitable, and told Burnett he should remain at his quarters, should deliver it nightly, and would have put him on his staff if Burnett had asked it. The sermon became Rosecrans's hobby; he thought and talked for a time of nothing else, and one night invited General Thomas to quarters to hear it. The general and his staff came, and the performance began with songs which did not interest, and continued with the sermon, which, much to Rosecrans's surprise, did not amuse "old Thom." But, after Burnett's farce had been finished, Rosecrans called upon Colonel Horace Porter, of the Ordnance Department, for a song, and Porter gave a comic Irish song in the best brogue, accompanying himself by imitating the playing upon Scotch bagpipes. Porter was one of the most dignified, quiet, sedate, and elegant officers of the army at Rosecrans's head-quarters; and the ridiculousness of his attitude, the contrast with his usual appearance and manner, was too much for General Thomas, and he "smiled" almost audibly several times during the song. I never afterward saw the fun stirred up in Thomas.

The contrast between Thomas and Sherman may be extended even to their personal appearance and habits; and in these, as in character, the difference is most marked. Thomas's figure is very striking. Something of his height is lost to the eye by the heaviness of his figure. If he were as thin as Sherman, he would look the six feet two or three inches which have been ignorantly attributed to him. He is really about five feet ten or eleven inches in height, but so much does his heaviness detract from the appearance of height that he does not appear so tall. Thick-set, robust, and healthy, he moves heavily and slowly, but by no means feebly or unsteadily. His beard and hair were sandy at the beginning of the late war, but they have since become silver sprinkled, and add to the great dignity of his appearance. His features are all large, with the exception of his nose—a long, thin Grecian feature which Napoleon would have admired. His lips are rather thick, rounded, and red. His chin and jaws, large and squarely cut, with his great, steady, though not bright eyes, indicate, more than any others of his features, his firmness and positiveness of character. His countenance is at all times severe and grave, but not necessarily stern. He seldom smiles; but the constant seriousness of his countenance is not repulsive. It may be said to be forbidding. It certainly forbids trifling. The simplest-minded man, seeking audience of him, will understand, on being received by the general, by a glance at his countenance, that he must be brief and to the point. His presence is no place for loungers. His visitors must have business to transact or retire, and they never require any other hint than the countenance of the general. He is a man in earnest, and it does not take long to discover it. He is perhaps as free from display and pretension as any man in the army. He never does any thing for "effect." His manner admits of no familiarity. There is dignity in every gesture, but not necessarily either grace or love. His style of living in camp is comfortable and even elegant. His mess consists of himself and two aids. His mess ware is principally silver of elaborate finish. I breakfasted once or twice with the general during the Chickamauga campaign. On the occasion of each visit daylight and breakfast were announced simultaneously by an elderly, dignified, and cleanly-attired colored servant, who brought me an excellent punch, with "Colonel Flynt's compliments," as an appetizer. The breakfast-table was spread under the fly of the tent, which served as a kitchen, and on it smoked fresh beef, ham, and strong black coffee. At each silver plate was a napkin of the purest white, artistically folded in the latest style of the first-class hotels, a silver water-goblet, a china cup, and the usual knives and silver forks. Better beef and better coffee could not have been found in the country in which the army was campaigning, while the hot rolls and potatoes, baked in the hot ashes of a neighboring fire, would have made many a French cook blush.

When beginning the campaign of Atlanta Sherman endeavored to effect an important innovation in the habits of his army by carrying out to the very letter his instructions to "move light," i.e., without extra baggage. In order to impress upon his officers the necessity of setting a good example to the men, he published an order, in which he stated that the "general commanding intended making the campaign without tent or baggage." The hint was lost on most of the officers, and among others on Thomas, who moved in his usual heavy style, with a complete head-quarter train and the usual number of tents, adding indeed to the usual allowance a large wagon arranged with desks, which, when covered by a hospital-tent fly, made a very complete adjutant general's office. The campaign began, and Sherman made several days' march without his tent, sleeping any where that night overtook him, but before reaching Resaca he was very glad to take up his abode near Thomas's head-quarters, and make use of his tents and adjutant general's office.

No one has ever accused General Thomas of being a genius either militarily or otherwise. He neither plans campaigns with the aptitude and originality of Sherman, nor fights battles with the vigor and abandon of Sheridan. Thomas's success has been obtained by long service and patient industry, and he is an example of what may be accomplished by the unremitting toil of a practical man. He is possessed naturally of that good, clear sense which is often inappropriately called common sense, but which is of no common order at all. He has never been brilliantly educated, and is neither a brilliant thinker nor converser. He is doubtless well versed in West Point lore and the art of war. His education has been derived principally from a long and varied experience with the world, which has rendered him pre-eminently a practical man. His mind consequently takes naturally, as has been before stated, to method, and every thing he does is completed (in the full sense of the word) in a methodical manner. There is little that is original in his plans or his mode of executing them, but all are distinguished for their practicability and completeness. His calculations leave a wide range for contingencies, delays, and accidents, and are not easily disturbed by untoward incidents and unexpected developments. He never goes into a campaign or battle without knowing exactly how to get out of it safely, in case the necessity for retreating arises. He has on more than one occasion furnished the means of getting the armies of others out of danger. At Stone River, when Rosecrans was defeated and his council of war proposed to retreat, Thomas showed that the safety of the army depended upon remaining and assuming the defensive. At Chickamauga, when the same leader left his army in the midst of a terrible battle and at the beginning of a rout of the greater part of it, Thomas again came to the rescue, and covered the retreat in a manner which saved the day and the army.

With his troops Thomas is a most popular leader. He has the deep-seated and deep-rooted affection of his men, which is not the less sincere because it is undemonstrative. He is looked upon by the army with a sort of affectionate reverence, and he possesses in the highest degree the confidence of his men. To this more than to any other feeling, person, or circumstance, the nation owed the safety of its army at Chickamauga. This feeling of confidence in its leader did more to hold his corps together on that day—did more to keep up the esprit de corps of his command during the terrible attacks to which it was subjected, than did all the discipline which had otherwise been drilled into the men. The men of the two routed corps were just as good, just as brave, and just as tenacious fighters as were Thomas's men, but they had no faith at all in the wisdom of their leaders, McCook and Crittenden, who were not men of either inspiring presence or iron qualities. Men will not stand and fight under officers in whom they have not the most implicit faith. Such confidence is reposed in Thomas to the fullest degree, and is accompanied by an affectionate regard which adds to its strength.

Soldiers, as I have had occasion to remark elsewhere, have a very natural mode of expressing their affection by titles of endearment, indicative of the peculiarities of the subjects of their admiration. Thomas has been christened with dozens of "nicknames." When he was at West Point and in the regular army in Mexico, he was called "Old Reliable," from his recognized and proverbial fidelity to the service. During the Mill Spring and Stone River campaigns he won from his men the sobriquet of "Old Pap Safety." This was subsequently boiled down into "Pap Thomas," by which name he is called more frequently than by any other. His slow gait, and quiet, dignified style of riding, gained him the title of "Old Slow-trot." "Uncle George" and "George H." are often used by the men in facetious hours, and the titles always linger on the tongues of the soldiers like sweet morsels. And though these titles are used by the men with an air and in a tone indicating familiarity with their leader, none of them ever knew him, in his communication with them, to sacrifice his dignity in the slightest degree. They have no difficulty in reaching his ear. They always find a patient listener and a sound adviser, and a kindly mannered and pleasant director. He never laughs and jokes with soldiers or officers, but his mild voice and quiet manner win him more of the love of his men than any momentary familiarity could do. I have known him to halt in the march and spend ten or fifteen minutes in directing stragglers to their commands.

General Thomas is the purest man I met in the army. He was the Bayard of our army—"sans peur, sans reproche," and I have endeavored in vain to find a flaw in his character. His character is free from every stain, and he stands forth in the army as above suspicion. He has gone through the war without apparently exciting the jealousy of a single officer. He has so regulated his advancement—so retarded, in fact, his promotion, that when, as the climax to two years' hard service, he fought a great battle and saved a great army, and was hailed and recognized by the whole country as a hero, not one jealous or defeated officer was found to utter dissent to this popular verdict.

There was at one time some ill feeling between Grant and Thomas, growing out of the anomalous position in which both were placed by Halleck when the army was besieging Corinth, but I believe that was cleared up. General Grant was made second in command under Halleck, and his army was given to Thomas, who remained in active command in the field. Grant's position was really none at all; it was not recognized by regulations or uses, and was felt by him to be an insult put upon him (he imagined at one time) at the instigation of General Thomas. Such was not the fact, however, and General Grant so became finally convinced.

The late rebellion was the school of many of our best officers, and dearly did the country pay in its best blood the tuition of some. Bull Run was the price which the country paid for having its erroneous idea of war violently corrected. The failure of the first assault on Vicksburg and of the attack on Kenesaw Mountain were fearful prices paid to correct certain errors of judgment in Sherman's mind. We paid for McClellan's violation of a well-known rule of war in placing the Chickahominy between his battalions. Numerous similar instances might be named, showing how the country has been compelled to pay terrible penalties of blood for the ignorance of unworthy and incompetent leaders; but enough. Thomas's training in the art of war has cost the country not a single disaster or sacrifice. On the contrary, he has saved the country, on more than one occasion, the fearful penalty it was about to pay for the ignorance of other leaders. He has been prominent in three grand campaigns. Two of them he has conducted on his own plans and in person. In the other he acted as second in command. The two which he planned and conducted were complete successes; and the other, as far as he was concerned, a magnificent triumph. His first campaign in the war for the Union was that against the fortified camp of Zollicoffer at Mill Springs, Kentucky. His plan embraced an assault upon the rebel works; but before he could get into position to do this the enemy marched out of his works and attacked him in his camp, failing in an attempt to surprise him. The rebels failed also in the battle which ensued, and were terribly defeated, with heavy loss, and at the sacrifice of the organization of their army. Night alone, under cover of which it crossed the Cumberland River, prevented the capture of the entire rebel force. Fourteen pieces of artillery, fifteen hundred horses, with all the stores of the enemy and a large number of prisoners, fell into our hands. This victory was complete, and doubly welcomed as the first positive success since the battle of Bull Run. The country hailed it as the first sign of the rejuvenation and reorganization of the army. The rebel "army of Western Kentucky" has never been heard of since that disastrous day; and George B. Crittenden, its commander, sank at once into disgrace and oblivion as a consequence of his defeat.

In the campaign and battle of Chickamauga Thomas was second in command to Rosecrans, but in all its important actions his is the principal figure. The story of Chickamauga has been often, and, in one or two instances, well told; but the whole truth about it must be reserved until time shall permit the historian to tell it without fear or favor. Thomas stands forth the undisputed hero of that day—the single spirit upon whom all depends. He is the central figure. There are no heroes beside him. The young and noble ones who died, as Lytle and Burnham, Van Pelt and Jones, and those not less noble spirits who distinguished themselves and lived to be rewarded, as Baird and Dick Johnston, old Steedman and young Johnston, who guided his columns to the assault, Wood and Harker—all these surrounding Thomas but add to his glory as the parhelion adds to the beauty of the sun. On the first day at Chickamauga Thomas did his share toward the destruction of a great rebel army, but it was in vain. The fruits of his victory were frittered away by the incompetency of others. There was no general advance when he advanced. On the second day it was too late; the enemy had succeeded in crossing his whole army over the Chickamauga, and the opportunity to destroy his forces in detail was gone forever. Circumstances then devolved upon Thomas the task of saving a great army, not destroying one. The duty was nobly performed, and the army nobly saved; and though those who were not present, and who judge of the battle from hearsay, may be mystified by the circumlocution and vagueness of official reports, those who stayed at Chickamauga know very well that Thomas alone retrieved that disaster and saved Rosecrans's army.

A short time after I had published in Harper's Magazine the sketch of General Thomas, of which this is a revised edition, I received many letters from old friends complaining that I had not done him justice in using the expression "Thomas originates nothing," and many were the instances quoted showing his originality of mind and plans. None of the arguments or examples given were convincing, however, and I have left the expression unchanged. One of these complainants stated that General Thomas was the originator of the plan to go through Snake Creek Gap in order to get upon Joe Johnston's rear and flank; but I am inclined to think this an error. The writer narrated that a few days after starting on the Atlanta campaign in May, 1864, Sherman, having thoroughly reconnoitred Rocky Face Ridge, the defensive line of the enemy, decided that it was necessary to storm and carry the position. Sitting one day on the railroad bank in front of Buzzard Roost Gap, he confided this opinion to General Thomas.

"It can't be done, general," Thomas answered; "the ridge can not be carried."

"But it must be," said the impetuous Sherman, with his usual petulance. General Thomas repeated his observation.

"But then we can't stay here," urged Sherman; "we must go ahead—we can't stop here. There is nothing left but to assault the ridge."

"Have you tried every other means, general? Can't we go around them?" asked Thomas, at the same time unfolding his map.

"Yes, yes, we have tried all other means."

"Why can't we go through Snake Creek Gap?" asked Thomas. The voices of the two, according to my informant, here became lowered; the two generals bent their heads over the map; and it is claimed by Thomas's admirer that the result of that conversation was the occupation of the mountain gorge of Snake Creek Gap. Although told with much detail and precision, I am not at all disposed to credit this story, and I am convinced that, though not without foundation, there is an error somewhere. Another admirer of General Thomas wrote me claiming for him the credit of having originated and planned "Sherman's march to the sea." He states that, shortly after the occupation of Atlanta, and while Hood's army was still in Sherman's front, General Thomas proposed to General Sherman to take the 14th and 20th corps, and march through the state to Savannah or some point on the coast equally important. The plan was not immediately acted on; information was received of Hood's purpose to flank Atlanta and go northward, and General Thomas was sent to Nashville to organize the forces there in order to meet him. Hood did move north, and Sherman decided to leave him to the care or the mercy of Thomas, while he, with the 14th, 15th, 17th, and 20th corps, twice the force originally said to have been proposed by Thomas, and really three times the force actually necessary for the movement, made the march which Thomas had planned. I very much doubt the full truth of this statement, though I do not know that it is untrue in any particular. But whether or not he planned it matters little; Thomas at Nashville may be said to have executed it, and to him, and not to Sherman, belongs the credit of its success. I have always wondered how Sherman came to delegate the subordinate, Thomas, with the lesser half of the army, to fight the main battles and conduct the real campaign, while he, the superior officer, with the greater half of the force, made a detour in which no danger was encountered—no danger, in fact, apprehended—and which could have been better effected with half the force.

When the London Times characterized Sherman's march to the sea as the "Anabasis of Sherman," and declared that it was virtually a retreat, the London Times was exactly right, but the American people "could not see it." But the stupidity of the rebels made that retreat a success instead of a disaster to us. Had the Fabian policy of Joe Johnston prevailed—had Atlanta been surrendered without a struggle, and had the rebels been content to cover Macon with their infantry and employ their cavalry in destroying the single railroad which inadequately supplied Sherman's army, the retreat to Savannah and the sea would have been instead a retreat to Chattanooga. When Hood removed his army from Sherman's front, he presented that already doubting general with a second alternative, whereas he had but one before, and permitted him to choose of two routes by which to retreat. Sherman chose, for the sake of the morale of his men and of the people, to "retreat forward" to Savannah instead of "advancing backward" to Chattanooga, and went off at a tangent to the sea. His unexpected detour did not interfere with Hood's plans. The rebel had no more and no fewer enemies to fight than he would have had if Sherman had followed him. Sherman could not have concentrated his forces at Nashville in time to meet Hood, for portions of the last force which, under General Steedman, fell back from Chattanooga to re-enforce Nashville were cut off by the enemy and did not reach the field at all. With this view in his mind, apprehending no danger from Sherman, and believing he could defeat Thomas, Hood pushed on, with what result is known. He met Thomas at Nashville, and the consequence was his annihilation. The success of Thomas made Sherman's march a success, and hence the former deserves the full credit for the latter's achievement. How great this credit is can be seen by forming in the mind an idea of the consequences which would have attended a failure on Thomas's part. Had he been defeated Nashville would have fallen; Hood would have marched into Kentucky and appeared on the line of the Ohio, while Sherman, making his appearance a thousand leagues away on the South Atlantic coast, would have found himself written down a great failure instead of a great general.

The battles of Nashville were not greater in result than grand in execution, and are, to my mind, Thomas's finest examples of grand tactics. I can not here allude to them in detail. The operations were conducted in a manner characteristic of the man. The retreat and concentration at Nashville was a masterly performance, executed without confusion and completed without loss. The battle before the city was one of hard blows and simple manœuvres, fought after ample preparation and due deliberation. The columns were heavy and massed, and the lines strong and deep. The action was slow and measured. In the midst of the engagement there were numerous lulls—pauses employed in dreadful preparation, in re-arranging lines and massing columns. There were numerous deliberate assaults of strong positions, and in every minute detail of the general plan there was visible a combined effort of each part of the army to reach some vital point of the enemy's position, the key of the battle-field. When this was won the battle was ended. The victory was the result of cool, deliberate action. The troops were tools in the hands of their leader, and were made willing and trusty instruments through the absolute and unbounded confidence which they felt in him.

In the three campaigns of Mill Spring, Chickamauga, and Nashville, the career of General Thomas is chiefly embraced. In the minor events of his military career there is nothing to detract from the glory which attaches to him in these.

ULYSSES S. GRANT.

CHAPTER III.

GRANT AS A GENERAL.

The clearest conception of the characters of Generals Sherman and Thomas is obtained by contrasting them. A correct estimate of General Grant may be had by forming in the imagination a character combining the peculiarities of both Sherman and Thomas; for in the person of the lieutenant general the very opposite qualities which distinguish the others meet and combine with singular grace and felicity. General Grant does not make so effective, or, so to speak, so dramatic a picture as Sherman, nor does he present so dignified, that is to say, so stately an appearance as Thomas; yet he combines in himself the originality and energy of the first, with the deliberation, coolness, and pertinacity of the latter. Without the constant fire and fury of Sherman, without the occasional sudden, fiery impulse of Thomas, Grant, always cool, calm, and dispassionate, is also always firm, always decided, and always progressive. Sherman is as mercurial as a Frenchman, and as demonstrative as an Italian; Thomas as phlegmatic as a Dutchman, and as tenacious as an Englishman; while Grant in every characteristic, in doggedness, pertinacity, positiveness, and taciturnity, is thoroughly American, and nothing else. Grant is a true sailor, in that he dreads both the storm of battle and the calm of inactivity, and his appropriate motto is "In medio tutissimus ibis." Thomas delights most in calm—is always calm himself, even in the midst of roughest seas. Sherman, on the contrary, delights in tempests, and would now be nothing if there had been no storm. Professor Mahan, who was the tutor of Grant and Sherman, has furnished a very handsome illustration of the contrast between them by comparing the first-named to a powerful low-pressure engine "which condenses its own steam and consumes its own smoke, and which pushes steadily forward and drives all obstacles before it," while Sherman belongs to the high-pressure class of engines, "which lets off both steam and smoke with a puff and a cloud, and dashes at its work with resistless vigor." Grant has Sherman's originality of mind, and, like him, gave expression to several new and striking thoughts upon the subject of the rebellion and its suppression, but they were invariably clothed in the full, rounded, and stately periods of Thomas rather than the sharp, curt, and nervous language of Sherman. He has planned several campaigns with not less of originality than that displayed by Sherman, but they have always been executed with the deliberation and persistence which is so prominent a characteristic of Thomas. Sherman has given us several splendid illustrations of strategy and logistics, as witness his marches in Mississippi, Georgia, and the Carolinas, but his battles will never be quoted as brilliant examples of grand tactics. Thomas has displayed abilities chiefly in the tactics of the battle-field, and has given us at Mill Spring and Nashville two splendid illustrations of the offensive, and at Chickamauga a magnificent example of defensive battle; but his marches, which are always slow and labored, are never likely to become famous. Grant has excelled in both these important branches of the art of war, and has given us brilliant examples of each, proving himself a master in each branch of the art of war. He uses the strategy of Sherman to reach his chosen battle-field, and then employs the grand tactics of Thomas to win the victory. At the risk of becoming tedious in endeavoring to impress this idea on the mind of the reader, I can not here repress the desire to again call attention to the natural and singular manner in which the three great generals of the war alternately appear in contrast and comparison as the great strategist, the great tactician, and the great general of the age.

ROBERT E. LEE.

After the great success of Grant below Richmond, culminating in the surrender of Lee, the rebels, though they had persistently ignored any latent greatness in Grant, were delighted to frequently discover similarities between the victor and the vanquished, and numerous were the comparisons which were instituted commendatory of Lee, and patronizingly of Grant. The two, as men and as generals, should rather have been placed in contrast; for, save in the silent, observant thoughtfulness which distinguishes both, they have hardly a trait in common. It is impossible to compare the most positive man of the war with the least resolute of the rebellion; the strongest of the true with the weakest of the false cause; the grandest character with the most contemptible; a great and successful general on the offensive with a weak and unsuccessful general on the defensive. As a general, Grant always assumed the offensive, and was uniformly successful. The opposite is strictly true of Lee. Lee's first offensive campaign in Western Virginia against McClellan was a failure; his first defensive efforts against the same leader a great success. His second offensive movement against Pope failed, and his third offensive movement, culminating at Antietam, was a great disaster. His second and third defensive battles, Fredericksburg against Burnside, and Chancellorsville against Hooker, were successful. His fourth offensive campaign signally failed at Gettysburg. His next campaign was defensive. It was fought in a country naturally strong for defensive purposes, in opposition to the man to whom he is compared, where he should be contrasted. Though conducted with energy and stubbornness, it was finally a great defeat, and annihilated Lee's army as it should have done, his pretensions to great generalship. Lee saw fit only to be a soldier and obey, not a leader to direct. He had none of the attributes of a revolutionist or of greatness; else, when seeing and declaring that the cause of the rebel leaders was hopeless, he would, as morally the strongest man in the South, and practically the head of the rebellion as the head of the army, have declared that no more blood should be uselessly shed, no more of war's desolation be visited upon the people. But it does not seem ever to have entered the head of this man that, perceiving the cause hopeless, and wielding the power which temporarily sustained that cause, it was his duty to forbid its farther prosecution at the price of blood. Had Lee possessed the courage, decision, and positiveness of Grant, he would himself have been peace commissioner instead of Stephens and his colleagues, and he alone the contracting power. A truly great and honest soldier in Lee's position, and with the convictions of the hopelessness of the rebel cause expressed by him in 1865, would have made peace, even if he had been compelled to put Jeff. Davis in irons to do so. As a man, compared with Grant, Lee has none of the characteristics natural to greatness; and when he joined the rebels for the sake of no great principle involving honor, but simply, as he declared in a letter to his sister, because he did not wish to raise his hand against relatives and children, although he believed them engaged, if not in a bad cause, at least in one for which there was no just occasion, he sank all individuality, and became a traitor out of mere indecision of character. If Lee is never hung as a traitor, he ought to be as a warning to all people who have not minds and opinions of their own. For this, the weakest act of a weak existence, there is no counterpart in Grant's life, but a thousand, or rather, I should say, one constant and unvarying contrast.

The resemblance between Generals Grant and Thomas in personal appearance and character is more marked than between the former and Sherman. The comparison between Grant and Sherman must indeed be confined to their military characteristics. The resemblance is most noted in the fertility of invention which distinguishes both in a higher degree than any two men hitherto developed by the war. Neither ever lacks for resources. Grant, with an inventive faculty truly wonderful, extricates himself from all difficulties with an originality not less admirable on account of the boldness with which his designs are accomplished. The originality of his designs, not less than the boldness with which he acts, adds to the certainty of success. If one resource fails he has another at hand. He creates opportunities, and, though he is no Cadmus, at whose will armed men spring from the ground, yet he may be said to originate the materials of action, and to supply by his energy and his spirit, his invention and tactics, many of the deficiencies existing in his physical force. He is not easily disheartened, but seems greatest in disaster or when surrounded by difficulties. He is not easily driven from the prosecution of a plan. He carefully examines its merits before he decides upon it, and fully tests its practicability before he abandons it for another. That to which he is compelled to resort by reason of the failure of one is not less matured than the first. It may be said with truth that he has never been forced to abandon any general plan upon which he had determined, though the campaign against Richmond was modified by circumstances and facts developed at the Wilderness and Spottsylvania. The purpose of the campaign overland was the destruction of an important line of railroad, and the desolation of a rich country, by and in which the enemy was enabled to exist at the very doors of Washington, and by thus forcing him to abandon his threatening and offensive attitude, enable Grant to place the army operating against Richmond in its only true strategical position south of the James River. It is now apparent to all that, had the attack of General W. F. Smith on Petersburg in June, 1864, proved successful—as there was every reason to suppose it would, and really no good reason why it did not—the capture of Richmond would have followed immediately. There exists a notable resemblance between this campaign of Grant's and that of Sherman against Atlanta. Both were prosecuted against large armies posted and fortified in a country naturally difficult to penetrate, and in which the enemy had all the advantages arising from defensible positions. Both were characterized by brilliant flank movements made in the very teeth of the enemy. And though Sherman's campaign embraced none of the desperate and lengthy battles in which Grant engaged, it is marked by several combats of unusual desperation, generally occurring on the march and fought for position.

Like Sherman, Grant is a fine mover and feeder of an army. The marches of each are made with great precision, and their logistical calculations are marked by great accuracy. If such were not the case, the dangerous flank movements of the one at the Wilderness and Spottsylvania Court-house, and of the other across the Allatoona Mountains and around Atlanta, might have resulted in very grave and serious disasters. Both generals have a full and genuine appreciation of the importance of economy of time in the collection, and of quantity in the distribution of supplies; and in view of the fact that both have at all times operated at a great distance, and at times entirely disconnected from their bases of supply, the regulation and completeness with which their vast armies have been fed is surprising, and calls forth the fullest admiration for the administrative ability which each has displayed. The energy which Grant possesses, in a degree fully equal to that of Sherman, differs materially, however, in character from that of that erratic warrior. There is nothing nervous about it, nor can it be said to be inspiring like that of Sherman, but it is no less effective. Sherman's energy supplies all that may be lacking in his subordinates, and retrieves their blunders and delays. Grant's energetic manner of working soon teaches subordinates that delinquencies are not allowable. The comparison might be extended farther and to other features, while some minor traits of opposite characteristics might be mentioned. Both are unselfish and unambitious, or it would perhaps be a better expression to say both are unselfishly ambitious, holding their own interests second to those of the country. Sherman acknowledges Grant to have been the first to appreciate and encourage him after his consignment to that tomb of military Capulets, Jefferson Barracks. Grant attributes much of his uniform success to the skill of his second in command. Neither ever wearies of sounding the praises or of admiring the qualifications of the other. Among the points of character in which they differ is temper, that of Grant being exceedingly good in the sense of moderate and even, while Sherman's is very bad in the sense of irritability and unevenness. There can be no doubt that both are good, generous, and unselfish men at heart.

The persistence with which Grant pursues an object or executes a plan, the tenacity with which he fights, his practicability, reservedness, and taciturnity, are the strongest points of resemblance between himself and Thomas. It is difficult to say which excels in these qualities. Grant's famous dispatch from Spottsylvania, "I propose to fight it out on this line if it takes all summer," was written with compressed lips—the reader naturally reads it with clenched teeth—and fairly and graphically illustrates the perseverance and stubbornness of the man. It is even more forcible than the memorable dispatch of Thomas, "We will hold Chattanooga till we starve;" and in better taste than that of Granger's, "I am in possession of Knoxville, and shall hold it till hell freezes over." Grant's criticism on the Army of the Potomac, which is doubtless as just an opinion of that army as has ever been uttered, illustrates this trait of his character still more forcibly and elegantly. A short time after he assumed personal supervision of Meade's army, General Oglesby asked him what he thought of its personnel.

"This is a very fine army," he replied, "and these men, I am told, have fought with great courage and bravery. I think, however, that the Army of the Potomac has never fought its battles through." It certainly fought them through at the Wilderness, Spottsylvania, and on the Appomattox, and fully confirmed Grant's faith in the superior endurance of the men.

It is also related of Grant that, when young, he was very fond of playing chess, and played with great skill, but found among his opponents one who was his superior, and who used to win the first games of a sitting with ease. But Grant was never content to remain beaten, and would insist on his opponent playing until he got the better of him in the end by "tiring him out," and winning at chess as at war by his superior endurance.

The following story of Grant may be apocryphal. If true, however, it is a fine commentary on that trait of his character under consideration. If not true, it shows that the feature is such a prominent one that anecdotes have been originated to illustrate it. The story runs that immediately after the battle of Shiloh, General Buell began criticising, in a friendly way, what he termed the bad policy displayed by Grant in fighting with the Tennessee River in his rear.

"Where, if beaten, could you have retreated, general?" asked Buell.

"I didn't mean to be beaten," was Grant's reply.

"But suppose you had been defeated, despite all your exertions?"

"Well, there were all the transports to carry the remains of the command across the river."

"But, general," urged Buell, "your whole number of transports could not contain over ten thousand men, and you had fifty thousand engaged."

"Well, if I had been beaten," said Grant, "transportation for ten thousand men would have been abundant for all that would have been left of us."

It is not to be lightly concluded that the act of Grant in encamping on the same side of the river and within thirty miles of the enemy was bad policy. If he had encamped on the east side of the stream the rebels would have made the river, instead of the railroad at Corinth, their line of defense, and rendered its navigation very difficult for gun-boats and impossible for transports. The stream could not have been made the base of operations as was intended. It is doubtful if we lost more men in the battle of Shiloh than we should have lost in attempting to force the passage of the stream. Grant's position was faulty because it was not fortified. His camp ought to have been intrenched. In the absence of works, he depended for protection on the flooded streams which in a measure surrounded his camp, but which failed to retard the rebel advance.

Grant's disposition to persevere has had a natural effect in creating in him a firm reliance upon himself. It is very seldom that he calls councils of war or asks advice in any shape. He fears no responsibility, and decides for himself. General Howard, himself a man of very marked characteristics, has noticed and alluded to this confidence, adding that it amounted almost to the superstitious fatality in which Napoleon was so firm a believer. This self-reliance is doubtless, however, merely the full confidence which has resulted from the habit of independent thought and action of a man of unusually strong, iron will, determination, and tenacity of purpose. Though his language often indicates this confidence in himself, it never degenerates into boasting.

During the battles of the Wilderness an aid brought the lieutenant general news of a serious disaster to the Second Corps, which was vigorously attacked by A. P. Hill. "I don't believe it," was the prompt answer of Grant, inspired by faith in his success. The aid was sent back for farther reports, and found that the reported disaster had been exaggerated.

Among the most admirable qualities of Grant's mind and character, and in which he is most like Thomas, is his practicability. Grant, like Thomas, is not a learned scholar, but has grown wise from worldly experience. His wisdom is that which results from a combination of common sense trained to logical reflection with practical observation. He deals with all questions in a plain, business-like manner, and with all absence of ostentation or display, and in a systematic style, which enables him to dispatch a great deal of business in a very short time. His practicability renders him remorseless in the execution of his plans. When he has decided it to be necessary, he pushes his massed columns upon the enemy, and orders the desolation and depopulation of a country with the same coolness, not to say indifference, with which he would announce a common event of little importance. His administration of the affairs of the Army of the Potomac, now universally acknowledged to have been of the highest ability, fully displayed this characteristic of practicability.

A fine illustration of his practicability is found in a story related of him when operating before Fort Donelson. On the night before the surrender, the preparations of a portion of the rebels to evacuate the fort led General McClernand to believe they were meditating an attack, and he communicated his suspicions to Grant, at the same time sending him a prisoner who had been captured but a short time before. On reading McClernand's dispatch, Grant ordered the prisoner's haversack to be searched. It was found that it was filled with rations. "If the rebels intend to hold the fort, they would not encumber their men with rations. They are preparing to leave," was the very sage and practical reasoning of the general; and he immediately ordered McClernand to assume the offensive. The result was that a commanding ridge near Dover, south of the fort, was carried, and only a portion of the garrison escaped; the remainder capitulated.

During the battles of the Wilderness a rebel shell dropped within a few feet of Grant and Meade, making a furrow in the ground and bursting some distance beyond. Grant, without a word, drew from his pocket a small compass with which he calculated the course of the shell. In five minutes afterward he had a piece or two of artillery posted near by, and opening upon, soon silenced the rebel battery, whose location had been betrayed by the course of the projectile. As soon as this had been done, he asked the elevation of the guns which had done such good work. On being told, he soon established, by a calculation well known to every artillerist, the important fact of the exact distance of the enemy's line from his own.

Another illustration of his practicability is also an instance of his magnanimity—a feature of his character equally prominent. The terms of surrender granted to General Lee—the dismissal of the captured army on parole, was a piece of strategy which was completely veiled by the apparent magnanimity of the conqueror. It was a splendid stroke of policy. The tender of such terms placed it at once out of the power of General Lee to decline them. His army could not have been kept together an hour after learning that they had been generously offered and refused. Lee's reputation demanded his acceptance of them. The rebel troops thus dismissed had to reach their homes by passing through Joe Johnston's army. The tale of their utter discomfiture and capture, and the generous treatment accorded them, Grant knew, would be whispered in the ears of Johnston's men, to the utter demoralization and disbandment of that army.

At Donelson and Vicksburg Grant's terms had been unconditional surrender. Such a surrender was important for the moral effect to be produced at the North. The surrender of Lee was demanded, and the most generous of terms granted, in order to produce the desired moral effect at the South. To my mind, this action illustrates the greatness of Grant more forcibly than any one other act of his life.

General Grant fully appreciates, as does Thomas, the philosophy of silence. His staff have learned to imitate his taciturnity; and there is, consequently, an air of industry and business about his head-quarters which no one who visits them can fail to observe. He has, throughout his career, published no foolish proclamations and made no visionary promises. His victories have been followed by no high-sounding addresses to his armies; but he has confined his compliments to a plain recital of the deeds of his men and the results of their achievements. He has, moreover, gone through the war without having made a single speech. At Lexington, Kentucky, in January, 1864, Grant met with a spontaneous reception from the citizens on his arrival from East Tennessee. At the request of the populace he made his appearance in front of his hotel, and, on being told that on account of his short stature he could not be seen by those on the outskirts of the crowd, he good-naturedly mounted a chair and bowed two or three times to the people. A speech was called for, but he contented himself with requesting Leslie Coombs, who was present, to state to the people that he "had never made a speech in his life, knew nothing about the business, and had no disposition to learn."

I have elsewhere, in endeavoring to show how Grant is a combination of the strategist, Sherman, and the tactician, Thomas, used the expression that he employed the strategy of one to reach his chosen battle-field, and the tactics of the other to win the victory. Grant's own definition of strategy will perhaps make this idea plainer. Shortly after the battles of Chattanooga, he was sitting in his head-quarters at Nashville, with his feet comfortably stretched before the fire, while he enjoyed himself with purring and chewing his cigar with that completeness of repose which strangers to his habits have called a dullness of facial expression. Quarter-master General Meigs sat near him, while General W. F. Smith, who had but a short time before made himself quite a reputation with Grant by the skillful operations in Lookout Valley in October, 1863, paced the floor apparently absorbed in thought. Meigs, noticing this, broke the silence, which had lasted for several minutes, by asking,

"What are you thinking about, 'Baldy?'"

On receiving no reply from the absorbed officer, he turned to Grant and remarked, with a laugh,

"'Baldy' is studying strategy."

Grant removed his cigar from his lips and said, with a serious air, "I don't believe in strategy in the popular understanding of the term. I use it to get up just as close to the enemy as practicable with as little loss as possible."

"And what then?" asked Meigs.

"Then? 'Up, guards, and at 'em!'" replied the general, with more than usual spirit; then again lapsing into his accustomed taciturnity.

Grant has "crept" upon the enemy in this war on several occasions to some purpose, and with an effect which proves that his strategy is of a superior order. His strategic march to the rear of Vicksburg is already accepted as an illustration of the art of war, and not many years will elapse before it will be quoted as such in the military academies of the country. The combinations against Richmond are full of fine strategic marches and manœuvres. The flank movement around Spottsylvania Court-house, and the march upon Petersburg, accomplished in the face of the enemy, are not less brilliant than that of Vicksburg; while the defeat, pursuit, and capture of Lee are by far the most brilliant operations known to the history of modern warfare. General Grant's marches closely resemble in their general outlines those of Sherman. They are executed with all the energy and certainly as much of the skill as those of Sherman, but on a larger scale, with larger forces, and in the face of greater natural obstacles. In none of Sherman's operations has he made the passage of such streams as the Mississippi or James Rivers. The mountains of Georgia furnish no more difficult passes than those of Virginia. The marches of Sherman in Georgia and South Carolina are wonderful and brilliant, but they were made in the face of an enemy totally inadequate to cope with him. Those of Grant in Mississippi, Tennessee, and Virginia, are not the less wonderful because made in the face of a strong, watchful enemy, who, in Virginia at least, had an admirably mobilized army, and because accompanied by weeks of hard contested encounters.

The numerous battles of Grant are the most important and the most successful of the war. From his first victory at Fort Donelson, through Shiloh, Corinth, and Iuka, Vicksburg, and Chattanooga, to the battles before Richmond, and the surrender of Lee, he has been almost uniformly successful, and his victories have been more complete, and productive of more substantial fruits than those of any other commander. As his strategy is that of Sherman on a larger scale, so his grand tactics are those of Thomas on more extensive fields. The movements and the manœuvres of the two men are the same. The movements are always deliberate and heavy; the manœuvres are always executed by massed columns formed in deep lines. Grant, like Thomas, appears to decide in his own mind the key-point of the enemy's position, and to direct his assaults to the ultimate possession of that point. He devotes every energy, and, when it is necessary, every life, to the attainment of this success, knowing that this ends the conflict. When it is gained, as at Chattanooga and during the engagements of April 2d before Petersburg, the battle is won. If he fails to reach this key of the field, as in the first assault at Vicksburg and at the Wilderness, he is beaten. If he wins the point and the victory, he immediately pursues the retreating foe, as at Chattanooga and Petersburg. But if he fails, he does not abandon the field. His mind is too rich in resources for retreat. Ceasing to be Thomas, he becomes Sherman again, and has recourse to strategy, whereby he forces the enemy to a field where his grand tactics will stand a better chance of success. A critical examination of Grant's campaigns will reveal these features fully developed. He fully comprehends the specialty of Sherman, strategy, as well as that of Thomas, grand tactics, and is master of both. He has displayed in his campaigns, all of which have been of mixed operations, all the persistence and pertinacity of Thomas combined with the originality of design and resources of mind of Sherman. But in none of his campaigns have these peculiarities been better or more brilliantly illustrated than in the campaign and battles of Chattanooga, and the not less wonderful campaign around Richmond. The first is an example of his tactics, the latter of his strategy.

The operations of Hooker and W.F. Smith in Lookout Valley, which were a part of the Chattanooga campaign, and which resulted in raising the siege of that strong-hold by opening river communication with the base of supplies, was not less original in conception or bold and brilliant in execution than the famous march around Vicksburg. Bragg was compelled to abandon all hope of starving out the garrison or capturing Chattanooga, and he determined to attempt the seizure of Knoxville with a portion of his army under Longstreet while he kept up a show of besieging Chattanooga with the remainder. It was this movement which gave Grant the opportunity for the display of his tactical abilities. Burnside, in advising Grant of Longstreet's approach to attack him, reported that he (Burnside) held a line on the Tennessee River, from London to Kingston, possessing unusual natural advantages, and expressed the opinion that he could easily defeat Longstreet in any attempt he might make to cross the stream. Grant immediately ordered Burnside to make no defense of the line which he held, but to fall back to Knoxville and stand a siege, promising to relieve him in a few days. The result of this was that Longstreet was deluded into crossing the Tennessee, and thus placed himself far beyond supporting distance of Bragg. Grant's strategy had thus far resulted in dividing the rebel army into two. He immediately went to work to defeat the parts in detail.

Bragg, learning of the approach of Sherman to Grant's aid, attempted, on November 23, 1863, to evacuate his strong position before Chattanooga, and retire for safety beyond the mountains. Grant, unwilling to let him off so cheaply, made a movement to detain him, and by commencing his proposed operations a day sooner than originally intended, he forced the rebel leader to remain in his rifle-pits and accept battle. Grant in nowise changed his plan as determined upon six days before the operations began, except that he commenced them eighteen hours sooner than intended. On the afternoon of November 23d he did that which he had previously intended to do on the morning of the 24th. It was the movement of Granger's corps into a position from whence, at the proper time, it was to assault the rebel centre. In this position the corps was compelled to lie idle, and in waiting for the auspicious moment, for eighteen hours longer than it was originally intended it should. This assault, which was made on the 25th, and was the closing scene of the battles, has been erroneously called one of those "blind, uncertain strikings which won the Alma and Magenta," when in reality Grant had determined upon it six days before it was executed, and spent two entire days in watching from the very front of the line for the moment at which to attempt it. The entire three days' engagement is remarkable for the consistency with which the plan was followed out. General Halleck pronounced the battle to be the "most remarkable in history," and Meigs called it the "best directed battle of the war." Never have operations in war better illustrated the vast advantages of the offensive.

The several battles of Chattanooga were fought on purely offensive principles, and I have often thought since that the secret of Grant's success may be discovered in the fact that he has always taken the offensive. I have heard men call him "the lucky Grant," and the newspapers speak of his good fortune; but it is not luck—it is not good fortune. It is "Le genie de la guerre." He does not depend upon circumstances or good fortune, but controls both. One such illustration from Grant, as witnessed at Chattanooga, shows more forcibly and graphically the vast advantages of offensive warfare than can all the maxims of Napoleon or Jomini. From the moment that Bragg at Chattanooga was compelled to abandon his attempts at an orderly retreat and evacuation of his position, his movements were forced upon him, and his army was really controlled and commanded by Grant. Every movement made by the enemy may be said to have been ordered by Grant. Bragg, in command of the rebel army, was merely his mouth-piece. The plan of the battle contemplated the breaking of the enemy's centre; but this was so strongly posted on a mountain ridge almost inaccessible, that, in order to render success possible, it was necessary to force him to weaken his forces holding the centre. This was accomplished after two days' labor by the attacks upon either flank of the rebel line by Hooker and Sherman, and was no sooner made than perceived by Grant, who instantly ordered the assault of the centre, which resulted in the victory, and the capture of several thousand prisoners and sixty pieces of artillery. To complete the success of the operations, Burnside about the same time defeated Longstreet at Knoxville (Fort Saunders), and Sherman approaching to the relief of the besieged, the rebels abandoned the siege and retreated to Virginia, rejoining Lee soon after at Fredericksburg.

In conception, execution, and result, the closing operations of the war—the campaign to the rear of Richmond—must be considered as by far the most remarkable and brilliant movements of the rebellion. There is every evidence necessary to show that the campaign, as deliberately planned, was energetically carried out. The battles of April 1st and 2d, south of Petersburg, were absolutely necessary to the solution of the strategic problem. The object was to gain a position on the right flank of Lee, in order to force him not only to evacuate Petersburg, but to compel him to evacuate it in such a way that he would have to retreat by roads on the north side of the Appomattox River. By the success of this battle Lee was thus forced north of the river, and Grant gained a route to Burkesville Junction—the only point to which Lee could retreat—which was parallel with that of the rebels, and which, while separated from them a great part of the distance by a river, was also much shorter and without any natural obstructions such as lay in Lee's way. Lee had to retreat by the longer route, which was practically made still longer by the necessity of recrossing the Appomattox River. The consequence was that Grant reached Burkesville Junction by the time Lee reached Amelia Court-house, and not only interposed himself as an impassable barrier to the junction of Johnston and Lee, but also continually presented a force between Lee and Lynchburg. By keeping this force thus "heading Lee off," while at the same time he continually attacked him in flank and rear, Grant forced him, on the seventh day of the pursuit, to surrender his whole force. From the moment of occupying Burkesville, Grant held Lee in a position from which, if defeated in battle, he had no line of retreat. He was forced to make a stand in a position in which, had he given battle, he would have been forced to an unconditional surrender or equally disastrous dispersion.

An idea of the character of General Grant must, of course, be formed from the developments of the war. His life at West Point, and his subsequent career in Mexico and in civil life, displayed no particularly prominent trait of character other than an adaptation to the practical in life. At West Point he is remembered as a quiet, studious, and taciturn youth, only remarkable for the decision which has since been so prominent a characteristic of the man. He was neither a book-worm nor an idler, and graduated neither first nor last, but in that medium rank in his class which has given to the country several of its most thoroughly practical and successful men. In Mexico he was distinguished only for the bravery which he displayed at Chapultepec.

In his manners, dress, and style of living, Grant displays more republican simplicity than any other general officer of the army. In manner he is very unassuming and approachable, and his conversation is noticeable from its unpretending, plain, and straightforward style. There is nothing declamatory nor pedantic in his tone or language. His rhetoric is more remarkable for the compact structure than the elegance and the finish of his sentences. He talks practically, and writes as he talks; and his language, written and oral, is distinguished by strong common sense. He seldom indulges in figurative language; but when he does, his comparisons betray his habits of close observation. He dresses in a careless but by no means slovenly manner. Though his uniform conforms to army regulations in cut and trimmings, it is often, like that of Sherman, worn threadbare. He never wears any article which attracts attention by its oddity, except, indeed, the three stars which indicate his rank. His wardrobe, when campaigning, is generally very scant, while his head-quarter train is often the smallest in the army. For several months of the war he lived in a log hut of unpretending dimensions on the James River, sleeping on a common camp-cot, and eating at a table common to all his staff, plainly furnished with good roast beef, pork and beans, "hard-tack," and coffee. It is related of the general that when the march to the rear of Vicksburg began, he announced to his army the necessity of "moving light"—i.e., without extra baggage. He set an example by sending to the rear all his baggage except a green brier-root pipe, a tooth-brush, and a horn pocket-comb. The story of his appearance in the Senate Chamber in February, 1865, is still fresh in the minds of the public. He had no sooner left the hall, after paying his respects to the senators, than one of the Democratic members rose and asked the consideration of the Senate upon what he termed the evident and gross mistake which had been made in appointing Grant a lieutenant general, and declared it to be his opinion that "there was not a second lieutenant of the Home Guard of his state who did not 'cut a bigger swell' than this man who had just left their presence!"

The general is not lacking in self-esteem. He very naturally desires to be popular, likes to be well spoken of, but succeeds better than Sherman in concealing what vanity he possesses. He often excites admiration by the modesty of actions which in others would be considered exceedingly immodest; as, witness the quiet manner in which he accepted a present of a hundred thousand dollars from the citizens of New York.

Those who are disposed, like himself, to be fatalists, may imagine in the significance of Grant's surname, and the manner in which he obtained his baptismal name, encouraging omens of his success and that of the cause in which he is engaged. The surname Grant (derived from the French word grande, great, or valorous) is that of a Scottish clan, whose motto, as given in Burke's "Encyclopædia of Heraldry," appears to have been adopted by General Grant. It is as follows: "Stand fast, stand firm, stand sure." The slogan of the clan was "Stand fast, Craigellachie." I believe there is no doubt that General Grant is of Scotch descent, and from the Grants and Duffs of Aberdeenshire. One of his aids, and a distant relation, Colonel Duff, was born at Duff House, "in the shadow," of which Mr. James Gordon Bennett, who was the first to appreciate and proclaim Grant's ability, records that he also was born. The general's proper Christian name received at baptism was Hiram Ulysses; but on entering West Point he received, by the mistake of the person who nominated him, the name of Ulysses Simpson, which, abbreviated, gives the same initials as those used to indicate the government of which he is the servant. "United States Grant" is an appellation much more common than Ulysses S. Grant; while the patriotic friends of the general have given this title several facetious variations, such as "Uncle Sam," "Unconditional Surrender," and "United we Stand Grant."

The confidence of the fatalist is not necessary to courage. There is a courage superior to the mere indifference to danger, and this quality Grant possesses to the fullest degree. Sherman calls him one of the bravest men he ever saw. His coolness and his clear-headedness under danger and amid excitement is remarkable, and is superior to that of Thomas, who, next to Grant, is the coolest and most clearly administrative man under fire now in the army. During the battles of Chattanooga Grant and Thomas established their head-quarters on "Orchard Knoll," immediately in the rear of the centre of the field, and from which they could have a full and close view of the column which was to make the assault on the rebel centre. From the moment the signal for the attack was sounded, the scene was of the most exciting character; but during that important half hour in which the victory trembled in the balance, Grant and Thomas remained passive, cool, and observant. They were standing together when the assaulting column had reached half way to the summit of Missionary Ridge, when a portion of it was momentarily brought to a halt, and when the stream of wounded retiring down the hill made the line look ragged and weak. At this moment Thomas turned to Grant and said, with a slight hesitation, which betrayed the emotions which raged within him,

"General, I—I'm afraid they won't get up."

Grant, continuing to look steadily at the column, hesitated half a minute before answering; then taking the cigar he was smoking between his fingers, he said, as he brushed away the ashes,

"Oh, give 'em time, general," and then as coolly returned his cigar to his mouth.

Fifteen minutes later I met him on the summit of the hill, riding along with head uncovered, receiving the plaudits of the men who had won, but who had not yet secured the victory. The rebel centre had been broken, but the right wing, which had just repulsed Sherman, was yet intact, and, turning about face, attacked the troops which had carried the centre of their line. Our line was much broken, and the troops excited to such a degree at the victory they had gained that they had become almost uncontrollable, and on the appearance of General Grant, who, following in the wake of the advancing columns, had appeared in their midst on the summit as the white-plumed helmet of Henry IV. had appeared at Ivry, the men gathered around him shouting and hurraing, grasping his hand and embracing his legs. But, while coolly receiving these demonstrations of affection and delight, Grant was not blind to the danger, and was using the necessary efforts to get his troops in readiness for the expected attack, which, but for his precaution, I am satisfied would have badly damaged us. He conveyed his fears intuitively, as it were, to his staff, and each one exerted himself to get General Turchin's brigade into position as ordered by Grant. Mingling in the very thickest of what now became the hottest fire of the day, they urged forward the troops, and personally gave directions for their disposal. Turchin, finding some men moving a piece of artillery to the rear in his way, raved and swore in broken English until he had got his men up to the works, and Lieutenant Turner as heartily cursed the fellows who were retiring the gun, and while doing so got seriously wounded. General Meigs, quarter-master general, busied himself in preparing friction primers for the captured guns which General Grant was ordering into position, but got so excited over the great victory gained that he gave the task up in despair to Captain Ross, of General Grant's staff. General Turchin pushed forward his troops, and no sooner had they appeared in line of battle in the fort, than suddenly the battle ceased and was over. As if with one accord, the rebels ceased to struggle. They broke in utter and total confusion, and rushed down the hill. Volley after volley followed them as they fled, but they did not halt. On they rushed, struggling and striving, reckless of all now save safety.

During the siege of Vicksburg Grant personally superintended the mounting of a number of Columbiads on a part of his line. While the men were cutting the embrasures in the works he stood upon the epaulement, and, though the rebels made a mark of him for their bullets, very composedly whittled a rail until the guns were placed to suit him.

Whittling and smoking are among Grant's favorite occupations. He is a true Yankee in these respects. It is recorded of him that, during the battles of the Wilderness, he was engaged in whittling the bark of a tree under which his head-quarters were established; and on all occasions, great and small, he smokes. He is a more inveterate smoker than either Sherman or Rosecrans, but he smokes in a different style and for a different effect. Both Sherman and Rosecrans take to tobacco as a stimulant to their nervous organizations. Grant smokes with the listless, absorbed, and satisfied air of an opium-smoker, his mind and body being soothed into repose rather than excited by the effect of the weed. Neither Sherman nor Rosecrans are neat smokers, the velvet breast-facing of their coats and their shirt-bosoms being generally soiled. Grant, on the contrary, is very neat, and smokes only the best of cigars. He smokes almost without cessation, and is never at ease when employed at any thing which forbids smoking as an accompaniment. During the famous interview with Pemberton before Vicksburg he smoked with his usual composure. "We pardon General Grant for smoking a cigar as he entered the smouldering ruins of the town of Vicksburg," said a rebel paper after the surrender. "A little stage effect," it added, "is admirable in great captains." But Grant never smokes dramatically. His cigar is a necessary part of himself, and is neither assumed nor abandoned for state occasions. He has been known to forgetfully smoke at reviews, and has frequently been brought to a halt and notified by sentinels or guards over commissary stores, "No smoking allowed here, sir." On entering the Senate Chamber to be presented to the Senate, he had to be requested to leave his cigar outside.

Sherman's erratic disposition caused him to be suspected of lunacy. Grant's imperturbation and his dullness of expression, added to exaggerated tales of his excessive use of strong tobacco as an opiate, was the origin of the story which prevailed at one time to the effect that he drank to excess. In early life he may have indulged in occasional sprees, but he does not drink now at all. Swearing is not a habit with him, and his phlegmatic temperament is seldom so ruffled as to cause him to indulge in an oath. He seldom jokes, and rarely laughs. His great "weakness" is Alexandrian, and consists in his love for fine horses. When quite a boy he was remarkable for tact in managing horses, "breaking" them with astonishing ease. When he was only fifteen years old persons came to him from a great distance to have him teach their horses to pace. This is not a great and exclusive quality of the man, however, as it is well known that thousands of negroes on Southern plantations were noted for the same knack or tact. It was doubtless the result of the innate love of the boy for horses, a love now as strong in the man and the general. He is said to be the best rider in the army.

Grant's undemonstrative manner has nothing of the repulsive about it. He has won and retained many warm friends. The friendship between him and Sherman has become historical, and is often quoted as in agreeable contrast to the numerous bitter and disgraceful jealousies which have too often been made public, but which exist in the army to an extent not suspected by those who have no intimate acquaintance with its secret history. There is much of romance in the story of Grant and Sherman's friendship. It began in 1862, and has ever since continued to grow in strength. When the armies of Halleck were lying—literally so, indeed—before Corinth, Grant was, to all appearance, shelved in disgrace. He was second in command, but to be second in command then was to be the "fifth wheel to the coach." Grant was much chagrined at his position, and felt in ten-fold degree each petty indignity which Halleck heaped upon him. One day General Sherman, who commanded one of the divisions of the wing under the command of General George H. Thomas, went to General Grant's quarters, bolted with his usual abruptness into his tent—they didn't stand on ceremony in the field—and found the general actually weeping with vexation. Sherman asked the cause, and, for the first time, Grant recounted the indignities which he had endured, the troubles he had encountered, and the false position in which he had been placed before the country.

"The truth is, Sherman," he said, "I am not wanted. The country has no use for me, and I am about to resign and go home."

"No you are not," returned Sherman, impatiently; "you are going to do nothing of the sort. The country does need you, and you must stay here, bear these petty insults, and do your duty."

He gave Grant no time for argument, compelled him, in a measure, to stay, cheered him up and kept him in the field until the appointment of Halleck, as commander-in-chief, left the command in the West vacant, and Grant again came into power.

Years afterward, at the close of the war, Sherman, returning from his march through the Carolinas, having just received the surrender of Joe Johnston, found himself placed in a false light before the country by this same man Halleck. When he reached Washington City he was boiling over with rage at the indignity which Halleck had placed upon him by telegraphing that he had directed his troops to move without reference to Sherman's truce or orders, and his naturally bad temper became threateningly violent and uncontrollable. He denounced Halleck in unmeasured terms, and, had the latter been in Washington, a personal collision might have occurred. But, before the two could meet, Grant saw Sherman, and the scene enacted in the tent before Corinth three years before was re-enacted, save that the parts were changed. Grant appeared as the peacemaker, and as positively, though in a very different manner, advised Sherman to ignore Halleck and frown him down. Sherman was wise enough to take the advice, and the "great marplot" will make his chief appearance in history as one whom these men could afford to ignore.

Grant has always been generous to his subordinates. His careful consideration of the interests of his staff and general officers is proverbial, while his generous treatment of inefficient officers, whom he has been compelled to relieve, is well known. In the first action in which he commanded, the battle of Belmont, his troops at first gained an advantage over the rebels. They began to plunder the rebel camp in spite of all that the general could do to stop them. At last Grant, who knew that Confederate re-enforcements were coming up, got some of his friends to set fire to the camp, so as to stop the plundering. Then he got his troops together as well as he could, and retreated; but, in the mean time, the Confederate re-enforcements came up, attacked, and defeated him. There were five colonels under Grant who had not by any means supported him efficiently in his attempts to stop the plundering and collect his troops. Grant expected to be deprived of his command on account of the defeat, and one of the colonels, fearful of the same fate, called to see him about the prospect. He gave him no satisfaction, but, on the colonel's departure, turned to a friend and said, "Colonel —— is afraid I will report his bad conduct."

"Why do you not?" asked his friend; "he and others are to blame for not carrying out your orders."

"Why," said the generous Grant, "these officers had never been under fire before; they did not know how serious an affair it was; they have had a lesson which they will not forget. I will answer for it they will never make the same mistake again. I can see by the way they behaved in the subsequent action that they are of the right stuff, and it is better that I should lose my command, if that must be, than the country should lose the services of five such officers when good men are scarce." Grant did not lose his command, and three out of the five officers afterward greatly distinguished themselves.

The impression prevails to some extent among persons unacquainted with Grant in the field, the only place where he shows to great advantage, that he owes all his success to Sherman, Thomas, Sheridan, and his other chief subordinates. The fact is, the indebtedness is on the part of the subordinates. Grant owes his reputation to them just as every schoolmaster owes his to the ability displayed by his scholars; but the indebtedness of the pupil to the tutor who educates his mind and directs his talent is not by any means repaid by this reflected credit. Sherman was a complete failure; he was looked upon, indeed, as a lunatic, until Grant saw what he was capable of, and directed his great abilities into the proper channel. Sheridan met with an uninterrupted series of defeats until Grant singled him out for his cavalry commander, and then the "belligerent cadet" met with an uninterrupted series of victories. Wilson stands similarly indebted; and Meade's greatest successes were obtained under Grant's direction.

It is not only with such men as Sherman, Sheridan, Logan, Howard, and others, with whom he bears the most intimate relations, but with his whole army, that Grant is a well-beloved leader. He has gained the universal admiration of his men by no clap-trap display or familiarity at the expense of discipline, but by a constant and watchful care for their interest. It is a boast in the Army of the Tennessee, which Grant commanded in person for nearly three years, that the men never wanted for food; Grant's commissary stores were always well filled. He was always careful to protect his men from the imposition of sutlers and army speculators, generally by fixing the prices of all articles sold in his department; and he cut red tape for the benefit of the private soldier with a remorseless hand.

When sitting for their photographs Grant and Sherman have dispensed with their cigars, and the consequence is an imperfect picture. None of the many artists who have painted them in oil have had the independence to supply the deficiency of the photographs, and add the cigar, which is a necessary accompaniment of the men, and which must be an important feature of every pen-picture which will be made of them. The addition of the cigar would doubtless detract from the dignity of the picture, but it should be remembered that artists paint as well for posterity as for the present generation. History will preserve in its picture of Grant his peculiarities, and, among others, the fact that he was an inveterate smoker. Why should not the artists preserve such a peculiarity as this, as well as the outlines of his figure and expression of his face? Is it any more important for posterity to know that his eyes were blue than that he smoked incessantly?

Grant is not so tall as Sherman nor so heavy as Thomas. His short stature would have made it difficult for him to enlist in the British army. He is but an inch above the minimum standard of officers of our army, but, being straight and somewhat spare, he has the appearance of being above medium height. Sheridan and Logan are the only major generals in our army who are shorter in figure than Grant. His forehead is high and square. His hair was originally a dark brown, but at forty-three, his present age, it is fast becoming sprinkled with iron-gray. His eyes are sharp and expressive, though small, peering out from under his overarching brow with great brilliancy. His nose is aquiline. His mouth is small, and he has a habit of closely compressing his lips. His chin and cheeks are covered with a heavy beard, which he never shaves, but keeps closely cropped or trimmed.

Though the war in which he has won his reputation is now ended, the future has still much to do in establishing the position which Grant has to hold in history. Today he enjoys the confidence of his countrymen to a degree unknown to military leaders during the war. If ultimately successful in the end—if he directs his course through the mazes of the political campaign which has followed hard upon the close of the war as well as he has his military career, posterity will delight, and will find little difficulty, in tracing out a comparison between his character and that of the country's first great leader. This it is hardly proper for the present age to do; and such a comparison, if made in detail, would doubtless shock the modesty of General Grant more than it would the nation's sense of propriety; but if consistent in character and success to the end, the historian of the future will not be content to draw simply the comparison which I have imperfectly outlined, but will liken him to one who in every respect was greater than the Sherman or Thomas to whom, combined as in one man, I have compared him. But, whether successful to the end or not, if he remains, as at present, aloof from politics and far above partisanism, General Grant, like Washington, will live forever in the memories of his countrymen as a good and honest man.

CHAPTER IV.

SHERIDAN AS A CAVALRYMAN.

Very few wars of as short duration as was that of the late Southern rebellion produced as many as three great and original military leaders of the calibre of Sherman, Thomas, and Grant. The ancients could boast of but one Alexander, one Cæsar, one Hannibal to an era; modern times of but one Frederick, one Suwarrow, one Napoleon to an age. It took half a century of constant and almost universal revolution to produce Napoleon and his prodigies. Only this country, of all the universe, can to-day boast of possessing a general universally conceded to be a great military genius, and it has more than one. The rebellion, which at its outset boasted of commanding nearly all the military talent of the country, produced in the end only one really great soldier—Joseph E. Johnston; all the rest were mediocre—hardly respectable, indeed, if Stonewall Jackson, who was a fair, though unequal counterpart to Sherman, be excepted. The loyal cause, which was thought to be weak in its leadership, produced in the end all the really able statesmen of the revolution, and, with the two exceptions noted, all the great military leaders. These latter are not confined to the three whom I have already sketched. Many of Grant's subordinates developed a genius for war of no ordinary quality, and won on hard-fought fields fame and reward as successful leaders. No general was ever seconded by such numbers of able lieutenants, not even Napoleon; and nearly all of Grant's chief subordinates won splendid reputations for skill, energy, and daring, the three attributes of greatness accompanying and necessary to success. When one looks at the developments of the war in this respect, he may well accept without question Grant's declaration, lately made in his usual modest style, that the country could readily have found another than himself to bring about the end of the war successfully.

PHILIP HENRY SHERIDAN.

Philip Henry Sheridan, who is one of the most noted and noteworthy of these subordinates of Grant, must always be looked upon as one of the miracles of war, not so much from the result as the manner of his achievements. If he were neither a great strategist, like Sherman, nor a great tactician, like Thomas, nor both, like Grant, he would still be a successful leader. I have endeavored to show in the preceding chapters that the lieutenant general is, as a military leader, complete in himself, possessing all the attributes of generalship; while Sherman, embodying nervous intellectual force, and Thomas, representing physical power, are constituted by nature, as well as by the choice of Grant, to be his chief subordinate commanders. Sheridan, in character, is like neither of the others, but is an original genius, and a leader not unworthy to rank with Sherman and Thomas, or to hold position as the third subordinate commander of General Grant. He may be said to be an Inspiration rather than a General, accomplishing his work as much, not to say more, by the inspiriting force of his courage and example as by the rules of war. He supplies to the army the passion and fire which is smothered in Grant and Thomas, and imperfectly developed in Sherman. He renders an army invincible more by the impartation to it of his own courage and fire than by any system of organization, and appears to accomplish by this imparted enthusiasm all that results under the leadership of the others from discipline. When the future historian sums up Sheridan's character, with all the facts yet hidden, as they must be for some years to come, laid profusely before him, he will hardly rank Sheridan with those who have carefully and wisely planned. He belongs rather to that class of our officers who have, by skillful and bold execution, won the distinctive classification of "fighting generals." He can not be said to have developed any strategic genius, and his tactics have been of a strange and rather eccentric character, but it can not be denied that, in every battle in which he has been prominently engaged, he has given brilliant examples of his courage, vigor, and skill as a quick, dashing, and stubborn fighter. He is pre-eminently a "fighting general." He claims to be nothing else, and can afford to rest his claim on his deeds during the rebellion. His entire career in private and public has shown him to be impetuous, passionate, bold, and stubborn. He was born a belligerent. His natural element is amid the smoke, his natural position in the front line of battle. He fights vigorously and roughly, and when the tide of battle flows and ebbs most doubtingly he holds on most grimly. In private life his great energy is a little curt, and his fiery temper a little too quick, but his abruptness and belligerency are too honest and natural to excite condemnation; while his manner, when not excited or opposed, is distinguished by great courtesy, modesty, and pleasantry. In battle the wildest and most impetuous of warriors, in peace he is the "mildest mannered man" that ever scuttled canal-boats on the James or crossed sabres with a rebel. He is as impetuous as Sherman and as persistent as Thomas. He is cool and collected in the minor matters over which Sherman grows nervous, and fiery and bold in great dangers in which Sherman grows coolest and calmest. Sherman's energy is that of the brain, inspired; Sheridan's that of the blood, inflamed. In history Sheridan will stand forth as a type—a representative leader, even more boldly, if not more prominently, than Sherman, or Thomas, or even Grant. His was a specialty—he was great in a peculiar line of duty, history and romance will unite to make him the type of the "modern cavalier," and he will enjoy, in some degree, the semi-mythical existence which all representative men hold in history.

Sheridan is descended from the same class of the north of Ireland emigrants which produced Andrew Jackson and Andrew Johnson, save that the parents of the latter were Protestants, while those of Sheridan were Catholics. Having settled, on their arrival in this country, in a more populous, thriving, educated, and free district, Ohio, they were enabled to offer their son better educational advantages than were the parents of Jackson and Johnson, who had settled in the less civilized district of North Carolina, and hence young Sheridan became possessed of a good common-school education in his native place, Perry County, Ohio, where he was born in 1831. Any number of statements have been made as to Sheridan's birthplace. Some writers have declared it to be Boston, while still others have said it was Somerset, Ohio. He was born, according to his own statement, near the town of Somerset, in Perry County, Ohio, on the 6th of September in the year named. The necessities of his family early forced him to manual labor, while his own inclination led him to study. He was a quick though somewhat careless student, while his great animal spirits made him early a rather wild and belligerent youth, fond of a boyish frolic and a trick, always lively and always generous, sometimes thoughtless in wounding the feelings of others, but quick to generously heal when in fault. When quite young, Sheridan was variously employed in his native county in doing odd "chores," among others that of driving a water-cart about the streets of Somerset, Ohio, and in sprinkling the dusty thoroughfares of that old-fashioned town. When about twelve years of age he entered the employment of a Mr. John Talbot, in Somerset, Ohio. Talbot was an old gentleman who kept a country store in which was sold every thing useful and ornamental, embracing dry goods and groceries, confectionery and hardware, from rat-traps to plows, and from woolen socks to ready-made overcoats, and Sheridan found himself in a position to learn a little of every thing—every thing, at least, in the country grocery line. Mr. Talbot was a man who delighted in being thought, if not by others, at least by himself, a patron of youth, and he patronized young Sheridan, and was, as he afterward declared, "a friend to him when a friend was every thing." When Sheridan grew older and famous, Talbot still continued to patronize him, and once said, alluding to his former protégé, that, on taking him into his service, he "perceived that he was smart and active, and took some pains to instruct him not only in selling goods, etc., for that," he adds, with great candor, "was our duty and interest," but when a leisure moment offered he taught him to improve his "slight knowledge of writing, arithmetic, pronunciation," etc. Young Sheridan did not remain long with Mr. Talbot, but gave up his service for that of a gentleman named Henry Dittoe, in the same trade and in the same town as that of Mr. Talbot. While still here he attracted the attention of the Hon. Thomas Ritchey, then member of Congress from the Congressional district in which Perry County was located, and, owing to the influence of an elder brother and the favorable impression he made upon Mr. Ritchey, Sheridan obtained, very unexpectedly to him, the appointment of cadet to the West Point Military Academy. This was immediately after the close of the Mexican War, when it was a very difficult matter to obtain appointments for others than the sons and orphans of officers who had fallen in the war.

He therefore got into West Point pretty much as Mr. Lincoln used to say General Rosecrans won battles, "by the skin of his teeth." The fact is, he got out of the Academy with the honors of graduation in pretty much the same way. The characteristics which had distinguished him as a boy in his native town soon made him noted at West Point as the "best-natured and most belligerent cadet" in the Academy. In fact, his belligerent disposition retarded his advancement in youth and as a cadet as much as it has since advanced him. He fought so much at West Point, was so unruly, and "so full of deviltry," that, despite his fine scholarly attainments, the future great cavalryman graduated so low down in his class that he could only be commissioned in the lowest arm of the service instead of the highest, in which he has since so distinguished himself. As it was, he was a year longer in his course than nine tenths of his classmates. He entered in 1848, and should have graduated in 1852, but went over until the next year. I have been told that, at this late day, he required only "five points" more to his number of "black marks" to exclude him from the honors of graduation; and if he had not, toward the close of the session, by skillful management and unusual control over his quick temper, won the good opinion of one or two of his tutors, the future major general would have been forced to leave the Academy as he had entered it, instead of having the brevet of second lieutenant of infantry in his pocket. One of his instructors, who had admired his generous character, employed the argument that belligerency was not a fault in a soldier, and this is said to have done much in securing him the needed approval of the West Point staff of instructors and the honors of graduation. The argument was too powerful to be resisted by educated soldiers, and Sheridan was consequently sent forth fully authorized to be as great a belligerent in time of war as he desired.

Sheridan's class at West Point produced very few remarkable men. The three ablest of his classmates, McPherson, Sill, and Terrill, perished during the rebellion. McPherson, who graduated at the head of the class, was a brilliant student, an admirable engineer, but never a great leader. The student predominated in his organization, and he lacked in decision and nerve. He rose very high in rank in the regular army, but it was owing less to his available talents and practicability than to the care of Grant and Sherman, with whom he was a great favorite. Terrill made a fine soldier as an artillerist, and won well-deserved renown and promotion by his admirable handling of his battery at Shiloh. He was very ambitious of advancement. I was present at his death at Perryville. His brigade was pushed by General McCook, the corps commander, into a forest, in which the enemy surprised and defeated his troops, who were raw recruits, scattering them in every direction. Terrill's horse was shot under him, and, being thus dismounted, and left without a command, he turned—the ruling passion strong in death—to the artillery, and assumed command of a couple of batteries fighting in General Rousseau's line. Thus returned to the arm of the service for which education and inclination adapted him, he did magnificent service. While thus engaged, and while in the act of sighting a gun of Bush's Indiana battery, he was mortally wounded, and died a few hours afterward, with a message to his wife unfinished on his lips. Joshua W. Sill, who was, perhaps, the superior man of the class of 1853, fell in a similar manner at Stone River. The enemy had thrown himself upon Sheridan with great energy, and succeeded in forcing him to retire. Sill was one of Sheridan's brigade commanders, and in aiding the general to rally the retiring troops, and in leading them to a charge, he was shot and instantly killed as the enemy were temporarily repulsed. Sill was a practical man, of great resources, energy, and courage, small of stature, and compactly built. He was beloved and admired in the army for his great courtesy, kindness, and good sense. There were also in Sheridan's class others who became generals in the volunteer service during the late rebellion. William Sooy Smith commanded infantry during the greater part of the war, but conducted the cavalry expedition from Memphis in 1863, intended to co-operate with Sherman in Mississippi, but miserably failed. R. O. Tyler and B. F. Chamberlain were well known for services in the Potomac Army. General John M. Schofield attained to some prominence during the war, although he had more to do with combating the prejudice which existed against him in the War Office and the army than in fighting the rebels. William R. Boggs, who graduated fourth in Sheridan's class, failed as a rebel brigadier, and at the close of the war turned his attention, like Lee, to teaching young ideas how to shoot. John R. Chamblis, H. H. Walker, and John S. Bowen, who were also rebels, were failures. Hood was the only success among the seceding members of the class. He owed his rapid promotion from colonel to lieutenant general in the rebel army to something of the same qualities which won his promotion for Sheridan. Hood was not less bold and impetuous than Sheridan, but he lacked Sheridan's sound sense and quick judgment, and doubtless would not have made the rapid progress he did but for the aid and friendship of Jeff. Davis. Sheridan and Hood met in battle but once during the rebellion. It was at Chickamauga, and that encounter cost Hood his leg, although Sheridan was defeated. Hood commanded a division of Longstreet's corps, Sheridan one of McCook's divisions.

Eight years of almost profound peace followed Sheridan's graduation, and little opportunity offered for advancement. In May and June, 1855, Sheridan, then promoted to be a lieutenant, was in command of Fort Wood, New York Harbor, but in the July following he was ordered to San Francisco in charge of a body of recruits. On arriving there he was detailed to command an escort of cavalry intended for the protection and assistance of Lieutenant Williamson and the party engaged in the survey of the proposed branch of the Pacific Railroad from San Francisco to Columbia River, Oregon. Sheridan succeeded shortly after in getting himself detached from this command and ordered to join a battalion of dragoons under Major Raine, of the Fourth Infantry, then on an expedition against the Yakima Indians, and expecting active service and severe warfare. In this expedition he distinguished himself by gallantry at the "Battle of the Cascades" of the Columbia River (April 28, 1856). Although his action on the occasion is not described, it is not difficult to imagine it as of the same character as the later deeds of daring which have distinguished him. He was rewarded for his gallantry by being placed in command of the Indian Reservation of the Coast Range. Here he was engaged for a year in keeping the Conquillo Indians on Yakima Bay in proper subjection, and in building the military post and fort at Yamhill.

From this distant post he was recalled in 1861 to find himself promoted, by the resignation of large numbers of the Southern officers of the army, to a captaincy in what was then Sherman's regiment, the Thirteenth Infantry. He was ordered to join his regiment at Jefferson Barracks, and thus became attached to the Trans-Mississippi, or Army of the Southwest, in which he saw his first service in the present war. Although this army had gone through a campaign under Lyon, the preparations for another under Fremont, and was then under command of Halleck, it was so far from being organized that Sheridan could find no active duty, and was placed upon a military commission to inquire into certain alleged irregularities of the Fremont administration of Missouri affairs. About that time General Curtis, who had assumed command of the troops in the field, was ready to begin an active campaign, and Sheridan was appointed acting chief quarter-master, with which the duties of commissary were at that time blended. He was out of place and felt it, and his success as a quarter-master was very indifferent indeed. He used to laugh and say many months after that providing "hard-tack and sow-belly," as the soldiers called the crackers and pork which formed the chief ingredients of their rations, was not exactly in his line; and he was very fond of relating, in connection with the remark, his first experience in restricting the contraband traffic in salt with the rebels. As chief quarter-master, it was his duty to take such steps as would not only provide for his own troops, but deprive the rebels of contraband supplies. Hearing that Price, then at Springfield, was suffering for salt, he employed every means to stop the export of that article beyond our lines; and, congratulating himself on his success, used often to say, with a chuckle, that "the rebels were actually starving for salt." When the advance of the army took place, and Price was hastily driven out of Springfield, the only article left behind was, much to Sheridan's disgust, an immense quantity of salt which had been smuggled through our lines. He ever afterward professed himself disgusted with his quarter-mastership, and fortunately soon after got himself under arrest and sent to the rear.

Officers generally look upon arrests as misfortunes. Sheridan's arrest was the turning-point in his fortunes, since it placed him, after a brief delay, on the staff of a rising major general and in the line of promotion. The circumstances of his arrest are not without interest, as showing one or two of his characteristics. Like many regular officers of the army as organized in 1861, Sheridan was in favor of carrying on the war by striking hard blows at the organized armies of the rebels, and generously providing for the people, who, while remaining at home, under United States protection, as non-combatants, still surreptitiously furnished men and material to the rebels. It is difficult to conceive the "Ravager of the Shenandoah Valley" entertaining any of these false notions of sympathy, yet such were Sheridan's feelings at the time, so strict a stickler was he for military discipline. He has overcome this too delicate and nice consideration for the interests of rebel aiders and abettors, and, like the country, has been educated by war in the belief that treason is to be fought with fire. Feeling thus during the Pea Ridge campaign, Sheridan was particularly disgusted with the ravages committed by a regiment of Kansas Jay-hawkers in General Blunt's division, and used often to denounce them in unmeasured terms. He was so much embittered against the regiment and opposed to their style of warfare, that when General Blunt ordered him to impress a large amount of provender from the citizens for the use of the army, he replied in any thing but decorous terms, declining to execute the order, and intimating in conclusion that he was not a Jay-hawker. General Blunt, of course, relieved him and preferred charges against him. Sheridan was ordered to report to Halleck. The letter was forwarded as evidence against him, and fell into Halleck's hands. That officer, having a just appreciation of a good joke, laughed heartily over the letter; and, sharing Sheridan's prejudices against "jay-hawking" and "bummers" generally, he caused the charges to be withdrawn, and in May, 1862, ordered Sheridan to duty on his own staff as acting chief quarter-master.

It is a singular fact that Sheridan was a protégé and favorite of both Halleck and Grant, who had not a thought, feeling, or interest in common. To have equally pleased Halleck, the theoretical, and Grant, the practical soldier—Halleck, the wily and polite lawyer, and Grant, the simple-minded, straightforward soldier—Halleck, who attempted to rise by arts, and Grant, who trusted solely to action for promotion, required very great qualities in a mind as young as Sheridan's. The secret of his success in pleasing both doubtless lies in the fact that he attempted to please neither. Sheridan has been one of the most honest of our generals. There was nothing tricky about him; his comrades all felt that he used no underhand influence to rise. Yet to the friendship inspired in these two very opposite natures by his honest and straightforward conduct Sheridan is doubtless somewhat indebted for his rapid advancement from a captaincy to a major generalcy in three years. When one reflects upon the rapidity of his promotion, the days of France under the empire appear to have come to us, and Bulwer's preposterous promotion of his hero in the play becomes highly probable. "Promotion is quick in the French army," said old Damas. Verily not more so than in the national army of the United States during the rebellion.

General Halleck was at the time of this occurrence before Corinth, and thither Sheridan repaired, to find himself suddenly and unexpectedly transferred from the regular to the volunteer service as colonel of the Second Michigan Cavalry, in place of Gordon Granger, who had been promoted. Halleck had, with an appreciation which he subsequently frequently displayed in organizing the United States armies, noticed Sheridan's qualities, and placed him in the branch of the service for which he was best qualified: But even Halleck did not fully appreciate the admirable qualities of his young protégé, and failed, when intrusted shortly after with the absolute organization of the armies, to advance him to the position for which the quicker appreciation of Grant afterward singled him out, after observing his conduct in one battle only.

His promotion to colonel aroused the ambition of Sheridan, who had before modestly hoped to eventually become a major. He now had opportunities to distinguish himself, and immediately went to work to improve the opportunity, determined to win rank and fame before the close of the war, which, having now changed its character, also gave promise of being long and adventurous, and full of occasions for one in his arm of the service.

His regiment was brigaded with that of Colonel W. L. Elliott, who, as the ranking officer, became brigade commander, and under his leadership Sheridan made his first campaign as a cavalryman. It was the famous raid around Corinth and upon Beauregard's communications at Boonesville, which was noted at the time as one of the first and most successful adventures of our then rapidly improving cavalry, and won for its leader a reputation for dash that the loyal press, with very questionable taste, continually compared to the daring of Stuart and Morgan in their bloodless raids against weak outposts and unguarded rear-lines. This irregular warfare of the rebel cavalry had not, up to that time, partaken of the bloody character which has since been given the cavalry encounters of the war, and Elliott and Sheridan were among the first to expose the fallibility and weakness of the boasted rebel cavalry when vigorously opposed. Elliott never accomplished any thing afterward, and it is half suspected that Sheridan did the work on the occasion which made Elliott famous.

It was but a short time after this affair that a second opportunity to distinguish himself was offered Sheridan on the same field, and, taking advantage of it, he fought his first cavalry battle.

This engagement, although of a minor character, served to illustrate his characteristics as a quick, dashing, stubborn fighter, as more brilliantly developed in Sheridan at more important engagements. The rebels were commanded by General James H. Chalmers, who attacked Sheridan's single regiment with a brigade of cavalry, evidently expecting little resistance. Sheridan was not required, by the importance of the post he commanded nor the position of the army whose front he covered, to hold his ground, and could have with propriety declined battle, and fallen back on the infantry line; but it was not in the heart of the "belligerent cadet" to decline an invitation to battle from any gentleman. He drew up his regiment in line, and received the attack in handsome style. Chalmers's first repulse taught him that he should have to proceed with his attack more systematically, and he brought up his line for a more regular and general assault. While he was thus engaged, Sheridan, with perhaps more enterprise than sound discretion, in view of the insignificance of the stake for which he contended, sent a detachment on a detour to the rear of the rebel position. These, by strenuous exertions, succeeded in effecting this purpose, and made an attack from that direction, while Sheridan, attacking from the front, succeeded in surprising the rebels and driving them from the field in confusion. Chalmers, his opponent in this engagement, subsequently won, under Bragg and Forrest, a character for belligerency similar to that now enjoyed by Sheridan, but he was not as uniformly successful, and his belligerency got him into difficulty. Bragg arrested him for his failure to carry the works at Munfordsville, Kentucky, in September, 1862, when Chalmers had assaulted them without orders. He subsequently got into like difficulties with Forrest, but his readiness to fight and general good qualities brought him safely out of his troubles. In the engagement at Boonesville his readiness to fight was evinced to Sheridan's satisfaction, while Sheridan's superior endurance and enterprise were made apparent to the rebel at the same time.

It was this success which made Sheridan a brigadier general. It has always been an unfortunate feature of our army organization that there is no provision for the promotion of the deserving in the branch of the service in which they have won distinction, and for which they have evinced high qualifications. A colonel of cavalry shows himself eminently deserving of promotion by his services in that branch, and he is promoted to be brigadier general of infantry, and not only taken from the line of the service for which he is best fitted, but, though promoted in rank, is sent to command an inferior arm of the service. By this fault of organization not only does the army lose the service of the person thus promoted out of his sphere, but often the promotion becomes the ruin of the recipient, who may be totally unfitted for this new line of duty. There are numerous examples of this. Among several of these failures, which have resulted from this cause, two of the most notable were of persons in Sheridan's own class. I have elsewhere already noticed how Terrill, who, as a captain of artillery, gained a great reputation for his successful handling of his battery at Shiloh, and who was promoted to be a brigadier general of infantry, to utterly fail and throw away his young life in his chagrin and desperation. McPherson's success outside of the engineer corps was no greater. He graduated at the head of his class, distinguished himself as an engineer, was promoted rapidly from captain to corps commander, only to find himself totally unfitted for such duty, and in time to waste, by his inadaptation to infantry and his lack of decision, the rich fruits of Sherman's successful strategic march through Snake Creek Gap upon Resaca.

Sheridan's fate was not exactly the reverse of this, for, when taken from the cavalry, for which he was eminently fitted, and made brigadier general of infantry, his success at first was not encouraging; but under the various tests which these charges have proved to be, he was more uniformly successful than any officer I remember placed in the same position. I know, indeed, of no general officer who was subjected to so many tests as Sheridan. He was alternately commanding cavalry and infantry, then both together, constantly changing from one line of operations to another, and thus being subjected to the study of new lines and new topography, besides being forced to meet and overcome the prejudices against new commanders local to every army. In fact, Sheridan may be said to have begun his career anew three several times, and his ultimate success in spite of these obstacles shows the superiority of his mettle.

Immediately on his promotion Sheridan was placed in command in Kentucky of a division of raw troops, for the organization of which he was not so well fitted as for fighting them. The command was under General Nelson. Shortly afterward Nelson was killed, and the reorganization of his army, and its incorporation with that of General Buell, placed Sheridan in command of a division of partly disciplined veteran troops. A short time subsequently the army was again reorganized by Rosecrans, and Sheridan was given a division and assigned to the corps of General A. McD. McCook. Sheridan's division suffered defeat at Stone River and Chickamauga. But amid those disasters and defeats the fighting qualities of the "little cadet" found illustrations as brilliant, but not so familiar as those of his greater victories at Cedar Creek, Five Forks.

Stone River was a battle in which the endurance of the soldiers rather than the generalship of their leaders gave us possession of a field in which the enemy retained, until his abandonment of the field, the tactical and strategic advantage. Each corps, and even each division, "fought on its own hook;" there was no generalship, no plan, no purpose on our part. The official reports tell very elaborately of a grand plan, and how, despite the reverses of the first day, it was carried out to brilliant and successful completion, but that plan was arranged after the battle was finished. There was no such plan before the battle, for, like all of Rosecrans's battles, Stone River was fought without any definite plan. Bragg was the tactician of Stone River. He assumed and held the offensive during the whole engagement, and our forces were kept continually on the defensive. It is a singular fact, that so ignorant was Rosecrans of the position of the enemy, so absolutely without a plan was he, that on the very morning of McCook's disastrous defeat he ordered General Crittenden to occupy the town which the enemy were covering in strong force, declaring that they had evacuated it. General T. J. Wood protested against the blind obedience which General Crittenden would have given to this command, and, pending the reference of the remonstrance to Rosecrans, McCook was attacked and whipped. The soldiers fought the battle on our part, not the general commanding the army; and it was Thomas, Rousseau, Sheridan, Negley, Wood, and Palmer, as leaders, who saved the day, and retrieved the disaster precipitated by McCook's incompetency, and Rosecrans's incapacity, from extreme nervousness, to direct a large column of troops. Sheridan's division was posted on the left of McCook's corps, which, being struck in flank and rear, was very quickly and unexpectedly doubled up and thrown back upon Sheridan's division, which was thus forced, while fighting a division in its front, to turn and form a defensive crotchet to the whole army, thus being compelled to expose one or the other of its flanks. It was forced back by superior numbers until its line of battle described three sides of a square, and these being broken after a terrible resistance, it was forced to retreat through a dense forest of cedars, in which artillery could not be moved, to the line formed by the reserves under General Rousseau. While the rest of the corps had been rapidly driven, Sheridan's division fought for hours desperately, losing all the brigade commanders, seventy other officers, and nearly one third of the men killed and wounded. The other divisions of McCook's corps, under Jeff. C. Davis and R. W. Johnson, were never rallied until they reached Nashville, while Sheridan's fell back upon the line of reserves and fought for two days afterward. This result was entirely owing to the personal exertions, daring, and skill of Sheridan; and his conflict formed such a brilliant episode of that badly-managed battle, and his abilities shone so prominently in contrast with the delinquencies of others, that he was at once made a major general.

In the dark cedars at Stone River he kept his men together, when almost surrounded or entirely cut off, only by being at all times along the front line of battle with them; by well-directed encouragement to the deserving, and the blackest reproaches to the delinquents; by alternate appeals and curses, and a constant display of a daring which was inspiring, and in the presence of which no man dared betray himself a coward.

"The history of the combat of those dark cedars will never be known," wrote the only historian who has as yet truly written of Stone River, Mr. W. S. Furay, of the Cincinnati Gazette, a young man of very extraordinary abilities, and the most conscientious of all the war correspondents whom I met in the army. "No man," he adds, "could see even the whole of his own regiment, and no one will ever be able to tell who they were that fought bravest, or they who proved recreant to their trust. It was left to Sheridan to stay the successful onset of the foe. Never did a man labor more faithfully than he to perform his task, and never was leader seconded by more gallant soldiers. His division formed a kind of pivot, upon which the broken right wing turned in its flight, and its perilous condition can easily be imagined when the flight of Davis's division left it without any protection from the triumphant enemy who now swarmed upon its front and right flank; but it fought until one fourth of its number lay bleeding and lying upon the field, and till both remaining brigade commanders, Colonel Roberts and Shaeffer, had met with the same fate as General Sill."

When Sheridan had extricated his command from the forest and got in line with the reserves, he rode up to Rosecrans, and, pointing to the remnant of his division, said,

"Here is all that is left of us, general. Our cartridge-boxes contain nothing, and our guns are empty."

The Tullahoma campaign, which followed that of Stone River, offered few opportunities for the display of any other quality of the soldier in Sheridan than that of energy. The pursuit of Bragg, which formed the main feature of that campaign, required rapid marching, but no fighting. After the expulsion of the rebels from Tullahoma and Winchester the general pursuit was abandoned, as the enemy had reached the mountains, and only Sheridan's division and Stanley's cavalry received orders to pursue the enemy across the mountains to the Tennessee. Sheridan moved with great alacrity, hoping to reach the bridge over the Tennessee at Bridgeport in time to save it from destruction. He moved so rapidly that he reached the river before Stanley's cavalry, which had been ordered by an indirect route through Huntsville. He succeeded in saving the greater part of the bridge. He used to tell with great glee that on reaching Bridgeport he found numbers of the rear-guard of Bragg's army sitting on the burned end of the bridge, and asking his advance on the opposite bank of the river if "they were part of Stanley's cavalry." The infantry had moved so rapidly in pursuit that the enemy had all the while mistaken them for cavalry.

Sheridan has since displayed the same energy in moving, with better effect. The surrender of Lee was, without doubt, the effect of the admirable and vigorous execution by Sheridan of Grant's plan of operations from Five Forks to Burkesville Junction. It will be remembered that Sheridan, by rapid movements, placed his forces at Jettersville before Lee had reached Amelia Court-house, and thus cut off all retreat to Danville. His dispatches relating to those operations partake of the vigor of the actual movements, and handsomely illustrate his energy.

"I wish you were here yourself," he wrote to Grant—a compliment that the little lieutenant general may be proud to point to. "If things are pressed," he added, "I think Lee will surrender."

"Press things," was Grant's order. It needed no other. Sheridan pushed forward rapidly, struck right and left, punishing the enemy wherever found, and at last forcing Lee to surrender. Grant returned the compliment with interest in writing his final report of the closing operations of the war. He describes, in his peculiarly forcible language, that, on the eve of the battle of Winchester and the beginning of Sheridan's valley campaign, he went to Sheridan's quarters to examine his plans, forces, material, etc., and found that he had only a single instruction to give his lieutenant—"Go in!"

"Press things" and "go in" are instructions as laconic as they are indefinite. They betray Grant's practicability and plainness, and honor Sheridan. It is, perhaps, better to be the one addressed in such terms than even the author of them. Sheridan is not less plain and forcible in his language than Grant, as witness his various reports, the quotations above, and his opinion of Texas. "If I owned," he once said, "Texas and hell, I would sell Texas and live in the other place."

The battle of Chickamauga, as far as McCook and Sheridan were concerned, was only a repetition of Stone River. McCook's corps, consisting then of Davis's, Sheridan's, and Negley's divisions, was again defeated. General Negley, very unfortunately for that gallant officer and gentleman, was taken from his division in the heat of battle and ordered to the command of a number of batteries, and the division suffered badly, while the other division, under General Jefferson C. Davis, was scattered in every direction. Sheridan, who had formed the extreme right, had a desperate though ineffectual fight, but, after being separated from the rest of the army, eventually cut his own way out, brought in his division about half organized, and took his place in the line at Rossville, to which Thomas fell back at night. On this occasion, as at Stone River, Sheridan was a subordinate. The disaster to his division was general to his corps, and resulted from the incapacity of others, and not his own bad management. He was powerless to avert, he could only partly retrieve the disaster. On both occasions he did so with a skillful hand, by the most strenuous exertions, and at great personal risk.

Chattanooga was the battle in which Sheridan caught the eye of Grant, who there selected him without hesitation for the important position which he subsequently filled. Sheridan's division formed the right of the centre column, which, in the engagement at Chattanooga on November 25, 1863, assaulted and carried Mission Ridge, and, breaking the rebel centre, assured the victory. His men were kept in position waiting for the signal to assault for over thirty-six hours, and they and their leader had grown very nervous, half fearing the battle would be won too soon by Sherman and Hooker, and the chance for glory stolen from them, when at last the wished-for signal came, and away to the charge sprang the assaulting columns. General T. J. Wood commanded one column, and he and Sheridan strove with a lofty ambition, in which there was nothing that a saint could condemn, to reach the summit first. Sheridan gloried in the deed. He could not contain himself, and yet he rode along the front line, half leading, half directing his men, as clear-headed as if the cross-fire of the twenty rebel batteries that opened upon his men were directed against charmed lives, and he knew them to be futile as against him. During the charge he took a canteen of whisky from his aid, Captain Avery, and, filling a cup which he carried, raised it with a gesture toward Bragg's head-quarters, which were plainly visible on the mountain crest, saying, in imitation of the soldiers, "How are you, Mr. Bragg?" Before he could drink the liquor, a rifle-ball carried away cup and beverage. Sheridan exclaimed, "That's damned ungenerous!" There was no time for more, and he spurred forward, and soon again formed part of his front line. His horse was killed under him, and he led the remainder of the assault on foot, reaching the summit with the first, and, as horses were not plentiful on the ridge, he sprang upon one of the fifty captured guns, swinging his sword over his head, and shouting for joy with his men, while, at the same moment, he poured invective after invective on the heads of the rebels whom he was unable to pursue. Before the battle was ended, Grant, having left his head-quarters in Orchard Knob, rode along the summit of the ridge, and before the fire of the enemy had ceased he had marked Sheridan for future use. Chattanooga was the flood-tide of his fortunes, and, without knowing it at the time, he that day launched his bark anew. Henceforth his abilities were not to be lost by his being made subordinate to men of inferior calibre. He was henceforth to win great successes, not retrieve, in some degree, the great disasters of others.

Sheridan did not know for months after of his good fortune on that day. On the contrary, his friends soon after had reason to imagine that he was again under a cloud. It was but a few months after this memorable battle that Gordon Granger and Sheridan were relieved of their commands. It was generally known that Granger had offended Grant by his delay in moving with Sherman to Burnside's aid at Knoxville, and it was supposed that both he and Sheridan were laid on the shelf. I met the latter as he passed through Nashville, and he told me that he did not then exactly know his destination, except that it was Washington City. The announcement was soon made, however, that he had been placed in command of all of Grant's cavalry on the Potomac, and those who knew Sheridan learned to appreciate more highly the clearness with which Grant read the characters of his subordinates. Returning Sheridan to the cavalry service was not by any means the least important of Grant's services to the country.

It was not intended, in the scope of this chapter, to give a detailed statement of the events of Sheridan's life. The purpose was rather to make the public more familiar with his character than his history. The prominent points of his later career are as well known to all as myself. I have often had cause to regret that I have no personal recollections of Sheridan's remarkable campaign in the Shenandoah Valley. I should have been particularly glad to have had an opportunity to witness and to analyze the wonderful effect of Sheridan's presence on his men during the rout at Cedar Run. It can not be accounted for on any theory, however philosophical, framed by a person who was not an eye-witness, while it might be comprehended in the light of a minute and graphic description of the manner of the general on that occasion. His success in restoring order, and then confidence, was doubtless due to his decisive manner, while the subsequent restoration of morale was owing to the promptness with which the offensive was resumed. The control which Sheridan then held over his men is certainly very remarkable, in view of the short time during which he had commanded them, and the condition in which he found them on this day. Absent at the beginning of the battle of Cedar Creek, it will be remembered that he pushed forward to the front to find his troops retreating rapidly, and, although not pursued, much demoralized. Demoralized does not necessarily, as I have found by experience on more than one doubtful field, imply defeat. Sheridan appears to have felt so; for, on being told by a colonel whom he met that the "army was whipped," the indomitable Sheridan exclaimed, "You are, but the army isn't." His presence seemed to inspire the men with a new purpose. He possesses a secret similar to that of Cadmus. Though not making soldiers spring ready-armed from the earth as Cadmus did, he creates an enthusiasm which gives additional power and strength to those he has. On the occasion alluded to, so powerful was this inspiring presence that, in an incredible short space of time, he had his routed men re-formed in line, and ready to receive the onslaught of the enemy. But the enemy, intent on rifling the captured camps, had not pursued in force, and Sheridan found waiting was in vain. The confidence of the troops had been restored by the presence of their leader, the facility with which he re-established the broken lines, and the cheering language and encouraging tone of his conversation and orders. He fully re-established the morale of the men when, finding the enemy failed to pursue, he ordered an advance. The fact that he did advance on the same day of the rout serves to show, among Sheridan's other great qualities as a leader, his decision and daring. There are few generals, in our own or any other service, who would have conceived the idea, or for a moment entertained the purpose of immediately resuming the offensive. Two years before, pursuit after a victory, not to mention pursuit after a defeat, was held to be impossible. The fact that Sheridan was able on this occasion to resume the offensive with complete success shows how absolute was the confidence of the men in this comparative stranger, who had plead, entreated, cursed, and browbeat the flying army into order again. The magnificent ride from Winchester to the field, which at the time was made in all the accounts the salient feature of the battle, grows commonplace when compared to "Little Phil's" ride among the routed masses of his corps. He may be said to have been every where at once, for his presence was felt in every battalion. His orders, so brilliantly illustrated and varied by his peculiar and numerous oaths, found their natural echoes in the cheers of the men, in whose hearts his presence restored confidence. The rapidity with which he rallied his broken lines and brought order out of chaos is incredible even to those who have seen the "belligerent cadet" in the midst of battles; and to one who has never witnessed the singular effect which the reception of orders to attack have on men, it will still remain incredible how he so far restored the confidence and morale of his troops as to enable him on that occasion to snatch victory from defeat.

There was some occasion for the display of the same personal daring, and the exercise of the same influence by example, on the part of Sheridan, at the battle of Five Forks. His presence on every part of that contested field, it is now generally conceded, had as much to do as generalship with the final result of that battle, where every thing depended on the persistence of the attack on the weak point which Sheridan had discovered. It is doubtful if success would have followed the efforts of a general who had been content to direct the battle. Sheridan led. He was in the front line, under the heaviest fire, at all times, waving his sword, encouraging his men, exhorting them to incredible deeds, and, as usual with him, swearing alternately at the enemy and his own skulkers. He is represented by those present as the "impersonation of every thing soldierly." He rode up and down the lines, under fire, continually waving his sword, commanding in person, exhorting them to seize the opportunity within their grasp, and sweep their enemies to destruction. It is related of him, and the story is characteristic enough to be true, that, at the conclusion of the first day's unsuccessful battle at Five Forks, while striding up and down in front of his field head-quarters, apparently absorbed in deep and calm thought, he suddenly startled his staff by breaking out in a series of horrible oaths, in which he swore he would carry the rebel lines next day, or "sink innumerable fathoms into hell."

Despite several remonstrances which I have received from him and his friends, I must say that Sheridan occasionally indulges in oaths, but one can easily find it in his heart to forgive them. They are merely the emphasis to his language. Oaths are said to be fools' arguments. Sheridan throws them at one in a discussion not from a want of more forcible arguments, but from a lack of patience to await the slow process of logical conclusions. For this same reason he heartily despises a council of war, and never forms part of one if he can possibly avoid it. He executes, not originates plans; or, as Rosecrans once expressed it in his nervous manner, "He fights—he fights!" Whatever is given Sheridan to do is accomplished thoroughly. He does not stop to criticise the practicability of an order in its detail, and at the same time does not hesitate to vary his movements when he finds those laid down for him are not practicable. He does not abandon the task because the mode which has been ordered is rendered impossible by any unexpected event. If the result is accomplished Sheridan does not care whose means were employed, or on whom the credit is reflected. He grasps the result and congratulates himself, the strategist of the occasion and the men, with equal gratification and every evidence of delight. His generous care for the reputation of his subordinates, his freedom from all petty jealousy, his honesty of purpose, and the nobleness of his ambition to serve the country and not himself, his geniality and general good-humor, and the brevity of his black storms of anger, make him, like Grant, not only a well-beloved leader, but one that the country can safely trust to guard its honor and preserve its existence. It is easy for one who knows either of the two—Grant and Sheridan—to believe it possible that, during all the period in which they held such supreme power in our armies, not a single thought of how they might achieve greatness, power, and position, at the expense of country, has ever suggested itself to their minds. There are few other characters known in profane history of whom the same thing can be truly said.

Sheridan goes into the heat of battle not from necessity merely. The first smell of powder arouses him, and he rushes to the front of the field. It is related of him that when the engagement of Winchester began, he stood off a little to the rear, as Grant would have done, and endeavored to calmly survey the field and direct the battle. But it was not in his nature to remain passive for a great while. When the fight warmed up and became general, he could stand it no longer, and, drawing his sword, he exclaimed, "By God, I can't stand this!" and rode into the heat of the engagement.

The belligerent in Sheridan's organization is often aroused without the stimulus of the smell of gunpowder. In 1863, while Sheridan was encamped at Bridgeport, Alabama, he invited General George H. Thomas, then encamped at Deckerd, Tennessee, to examine the works erected at Bridgeport and the preparations going on for rebuilding the bridge. I was then at Deckerd, and being invited to accompany the party to Bridgeport, did so. At one of the way-stations the train halted for an unusually long time, and Sheridan, on asking the conductor, a great, burly six-footer, the reason, met with a somewhat gruff reply. Sheridan contented himself with reproving his manner, and ordered him to proceed with the train. The conductor did not reply, and failed to obey. After waiting for a time, Sheridan sent for the conductor, and demanded to know why he had not obeyed. The fellow answered, in a gruff manner, that he received his orders only from the military superintendent of the road. Without giving him time to finish the insulting reply, Sheridan struck him two or three rapid blows, kicked him from the cars and into the hands of a guard, and then ordered the train forward, acting as conductor on the down and return trip. After starting the train he returned to his seat near General Thomas, and, without referring to the subject, resumed his conversation with that imperturbable dignitary.

On another occasion Sheridan detected an army news-vender in some imposition on the soldiers, and, without waiting for an explanation, he seized him by the back of the neck and thumped his head against the car, although he had to stand on tiptoe to do it.

Sheridan's appearance, like that of Grant, is apt to disappoint one who had not seen him previous to his having become famous. He has none of the qualities which are popularly attributed by the imagination to heroes. "Little Phil" is a title of endearment given him by his soldiers in the West, and is descriptive of his personal appearance. He is shorter than Grant, but somewhat stouter built, and, being several years younger and of a different temperament, is more active and wiry. The smallness of his stature is soon forgotten when he is seen mounted. He seems then to develop physically as he does mentally after a short acquaintance. Unlike many of our heroes, Sheridan does not dwindle as one approaches him. Distance lends neither his character nor personal appearance any enchantment. He talks more frequently and more fluently than Grant does, and his quick and slightly nervous gestures partake somewhat of the manner of Sherman. His body is stout but wiry, and set on short, heavy, but active legs. His broad shoulders, short, stiff hair, and the features of his face, betray the Milesian descent, but no brogue can be traced in his voice. His eyes are gray, and, being small, are sharp and piercing, and full of fire. When maddened with excitement or passion these glare fearfully. His age is thirty-four, but long service in the field has bronzed him into the appearance of forty, yet he is one of the most elegant of young bachelors, and answers fully to the description of the first Scipio, "Et juvenis, et cœlebs, et victor."

JOSEPH HOOKER.

CHAPTER V.

FIGHTING JOE HOOKER.