"A hasty jest I once let fall."
"A hasty jest I once let fall."
"A hasty jest I once let fall."
"A hasty jest I once let fall."
When Kingsley was forty, he preached for the first time before the Queen and Prince Albert at Buckingham Palace, and was soon made one of Her Majesty's chaplains. He preached at the Chapel Royal, St. James's, and before the Court in the private chapel at Windsor Castle. From this time onward he received the utmost consideration and appreciation from the royal household. Having been made Professor of Modern History at Cambridge, which position he filled admirably for nine years, he was requested by the Prince Consort to give private lectures to the Prince of Wales, who had just left Oxford. The Prince came to Mr. Kingsley's house three times a week, twice with the class, and every Saturday to go over the week's work alone.
Every now and then Mr. Kingsley, from his ardent nature, broke down from overwork. Then he would go with his wife to the Isle of Wight to see Tennyson and his wife, or with James Anthony Froude to Ireland.
Death was beginning to enter the family circle. His father died in the winter of 1860. He wrote Mr. Maurice, "How every wrong word and deed toward that good old man, and every sorrow I caused him, rise up in judgment against one; and how one feels that right-doing does not atone for wrong-doing."
In the spring Charlotte, Mrs. Kingsley's sister, the wife of Froude, was laid under the fir-trees in Eversley churchyard. "Her grave," says Mrs. Kingsley, "was to him during the remainder of his own life a sacred spot, where he would go almost daily to commune in spiritwith the dead, where flowers were always kept blooming, and where on the Sunday morning he would himself superintend the decorations,—the cross and wreaths of choice flowers placed by loving hands upon it." Prince Albert died in 1861, a great personal loss to Kingsley, as to all England.
In the spring of 1862 "The Water-babies" was written, and dedicated to his youngest son, Grenville Arthur, then four years old, named after his godfather, Dean Stanley, and Sir Richard Grenvil, one of the heroes of "Westward Ho!" from whom Mrs. Kingsley's family claimed descent.
The strange experiences of poor little Tom, the chimney-sweep, after he left the hard work in the chimneys, under his brutal master, Grimes, to enjoy the wonders of the sea, as a water-baby, are most amusing and graphic. The book has always had a great circulation.
Three years after this, Queen Emma of the Hawaiian Islands spent two days at the Eversley Rectory. She said to Mrs. Kingsley, "It is so strange to me to be staying with you and to see Mr. Kingsley. My husband read your husband's 'Water-babies' to our little prince." On her return she sent to Mr. Kingsley the Prayer Book in Hawaiian, translated by her husband, King Kamehameha IV.
Kingsley did not forget how hard it had been for an unknown author to find a publisher. Mr. Charles Henry Bennett, a man of genius, but struggling with poverty, had illustrated "Pilgrim's Progress," but could get no one to take it. Kingsley wrote a preface, and Messrs. Longman at once undertook to bring it out. Thus did the noble man help artist and author, tramp and sick laborer, seeker after knowledge or after the comfort of the gospel.
In 1863 Kingsley was made a Fellow of the Geological Society, proposed by his friend Sir Charles Bunbury, and seconded by Sir Charles Lyell. He was already a Fellow of the Linnean Society. His name was proposed for the degree of D.C.L. at Oxford by the Prince of Wales, but was withdrawn on account of opposition from the extreme High Church party.
He now gave lectures to the boys at Wellington College, to which his son Maurice had gone, and assisted them in forming a museum; he brought out a volume of poems and one or two volumes of sermons. No wonder he failed in health, and was obliged to go to France with Froude, the latter going on into Spain for historical work.
The labors of the devoted preacher and author increased year after year. Impressed more than ever with the monotonous life of the English laborer and his hard-worked wife, Kingsley started Penny Readings for the people, and village concerts, in which friends from London helped.
He attended the national science meetings; he preached in Westminster Abbey; he brought out a series of papers for children on natural science, called "Madam How and Lady Why;" he read sixteen volumes of Comte's works in preparation for his Cambridge lectures—he had already given a course on the History of America.
In 1869 he was appointed Canon of Chester. Here he started a class in botany,—a walk and a field lecture were enjoyed once a week by a hundred or more persons,—which has resulted in the Chester Natural History Society, with about six hundred members. He also gave many geological lectures. "The Soil of the Field," "The Pebbles in the Street," "The Stones in the Wall,""The Coal in the Fire," "The Lime in the Mortar," "The Slates on the Roof," were published in a book called "Town Geology." How broadened would be the minds of many in our congregations, especially the minds of our young men and women, if more of our ministers would teach the wonders of the world in which we live!
Kingsley was made President of the Education Section of the Social Science Congress at Bristol, and one hundred thousand copies of his valuable inaugural address were distributed. At this Congress he met Dr. Elizabeth Blackwell from America, and she became a welcome guest at Eversley. He was an ardent advocate of medical education for women.
He wrote to John Stuart Mill that his "Subjection of Woman" seemed to him "unanswerable and exhaustive, and certain, from its moderation as well as from its boldness, to do good service in this good cause." ...
After a journey with his daughter to the West Indies, from which came his book, "At Last," he returned to his multifarious duties. As President of the Midland Institute at Birmingham, he spoke on the Science of Health. As a result, a manufacturer gave £2,500 to found classes and lectures on Human Physiology and the Science of Health, believing that physical improvement would be followed by mental and moral improvement.
In the spring of 1873 Mr. Gladstone, with the sanction of the Queen, asked Kingsley to become Canon of Westminster. His aged mother, now eighty-six, who had made her home at Eversley since the death of her husband, lived long enough to rejoice in his appointment to the Abbey, and died April 16.
The Archbishop of Canterbury welcomed him heartily."It is a great sphere," he wrote, "for a man who, like you, knows how to use it."
But those who knew him best had grave fears that he would not long fill the place. He was urged to make a sea voyage, and with his daughter Rose started for America in January, 1874, taking with him a few lectures, to meet his expenses.
They landed Feb. 11, in New York. His daughter wrote home to the anxious mother, "Before my father set foot on American soil, he had a foretaste of the cordial welcome and generous hospitality which he experienced everywhere, without a single exception, throughout the six months he spent in the United States and Canada. The moment the ship warped into her dock, a deputation from a literary club came on board, took possession of us and our baggage."
Mr. Kingsley wrote home Feb. 12, "As for health, this air, as poor Thackeray said of it, is like champagne. Sea air and mountain air combined; days already an hour longer than in England, and a blazing hot sun and blue sky. It is a glorious country, and I don't wonder at the people being proud of it.... I dine with the Lotus Club on Saturday night, and then start for Boston with R., to stay with Fields next week."
He took great interest in Salem and Cambridge. He dined with Longfellow, whom he greatly admired. "Dear old Whittier called on me, and we had a most loving and like-minded talk about the other world," he writes home. "He is an old saint. This morning I have spent chiefly with Asa Gray and his plants, so that we are in good company."
In New York he met William Cullen Bryant; was entertained by that considerate and lovely friend toeverybody, the late Mrs. Botta; spoke in the Opera House at Philadelphia to nearly four thousand persons, the aisles crowded; received cordial welcome from President Grant, and from the scientific men at the Smithsonian Institute in Washington; talked with Charles Sumner an hour before he was seized with his fatal illness; visited Mark Twain at Hartford, Conn.; preached in Baltimore to a large congregation; stopped on his way West at Niagara, where he longed for his wife "to sit with him, and simply look on in silence whole days at the exquisite beauty of form and color."
Then with a party of several English and Americans, in a Pullman car, Kingsley and his daughter journeyed to California. He preached at Salt Lake City to a crowded congregation. The scenery everywhere delighted him. "The flowers," he wrote, "are exquisite, yellow ribs over all the cliffs, etc., and make one long to jump off the train every five minutes, while the geology makes one stand aghast; geologizing in England is child's play to this."
Again he preached in the Yosemite. The Dean of Westminster in the old Abbey said that Kingsley, "who is able to combine the religious and scientific aspects of nature better than any man living, is on this very day, and perhaps at this very hour, preaching in the most beautiful spot on the face of the earth, where the glories of nature are revealed on the most gigantic scale,—in that wonderful Californian Valley, to whose trees the cedars of Lebanon are but as the hyssop that groweth out of the wall,—where water and forest and sky conjoin to make up, if anywhere on the globe, an earthly paradise."
Mr. Kingsley was ill of pleurisy for some time in California. He began to long for home. "I am veryhomesick," he writes to his wife, "and counting the days till I can get back to you."
He returned to Eversley in August, and, as there was much sickness, began at once his self-sacrificing ministrations. He preached his last sermon in the Abbey Nov. 29, with great fervor. Dec. 3 he and his wife went to Eversley, where she was taken very ill. When told that there was no hope for her, he said, "My own death-warrant was signed with those words."
He cared for her tenderly, and on Dec. 28 was stricken with pneumonia. He had been warned that he must not leave his room, as a change of temperature would prove fatal; but one day he sprang out of bed, came to his wife's room for a few moments, and, taking her hand in his, said, "This is heaven, don't speak;" but soon a severe fit of coughing came on: he went back to his bed, and they never met again.
A correspondence was kept up for a few days in pencil, but this became too painful. Towards the last he said, "No more fighting—no more fighting," and then he prayed earnestly. Again he murmured, "How beautiful God is!"
For two days he sent no messages to his wife, thinking that she had gone before him. He said to the nurse who cared for them both, "I, too, am come to an end; it is all right—all as itshould be."
His last words were the Burial Service, "Shut not Thy merciful ears to our prayers ... suffer us not, at our last hour, from any pains of death, to fall from Thee." On Jan. 23, 1875, without a struggle, his life went out.
Dean Stanley telegraphed, "The Abbey is open to the Canon and the Poet;" but Kingsley had said, "Go whereI will in this hard-working world, I shall take care to get my last sleep in Eversley churchyard;" and under the fir-trees he was buried.
A great crowd of all classes stood around that open grave, and later, little children who had loved the "Water-babies" came often and laid flowers upon the mound.
"Few eyes were dry," says Max Müller, "when he was laid in his own gravel bed, the old trees which he had planted and cared for waving their branches to him for the last time.... He will be mourned for, yearned for, in every place in which he passed some days of his busy life."
A Memorial Fund was at once raised by friends in England and America. Eversley church was enlarged and improved; at Chester a prize was founded in connection with the Natural History Society; a marble bust of him placed in the Cathedral Chapter-house, and a stall restored in the Cathedral, which bears his name. In Westminster Abbey a marble bust of Kingsley, by Mr. Woolner, was unveiled Sept. 23, 1875, with appropriate services.
Mrs. Kingsley survived her husband sixteen years, dying at Leamington, Dec. 12, 1891, at the age of seventy-seven.
His daughter Rose, and Mary who married the Rev. William Harrison, are both authors, the latter using the name "Lucas Malet." Kingsley, himself, wrote thirty-five volumes.
Charles Kingsley was as lovable in his home-life as he was brilliant and noble in his public career. Said an intimate friend of him, "To his wife—so he never shrank from affirming in deep and humble thankfulness—heowed the whole tenor of his life, all that he had worth living for. It was true. And his every word and look and gesture of chivalrous devotion for more than thirty years seemed to show that the sense of boundless gratitude had become part of his nature, was never out of the undercurrent of his thoughts."
His son-in-law, the Rev. Mr. Harrison, says, "Home was to him the sweetest, the fairest, the most romantic thing in life; and there all that was best and brightest in him shone with steady and purest lustre."
With his children he was like an elder brother. He built them a little house, where they kept books and toys and tea-things, and where he often joined them, bringing some rare flower or insect to show them. He was always cheerful with them and his aged mother. He used to say, "I wonder if there is so much laughing in any other home in England as in ours."
Corporal punishment was never allowed in his home. "More than half the lying of children," he said, "is, I believe, the result of fear, and the fear of punishment."
He was especially tender to animals. "His dog Dandy," says his wife, "a fine Scotch terrier, was his companion in all his parish walks, attended at the cottage lectures and school lessons, and was his and the children's friend for thirteen years. He lies buried under the great fir-trees on the rectory lawn, with this inscription on his gravestone, 'Fideli Fideles;' and close by, 'Sweep,' a magnificent black retriever, and 'Victor,' a favorite Teckel given to him by the Queen, with which he sat up during the two last suffering nights of the little creature's life."
Cats, too, were his especial delight, a white one and a black. "His love of animals," says Mrs. Kingsley,"was strengthened by his belief in their future state—a belief which he held in common with John Wesley and many other remarkable men. On the lawn dwelt a family of natter-jacks (running toads) who lived on from year to year in the same hole in the green bank, which the scythe was never allowed to approach. He had two little friends in a pair of sand-wasps, who lived in a crack of the window in his dressing-room, one of which he had saved from drowning in a hand-basin, taking it tenderly out into the sunshine to dry; and every spring he would look out eagerly for them or their children, who came out of, or returned to, the same crack."
His guests were one day amused when his little girl opened her hand and begged him to "look at thisdelightfulworm."
Mr. Harrison tells this characteristic incident. One Sunday morning, in passing from the altar to the pulpit, he disappeared, and was searching for something on the ground, which he carried into the vestry. It was found later that he had discovered a beautiful butterfly, which, being lame, he feared would be trodden upon. Thus great in all little humanities was the great preacher of Eversley and Westminster Abbey.
His life was like his own poem,—
"Be good, sweet maid, and let who will be clever;Do noble things, not dream them, all day long:And so make life, death, and that vast forever,One grand, sweet song."
"Be good, sweet maid, and let who will be clever;Do noble things, not dream them, all day long:And so make life, death, and that vast forever,One grand, sweet song."
"Be good, sweet maid, and let who will be clever;Do noble things, not dream them, all day long:And so make life, death, and that vast forever,One grand, sweet song."
"Be good, sweet maid, and let who will be clever;
Do noble things, not dream them, all day long:
And so make life, death, and that vast forever,
One grand, sweet song."
Like Grant, Sherman was born in Ohio; the former in a log house at Mt. Pleasant, 1822, the latter at Lancaster, Feb. 8, 1820.
His ancestor, Edmund Sherman, came from Dedham, England, to Massachusetts, with his three sons, in 1634. From his son Samuel, who was one of the original proprietors of Woodbury, Conn., came the noted general, through a line of ministers and lawyers.
The grandfather, Taylor Sherman, was a judge in Norwalk, Conn., and one of the commissioners appointed by the State to go to Huron and Erie Counties, Ohio, to settle some land matters with regard to the Indians. He received two sections of land for his services.
His wife, Betsey, was a woman, says E. V. Smalley, in theCenturyfor January, 1884, "of uncommon strength of character, who was always called on to give advice in times of trouble to her whole circle of relatives and descendants—a strong-willed, intelligent, managing woman.... To Grandmother Betsey might be attributed the talent of the later members of the family."
Her son Charles, admitted to the bar at twenty, married Mary Hoyt, and soon went to Lancaster, Ohio. He returned in a year, and took his young wife and babyover six hundred miles on horseback to the new home in the West, where ten other children were born, the eleven comprising six boys and five girls.
WILLIAM TECUMSEH SHERMAN
WILLIAM TECUMSEH SHERMAN.
The third son, William, was named Tecumseh after the famous Indian chief, who died at the battle of Tippecanoe. When the child was four years old, the father was appointed a judge of the supreme court of Ohio, but died suddenly in Lebanon while on the bench, after he had held the position for five years.
Mrs. Sherman found her home full of children, with an annual income of only two hundred and fifty dollars with which to support them. Her husband had been loved for his genial nature and his generous heart, so that friends were not wanting to help the young mother bear her burdens.
John, the now well-known senator, was sent to an uncle in Mount Vernon, another to a friend in Cincinnati, and Tecumseh to the home of the Hon. Thomas Ewing, a prominent United States Senator from Ohio.
The lad of nine attended the village schools till he was sixteen, when, through the influence of Mr. Ewing, he entered the Military Academy at West Point. He had no love for warlike pursuits, but looked forward to becoming a civil engineer in the far West.
He had all along cared for history, travel, and fiction, but never especially for battles. He enjoyed out-door sports, and long rambles with rod and gun. He studied well while at West Point, standing high in drawing, chemistry, mathematics, and philosophy, reaching the sixth place in a class of forty-three at his graduation in 1840.
He was never fond of display, and had no relish for the minutiæ of dress and drill. "Men who havesuccessfully conducted great campaigns, and fought great battles, have not," says Mr. Smalley, "as a rule, taken much interest in the polishing of buttons, or the exact alignment of a company of troops."
Soon after graduating, young Sherman, tall, slender, with auburn hair and hazel eyes, a second lieutenant in the Third Artillery, was sent to Florida to keep in check the Seminole Indians. After two winters he was transferred to Fort Moultrie, near Charleston, South Carolina, as first lieutenant, where he remained for four years. Here he enjoyed Southern hospitality, and learned the character of the people and the topography of the country, both here and in Georgia. More than twenty years later, this knowledge was invaluable when he fought his battles at Atlanta and made his immortal March to the Sea.
War with Mexico was threatening; and in 1846 Sherman was sent to New York, and afterwards to Ohio, as a recruiting officer. When he heard of the battles of Palo Alto and Resaca de la Palma, May 8 and 9, he was eager to be at the front: recruiting, as he says in his memoirs, while "his comrades were actually fighting, was intolerable."
He was soon ordered to California, which his company reached, after a voyage of nearly two hundred days, by way of Cape Horn. At Rio Janeiro, "the beauty of whose perfect harbor words will not describe," they remained for a week, and the young Ohio officer enjoyed the delights of travel. He saw Dom Pedro and his Empress, the daughter of Louis Philippe of France, the Palace, the Botanic Gardens, the Emperor's coffee plantation, where the coffee-tree reminded him of "the red haw-tree of Ohio; and the berries were somewhat likethose of the same tree, two grains of coffee being enclosed in one berry."
At Cape Horn, "an island rounded like an oven, after which it takes its name (ornos, oven)," they were followed by Cape-pigeons and albatrosses of every color. At Valparaiso they remained ten days, and enjoyed large strawberries in November. The last of January, 1847, they entered Monterey Bay, and saw live-oaks and low adobe houses, with red-tiled roofs, amid dark pine-trees.
The camp was soon established, and some of their six months' provisions hauled up the hillside in the old Mexican carts with wooden wheels, "drawn by two or three pairs of oxen yoked by the horns."
They brought a saw-mill and a grist-mill with them to the new country. Living was cheap, as cattle cost but eight dollars and fifty cents for the best, or about two cents a pound.
Sherman soon met Colonel Frémont, afterwards a candidate for the Presidency, General Kearney, and other officers noted in those early days of California. San Francisco was called Yerba Buena, and Sherman felt almost insulted when asked if he wished to invest money in land "in such a horrid place as Yerba Buena."
The best houses were single-story adobes; the population was about four hundred, mostly Kanakas, natives of the Hawaiian Islands.
Sherman spent much time in hunting deer and bear in the mountains back of the Carmel Mission, and could often in a single day load a pack-mule with the geese and ducks which he had shot. These geese would appear in profusion as soon as the fall rains caused the young oats to come up.
"The seasons in California," he writes, "are wellmarked. About October and November the rains begin, and the whole country, plains and mountains, becomes covered with a bright green grass, with endless flowers. The intervals between the rains give the finest weather possible. These rains are less frequent in March, and cease altogether in April and May, when gradually the grass dies and the whole aspect of things changes, first to yellow, then to brown, and by midsummer all is burnt up, and dry as an ash-leaf."
The "gold-fever" broke out in the spring of 1848. Thomas Marshall found some placer-gold fifteen miles above Mormon Island, in the bed of the American Fork of the Sacramento River. He had worked for Captain Sutter in his saw-mills, and seeing this gold in the tailrace of the saw-mill, tried at first to keep it a secret, after telling Sutter; but others soon found the yellow metal, and not only California, but the whole civilized world, was excited over the discovery.
Sutter's saw and grist mills soon went to decay. Men earned fifty, a hundred, and sometimes thousands of dollars a day, if they found a "pocket" of gold. Prices became fabulous. Flour and bacon and other eatables sold for a dollar a pound. A meal usually cost three dollars. Miners slept at night on the ground. All day they worked in cold water in the river-beds, their clothes wet; but no complaints were heard.
Soldiers deserted from the coast to join the gold-diggers. At one time six hundred ships were anchored at San Francisco, and could not get away for lack of crews. Sherman and his officers were obliged to pay three hundred dollars a month for a servant, or go without, as their own pay was but seventy dollars a month. Often they did their own work. Sherman cooked, and LieutenantOrd cleaned the dishes, but "was deposed as a scullion because he would only wipe the tin plates with a tuft of grass, according to the custom of the country," says Sherman; "whereas, Warner insisted on having them washed after each meal with hot water. Warner was, in consequence, promoted to scullion, and Ord become the hostler."
Twice Sherman and some other officers visited the mines, being obliged to cross the Sacramento River in an Indian dug-out canoe. The unwilling horses and mules were driven into the water, following the one led by the man in the canoe. When across, several of the frightened creatures escaped into the woods, where they were recovered and brought back by the Indians.
The winter of 1848-49 was a serious one to the thousands of homeless men and women who had come to seek their fortunes in the mountains. The president had made the gold-finding the subject of a special message to Congress, and emigrants were pouring into California by land and by sea. Of course there was much hardship, much disregard of law, and extremes of poverty and wealth.
The winter of 1849-50 only deepened the distress. In crossing the plains and mountains many animals of the emigrants perished, and they themselves lacked food. One hundred thousand dollars were used to buy flour, bacon, etc., for these people, and men and mules were sent out by General Persifer F. Smith to meet and relieve them. In San Francisco, after the long rains, Sherman says: "I have seen mules stumble in the streets and drown in the liquid mud. Montgomery Street had been filled up with brush and clay, and I always dreaded to ride on horseback along it, because the mud was so deep that a horse's legs would become entangled in the brushesbelow, and the rider was likely to be thrown, and drown in the mud."
A room twenty by sixty feet for a store or gambling-saloon rented for a thousand dollars a month. Sherman took a share in a store, and thereby made fifteen hundred dollars, which helped him to live with these exorbitant prices. Later he made about six thousand dollars in three lots in Sacramento.
He returned East in January, 1850, on a leave of absence for six months. His comrades had fought great battles in Mexico, which he had not been able to share. "I thought it the last and only chance in my day," he writes, "and that my career as a soldier was at an end."
He visited his mother, then living at Mansfield, Ohio, and on the 1st of May, 1850, married, after an engagement of some years, Miss Ellen Boyle Ewing, daughter of the man who had adopted him in his childhood. Mr. Ewing was then Secretary of the Interior, and, of course, the wedding, on Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington, was a brilliant one. President Taylor and his cabinet, Daniel Webster, Henry Clay, and other leaders were present. In the fall of 1851 Sherman was made a captain in the Commissary Department, and ordered to St. Louis. The following year he was sent to New Orleans, to which city Mrs. Sherman went with her two children.
Seeing little prospect of advancement in the army, in 1853 Captain Sherman resigned his position, and became manager of a bank in San Francisco, a branch of a house in St. Louis.
On his way to California, when near the Pacific coast, the ship Lewis struck on a reef, and all came near losing their lives. Sherman, with his usual mastery over circumstances, sat on the hurricane deck with thecaptain, and while others prayed, or called for help, waited calmly, and was among the last to leave the ship. When all were safely on the beach, he scrambled up the bluff, and finally saw a schooner loaded with lumber, on which he asked a passage to the city of San Francisco, that he might send help to the wrecked.
This schooner capsized, and Sherman found himself in the water, mixed up with planks and ropes, steadily drifting out to sea. He was finally picked up by a boat, and as soon as possible he sent two steamers to the relief of the passengers of the Lewis, which went to pieces the night after they got off.
In the unsettled state of the country, the bank did not prove a success, and was closed May 1, 1857. Mrs. Sherman and her three children, Minnie, Lizzie, and Willie, returned to Lancaster, Ohio.
For a time Sherman became agent in New York for the St. Louis house; but the latter failing in the financial disturbances of the country, his business ventures seemed at an end, and Sherman returned to Lancaster, July 28, 1858.
"I was then perfectly unhampered," he says, "but the serious and greater question remained, what was I to do to support my family, consisting of a wife and four children, all accustomed to more than the average comforts of life?"
Like General Grant, he had resigned from the regular army that he might earn enough to support his family. Banking had been no more successful than Grant's leather business.
Two sons of Mr. Ewing had gone to Leavenworth, Kansas, where they had bought some land, and opened a law office. They offered Sherman a partnership, as hehad read law considerably. He accepted the position, but soon found that he did not earn money enough, so began to manage a farm, forty miles west of Leavenworth, for his father-in-law.
This not proving more remunerative than Grant's farming, he offered himself to the army again in 1859, feeling, that a sure, though small, amount was better for his family than the uncertainties of business. He was soon appointed the superintendent of a military college about to be organized at Alexandria, Louisiana.
This position did not prove an easy one. The building was a large and handsome one in the midst of four hundred acres of pine-land, but there was not a table, chair, or black-board ready for beginning. Sherman immediately engaged some carpenters, and went to work with his usual energy.
Meantime, the slavery question bade fair to rend the Union asunder. South Carolina seceded Dec. 20, 1860, and Mississippi soon after. In the middle of January, 1861, Sherman wrote to the Governor of the State: "If Louisiana withdraw from the Federal Union, I prefer to maintain my allegiance to the Constitution as long as a fragment of it survives.... I beg you to take immediate steps to relieve me as superintendent, the moment the State determines to secede, for on no earthly account will I do any act or think any thought hostile to, or in defiance of, the old Government of the United States."
Sherman soon came North and visited his brother, Senator John Sherman. Both called upon Lincoln, and the President asked the soldier "how the people of the South were getting along." "They think," was the reply of Sherman, "they are getting along swimmingly—they are preparing for war."
"Oh, well!" said Lincoln, "I guess we'll manage to keep house."
April 1, through the influence of friends, Sherman was made President of the Fifth Street Railroad, in St. Louis, at a salary of twenty-five hundred dollars a year, and moved his family thither. Five days later, and six days before the attack on Sumter, April 12, 1861, he was asked to accept the chief clerkship of the War Department, with the promise that, when Congress met, he should be made Assistant Secretary of War. This offer he declined, as he had already moved his family to St. Louis, and did not feel at liberty to change his position.
He wrote later to Simon Cameron, Secretary of War, that he would not volunteer forthree months, "Because," said he, "I cannot throw my family on the cold charity of the world," but for athree-years' call, good service might be done. He was appointed Colonel of the Thirteenth Regular Infantry, May 14, 1861, and again his family returned to Lancaster, Ohio.
The war feeling had been greatly intensified at the North by the death of Colonel E. Elmer Ellsworth, a young man of twenty-four, who had organized a body of Zouaves in Chicago, and had escorted President Lincoln to Washington. On May 24, when the Union forces crossed into Virginia, Ellsworth's Zouaves occupied Alexandria. A part of the troops were proceeding towards the centre of the town, when they saw a secession flag flying from the Marshall House.
Ellsworth ascended to the roof and pulled it down. The hotel keeper, James T. Jackson, shot him through the heart, and attempted to shoot Private Francis E. Brownell, who was with Ellsworth. Brownell at once shot Jackson through the head.
Brownell died at Washington, D.C., March 15, 1894.
The body of Colonel Ellsworth lay in state in the East Room of the White House for several hours. President Lincoln, and indeed the whole North, were deeply affected by his death.
Mr. Lincoln soon called for four hundred thousand men and four hundred million dollars, to carry on the war. Two Confederate armies were already before Washington; one at Manassas Junction under General Beauregard, the other at Winchester under General Joseph E. Johnston.
General Irvin S. McDowell, aged forty-three, of the Mexican War soldiers, had command of the Union forces, and Sherman held a brigade under him. The battle of Bull Run, or Manassas, was fought Sunday, July 21, with a loss on our side of 2,896, and on the Confederate of 1,982. Over thirty thousand men were in each army.
General John D. Imboden, in vol. 1 of that most interesting and valuable series, "Battles and Leaders of the Civil War," edited by Messrs. Johnson and Buel, tells the following incident of "Stonewall" Jackson in this battle. He had been wounded in the hand, but paid no attention to it, binding it up with his handkerchief, saying, "Only a scratch, a mere scratch," and galloped along his line. Three days later General Imboden found him at a little farm-house near Centreville. Jackson was bathing his hand at sunrise, in spring water. It was swollen and very painful. Mrs. Jackson had already come to him. "General," said Imboden, "how is it that you can keep so cool, and appear so utterly insensible to danger, in such a storm of shell and bullets as rained about you when your hand was hit?" referring to the Bull Run battle.
"Captain," he said, "my religious belief teaches me tofeel as safe in battle as in bed. God has fixed the time for my death. I do not concern myself aboutthat, but to be always ready, no matter when it may overtake me." After a pause, he said, "Captain, that is the one way all men should live, and then all would be equally brave."
Imboden apologized for the use of profanity on the battle-field, and Jackson simply remarked, "Nothing can justify profanity."
The men idolized Jackson, in part because he almost always succeeded. They trusted him without questioning. "Where are you going?" was once asked of some of his troops.
"We don't know," was the reply, "but old Jack does."
"It is now generally admitted," says Sherman, "that it [the Battle of Bull Bun] was one of the best planned battles of the war, but one of the worst fought.... Nearly all of us for the first time then heard the sound of cannon and muskets in anger, and saw the bloody scenes common to all battles, with which we were soon familiar. We had good organization, good men, but no cohesion, no real discipline, no respect for authority, no real knowledge of war. Both armies were fairly defeated, and whichever had stood fast, the other would have run."
Though the Union army retreated in great disorder, and the North was saddened thereby, Sherman and some others were made brigadier-generals for their bravery.
President Lincoln and Seward came to the Union camps soon after the battle. Lincoln said, in his homely fashion, "We heard that you had got over the big scare, and we thought we would come over and see the 'boys.'"
He stood up in the carriage and made a most feeling address, telling them how much devolved upon them, and how all looked for brighter days. When they began tocheer, he said, "Don't cheer, boys. I confess, I rather like it myself; but Colonel Sherman here says it is not military, and I guess we had better defer to his opinion."
A little later an officer who had attempted to go to New York without leave, and whom Sherman had threatened to shoot if he deserted at that critical time, approached the President, saying that he had a grievance, and that Colonel Sherman had threatened to shoot him.
With that rare good sense for which Lincoln was famous, and knowing that his leaders must be supported in authority, he bent over toward the aggrieved officer, and said in a loud whisper, "Well, if I were you, and he threatened to shoot, I would not trust him, for I believe he would do it." Sherman afterwards thanked the President for his confidence.
Soon after this General Sherman was assigned to the department of the Cumberland, under General Robert Anderson, formerly at Fort Sumter. Anderson's health failing, Sherman soon took his place. Mr. Cameron, Secretary of War, having a consultation with Sherman, the latter complained that he had only eighteen thousand men, whereas two hundred thousand men were needed to destroy all the opposition in the Mississippi Valley.
It soon came out in the papers that Sherman was "crazy," as at that time the North seemed to have no adequate idea of the immensity of the work in hand. The succeeding years proved that Sherman was right in his estimate of the power and purpose of the South in its war against the Union.
Sherman was relieved by General Buell, and the "insane" general was ordered to take charge of a Camp of Instruction. Hurt by the cruel charge, he still performedhis duties "for a country and government," as he said, "worth fighting for, and dying for if need be."
Early in 1862 Grant had won some great victories at Forts Henry and Donelson, on the Tennessee and Cumberland Rivers. The latter fort, under General Buckner, surrendered Feb. 16, with sixty-five guns, seventeen thousand six hundred small arms, and nearly fifteen thousand troops.
Major-General Grant was now commanding the Army of the Tennessee under Halleck, and Sherman was assigned to a division under Grant. The latter held about the same "crazy" idea that Sherman held,—that the Southerners were hard and brave fighters, and would never surrender till forced to it through exhaustion of men and money.
The next great battle was at Shiloh, or Pittsburg Landing, begun by the Confederates Sunday, April 6, 1862, and lasting two days. The first day our men were driven back a mile with heavy loss. General Albert Sidney Johnston, the commander-in-chief of the Confederates, was struck about 2P.M.by a minie-ball in the calf of the leg, which penetrated the boot and severed the main artery. His horse was shot in four places. He would not leave the field till compelled by loss of blood, and died soon after.
Dr. D. W. Yandell, who had been with Johnston, left him to establish a hospital for the wounded, among them many Federals. "These men were our enemies a moment ago," said Johnston; "they are our prisoners now. Take care of them." Had Yandell remained with him, his life would probably have been saved, as the wound would have been attended to.
"During the whole of Sunday," says Grant, "I wascontinually engaged in passing from one part of the field to another, giving directions to division commanders. In thus moving along the line, I never deemed it important to stay long with Sherman. Although his troops were then under fire for the first time, their commander, by his constant presence with them, inspired a confidence in officers and men that enabled them to render services on that bloody battle-field worthy of the best of veterans.
"A casualty to Sherman that would have taken him from the field that day would have been a sad one for the troops engaged at Shiloh. And how near we came to this! On the 6th, Sherman was shot twice—once in the hand, once in the shoulder, the ball cutting his coat and making a slight wound, and a third ball passed through his hat. In addition to this, he had several horses shot during the day."
Later, Colonel James B. McPherson's horse was shot quite through, just back of the saddle, but the poor creature carried his rider out of danger before he dropped dead.
Both armies slept on their arms that night in a pouring rain, and the next morning, April 7, renewed the fight, with a hard won victory for the Union forces. So dreadful was the conflict that Grant writes, "I saw an open field, in our possession on the second day, over which the Confederates had made repeated charges the day before, so covered with dead that it would have been possible to walk across the clearing in any direction, stepping on dead bodies, without a foot touching the ground.... On one part, which had evidently not been ploughed for several years, probably because the land was poor, bushes had grown up, some to the height ofeight or ten feet. There was not one of these left standing unpierced by bullets. The smaller ones were all cut down."
Our loss in killed, wounded, and missing was 13,573; the Confederates reported their loss as 10,699, but General Grant thinks it was much greater.
The battle had been bravely and desperately fought on both sides. About five hundred yards east of Shiloh meeting-house there had been a deadly combat. Several times cartridges gave out; but Sherman appealed to the regiments to "stand fast," as their retiring would have a bad effect on others, and the men heroically kept their posts. Sherman's division lost over two thousand men.
Grant said, in his official report, "I feel it a duty to a gallant and able officer, Brigadier-General W. T. Sherman, to make mention that he was not only with his command during the entire two days of action, but displayed great judgment and skill in the management of his men."
Halleck said, "Sherman saved the fortunes of the day on the 6th, and contributed largely to the glorious victory on the 7th."
When on the 8th it was found that the enemy had retreated, "leaving killed, wounded, and much property by the way," says Sherman, "we all experienced a feeling of relief. The struggle had been so long, so desperate and bloody, that the survivors seemed exhausted and nerveless. We appreciated the value of the victory, but realized also its great cost of life."
Sherman was promoted to the position of major-general May 1. During June and July he was "building railroad-trestles and bridges, fighting off cavalry detachments coming from the South, and waging an everlasting quarrel with planters about the negroes and fences, theytrying, in the midst of moving armies, to raise a crop of corn."
The desire now was to get complete possession of the Mississippi River. Admiral Farragut had taken New Orleans, after the dreadful passage of Forts Jackson and St. Philip. The brave old admiral had said, "If I die in the attempt, it will only be what every officer has to expect. He who dies in doing his duty to his country, and at peace with his God, has played the drama of life to the best advantage."
With his six sloops-of-war, sixteen gunboats, twenty-one schooners, and five other vessels, forty-eight in all, carrying two hundred guns, all led by the Hartford, Farragut pushed his way through a sea of fire. Five fire-rafts—flat boats, filled with dry wood smeared with tar and turpentine—blazed among his ships, while shot and shell strewed his decks with the dead; but he cut his way to victory, and won immortal honor.
Memphis had been captured by our gunboats and rams, under Admiral Davis, June 6. Of the eight Confederate gunboats in the flotilla, three, the Lovell, Beauregard, and Thompson, were destroyed by our vessels; four were captured and repaired for our use; while one, the Van Dorn, escaped. Five transports and some cotton were taken, and a large ram and two tugs on the stocks were destroyed.
Sherman was ordered to go to Memphis to take command of the district of West Tennessee. When he entered the city, the stores, churches, and schools were closed. He caused these and the places of amusement to be opened, and put the fugitive slaves to work on the fortifications, and gave them food and clothing.
The story is told of an Episcopal clergyman who cameto Sherman, saying that he was embarrassed about his prayer for the President.
"Whom do you regard as President?" said Sherman.
"Mr. Davis," was his reply.
"Very well; pray for Jeff Davis if you wish. He needs your prayers badly. It will take a great deal of praying to save him."
"Then I will not be compelled to pray for Mr. Lincoln?"
"Oh, no. He is a good man, and don't need your prayers. You may pray for him if you feel like it, but there's no compulsion."
To some of the editors in Memphis, Sherman said, "If I find the press of Memphis actuated by high principle and a sole devotion to their country, I will be their best friend; but if I find them personal, abusive, dealing in innuendoes and hints at a blind venture, and looking to their own selfish aggrandizement and fame, then they had better look out; for I regard such persons as greater enemies to their country and to mankind than the men who, from a mistaken sense of State pride, have taken up muskets, and fight us about as hard as we care about."
Sherman went to theArgusoffice one day, and, in his familiar manner, said to the young editors, as he sat down and rested his feet on the table: "Boys, I have been ordered to suppress your paper, but I don't like to do that. I just dropped in to warn you not to be so free with your pencils. If you don't ease up, you'll get into trouble."
When some complained of the acts of the soldiers, Sherman replied that he knew of several instances where their conduct had been provoked by sneering remarks about "Northern barbarians" and "Lincoln's hirelings.""People who use such language," he said, "must seek redress through some one else, for I will not tolerate insults to our country or cause."
All sorts of ruses were adopted by the Southern army to obtain things from Memphis. While General Van Dorn was at Holly Springs, he desired supplies for his men. Some of our soldiers found, in a farmer's barn, a large hearse with pall and plumes, which had been used at a big funeral. It was filled with medicines for Van Dorn's army! "It was a good trick," said Sherman, "but diminished our respect for such pageants afterward."
In December there was a concerted movement by Grant and Sherman to capture Vicksburg. The latter was to move down the river, and with Admiral Porter's gunboats, "proceed," said Grant, "to the reduction of that place in such manner as circumstances and your own judgment may dictate." Sherman was to make the attack by land, in the rear, while Porter attacked by river front. Three divisions of Sherman's army were landed in the low, marshy lands, cut by the Chickasaw Bayou and other creeks, where a slight rise in the Mississippi River would drown them all. The bluffs of Walnut Hills, on which Vicksburg stands, are two hundred feet high, and impregnable.
Against these the fearless troops were led Dec. 29, with great slaughter. De Courcy's brigade of Morgan's division, and Frank Blair's brigade of Steele's division, with the Fourth Iowa, were under the hottest fire. De Courcy lost 700, Blair 743, and the Fourth Iowa 111 men; the Confederate loss was only about 187.
Sherman says, "The men of the Sixth Missouri actually scooped out with their hands caves in the bank,which sheltered them against the fire of the enemy, who, right over their heads, held their muskets outside the parapet vertically, and fired down. So critical was the position, that we could not recall the men till after dark, and then one at a time. Our loss had been pretty heavy, and we had accomplished nothing."
It was evident that Vicksburg must be taken in some other manner. Grant decided to cut a canal across the peninsula opposite Vicksburg, that he might get below the city. All through January and February, Sherman's men were digging the canal, planned to be sixty feet wide and nine feet deep, and fighting off the Mississippi, which continued to rise, and threatened to drown them. When the men were not digging canals, they were clearing bayous, which were filled with cypress and cottonwood trees. Sometimes they marched at night through canebrakes, carrying lighted candles, Sherman walking with them, the water above his hips. The drummer-boys carried their drums on their heads, and the men slung their cartridge-boxes around their necks.
Admiral Porter, from his gunboats, used to send Sherman messages, written on tissue paper, concealed in a piece of tobacco. A negro carried them through the swamps.
Many weeks were spent on other canals, but all proved useless. Finally it was decided to move all the troops down the west bank of the river, cross over below Vicksburg, and attack it on the land side.
A series of battles followed at Port Gibson, Raymond, Jackson, Champion Hills, and Big Black. Grant had inflicted a loss upon the enemy during a few days of eight thousand in killed, wounded, and missing; had captured eighty-eight pieces of their artillery, and driven theminto their defences at Vicksburg. "We must go back to the campaigns of Napoleon," says Francis Vinton Greene, lieutenant of engineers, "to find equally brilliant results accompanied in the same space of time with such small loss."
In these days of carnage, incidents even amusing happened. While Sherman and his troops were at Jackson, a fat man came to him and hoped that his hotel would not be burned, as he was a law-abiding Union man. Sherman said that this fact was manifest from the sign on his hotel, where the words "United States" had been faintly painted out and "Confederate Hotel" painted over it!
On May 22 the last assault was made on Vicksburg; and, though severe and bloody, it was unsuccessful, on account of the strength of the position, and the earnest fighting of the garrison.
"I have since seen the position at Sevastopol," writes Sherman, "and without hesitation I declare that at Vicksburg to have been the more difficult of the two."
It was during this dreadful assault that the drummer boy, Orion P. Howe, came to Sherman, calling out in a childish voice that one of the regiments was out of ammunition, and must abandon its position unless relief was sent. The general looked down from his horse upon the lad, and saw the blood running from a wound in the leg.
"All right, my boy," said Sherman, "I'll send them all they need; but as you seem to be badly hurt, you had better go to the rear and find a surgeon and let him fix you up."
The boy saluted and started for the rear; but again he came running back, shouting, "General, calibrefifty-eight, calibre fifty-eight!" fearing that the wrong size might be sent, and prove useless. He was afterwards, through Sherman, appointed a cadet at the Naval Academy, Annapolis.
The siege of Vicksburg was begun at once. Mines were dug by both sides and exploded. Chief Engineer S. H. Lockett, of the Confederates, tells how a private suggested the firing of a wicker case filled with cotton, which protected the Federals in their sapping. He took a piece of port-fire, put it into cotton soaked with turpentine and fired it from an old-fashioned bore musket. The wicker case took fire and burned up. Barrels of powder, lighted by a time-fuse, were thrown into the ranks of the besiegers.
As the weeks went by, the provisions for the soldiers and citizens of Vicksburg were well-nigh consumed. They ate rats and mules. Flour was five dollars a pound. Some of the people built rooms in the yellow clay banks, and thus escaped the shells.
The soldiers grew desperate. General Pemberton hoped they could cut their way out, and caused boats to be made out of some of the houses,—they planned to make two thousand,—which they could use in their escape down the river.
Finally, when all became hopeless, Pemberton said, "Far better would it be for me to die at the head of my army, even in a vain effort to force the enemy's lines, than to surrender it and live and meet the obloquy which I know will be heaped upon me. But my duty is to sacrifice myself to save the army which has so nobly done its duty to defend Vicksburg."
July 4, 1863, Pemberton surrendered his garrison of over thirty-one thousand men, sixty thousand muskets, and over one hundred and seventy cannon.
Grant said of Sherman, "His untiring energy and great efficiency during the campaign entitled him to a full share of all the credit due for its success. He could not have done more if the plan had been his own."
Before sunset of July 4, Sherman, with fifty thousand men, was in pursuit of Johnston, who had been trying to aid Pemberton. Johnston marched rapidly, driving all cattle, hogs, and sheep into the ponds, and shooting them, so that they should not furnish food for the Federals, and also to spoil the water. Johnston made a stand at Jackson, but soon evacuated the place.
For bravery and success in this campaign, Grant was made major-general in the regular army, the highest grade then allowed by law, and Sherman and McPherson brigadier-generals in the regular army.
After the fall of Vicksburg, Sherman's family, Mrs. Sherman, Minnie, Lizzie, Willie, and Tom, came from Ohio to visit him. Willie was nine years old, fond of the parade of war, and was made a "sergeant" in the regular battalion. He became ill in the low marshy country, and died of typhoid fever, just after the family reached the Gayoso Hotel in Memphis.
This death was a great blow to Sherman, as he showed in a letter which he wrote to Captain C. C. Smith, commanding Battalion Thirteenth United States Regulars: "I cannot sleep to-night till I record an expression of the deep feelings of my heart to you, and to the officers and soldiers of the battalion, for their kind behavior to my poor child.... The child that bore my name, and in whose future I reposed with more confidence than I did in my own plan of life, now being carried by steamer a mere corpse, seeking a grave in a distant land, with a weeping mother, brother, and sisters clusteredabout him. For myself I ask no sympathy. On, on I must go, to meet a soldier's fate, or live to see our country rise superior to all factions, till its flag is adored and respected by ourselves and by all the powers of the earth....
"Child as he was, he had the enthusiasm, the pure love of truth, honor, and love of country, which should animate all soldiers.... Assure each and all, if in after years they call on me or mine, and mention that they were of the Thirteenth Regulars when Willie was a sergeant, they will have a key to the affections of my family that will open all it has; that we will share with them our last blanket, our last crust!"
In the spring of 1867, Willie's body was removed from Lancaster, Ohio, to St. Louis, and buried by the side of another child, Charles, born in 1864. Sherman's officers and men erected a beautiful monument to Willie, and had inscribed on it, "Our little Sergeant Willie, from the First Battalion Thirteenth United States Infantry."
After the dreadful battle of Chickamauga, Ga., Sept. 20, 1863, in which we lost 15,851 men, and the Confederates 17,804, Grant went to Chattanooga to retrieve that disaster. In this battle Thomas, "who," says General Fullerton, "never retreated and had never been defeated," so wonderfully held his ground that he was ever afterwards called the "Rock of Chickamauga."
"With but twenty-five thousand men," said General Garfield, "formed in a semicircle, of which he himself was the centre and soul, he successfully resisted for more than five hours the repeated assaults of an army of sixty-five thousand men, flushed with victory and bent on his annihilation.
"Towards the close of the day his ammunition beganto fail. One by one of his division commanders reported but ten rounds, five rounds, and two rounds left. The calm, quiet answer was returned, 'Save your fire for close quarters, and when your last shot is fired give them the bayonet.
"On a portion of this line the last assault was repelled by the bayonet, and several hundred rebels were captured. When night had closed over the combatants, the last sound of battle was the booming of Thomas's shells bursting among his baffled and retreating assailants."
Grant telegraphed to Thomas to hold Chattanooga at all hazards; and Thomas, with his troops on less than half rations for the past month, replied, "We will hold the town till we starve." He urged Sherman to come at once. Then followed those memorable battles of Lookout Mountain, when Hooker fought his "Battle above the clouds," and Missionary Ridge, when Wood's and Sheridan's divisions under Thomas lost in one hour's storming 2,287 men.
"Sherman was fighting the heavy column of the enemy on our left," said General Henry M. Cist, "and the main part of the battle had been his share." He lost about two thousand men.
At three o'clock the first rifle-pits on the ridge were to be carried, and there they were to halt to await orders. There was some delay, so that the order was not given till half-past three, when the guns sounded, one, two, up to six, for the charge.
The enemy had four lines of breastworks, but one had been captured by Thomas the day before. Three rifle-pits remained. As our men approached, cheering, and breaking into a double-quick, the enemy poured upon them shot and shell from their batteries, changing itsoon to grape and canister, with a terrific fire of musketry.
"Dashing through this over the open plain," says General Cist, "the soldiers of the army of the Cumberland swept on, driving the enemy's skirmishers, charging down on the line of works at the foot of the ridge, capturing it at the point of the bayonet, and routing the rebels, sending them at full speed up the ridge, killing and capturing them in large numbers. These rifle-pits were reached simultaneously by the several commands, when the troops, in compliance with their instructions, lay down at the foot of the ridge awaiting further orders."
Here they waited under a hot fire. The orders did not come; and then without orders, first one regiment and then another, with their colors raised, pushed up the mountain covered with rocks and fallen timber.
The centre of Sheridan's division reached the crest first, and almost at the same time the ridge was carried in six places. Almost entire regiments were taken from the enemy, and batteries, the Confederates often bayoneted at their guns. In an hour the work had been accomplished, and the storming of Missionary Ridge had passed into history as a memorable instance of bravery. "After it was over," says General Fullerton, "some madly shouted, some wept from very excess of joy, some grotesquely danced out their delight,—even our wounded forgot their pain to join in the general hurrah."
Grant and Thomas were watching the battle through their glasses. Grant asked, "By whose orders are those troops going up the hill?"
"I don't know," said Thomas, "I did not."
"I didn't order them up," said Sheridan, "but we are going to take the ridge."
Grant remarked that "it was all right if it turned out all right, but, if not, some one would suffer."
By the capture of the ridge, Sherman was enabled to take the tunnel as he had been ordered. Captain S. H. M. Byers, who was captured at the tunnel with sixty of his regiment and put in Libby prison for seven months—the sixty were soon reduced to sixteen by death—thus describes the scene. "As the column came out upon the ground, and in sight of the rebel batteries, their renewed and concentrated fire knocked the limbs from the trees above our heads.... In front of us was a rail-fence. 'Jump the fence, boys,' was the order, and never was a fence scaled more quickly. It was nearly half a mile to the rebel position, and we started on the charge, running across the open fields. I had heard the roaring of heavy battle before, but never such shrieking of cannon balls and bursting of shells as met us on that run."
Sherman, in his official report, gave his officers and men due credit for their "patience, cheerfulness, and courage." "For long periods," he said, "without regular rations or supplies of any kind, they have marched through mud and over rocks, sometimes barefooted, without a murmur. Without a moment's rest after a march of over four hundred miles, without sleep for three successive nights, we crossed the Tennessee, fought our part of the battle of Chattanooga, pursued the enemy out of Tennessee, and then turned more than a hundred and twenty miles north, and compelled Longstreet to raise the siege of Knoxville."
Congress soon passed a resolution of thanks toSherman and his army for their "gallant and arduous services in marching to the relief of the Army of the Cumberland, and for their gallantry and heroism in the battle of Chattanooga, which contributed in a great degree to the success of our arms in that glorious victory."
The grade of lieutenant-general was now revived in the army, and bestowed upon Grant. He wrote Sherman at once to "express my thanks to you and McPherson, asthe mento whom, above all others, I feel indebted for whatever I have had of success. How far your advice and suggestions have been of assistance, you know. How far your execution of whatever has been given you to do entitles you to the reward I am receiving, you cannot know as well as I do."
And Sherman wrote back: "I believe you as brave, patriotic, and just as the great prototype Washington; as unselfish, kind-hearted, and honest as a man should be; but the chief characteristic in your nature is the simple faith in success you have always manifested, which I can liken to nothing else than the faith a Christian has in his Saviour.
"This faith gave you victory at Shiloh and Vicksburg. Also, when you have completed your best preparations, you go into battle without hesitation, as at Chattanooga—no doubts, no reserve; and I tell you that it was this that made us act with confidence. I knew, wherever I was, that you thought of me, and if I got in a tight place you would come—if alive."
Sherman at this time was put in command of the military division of the Mississippi, with Schofield, Thomas, McPherson, and Steele under him. Grant was to conquer Robert E. Lee and his large army at the East; and Sherman, Joseph E. Johnston's army at the West and South.
Supplies were at once gathered by Sherman at Chattanooga for one hundred thousand men, which would necessitate one hundred and thirty cars, of ten tons each, to reach that city daily. Confederate raids under Forrest and others were frequent; but, as in the case of Grant, nothing could deter Sherman.
On May 5, 1864, the great army started for Atlanta, Ga., prepared to fight its way. The men fought bravely at Resaca, at Allatoona Pass, and elsewhere.
During the month of May, Sherman had advanced his army, as he says, "nearly a hundred miles of as difficult a country as was ever fought over by civilized armies. The fighting was continuous, almost daily, among trees and bushes, on ground where we could rarely see a hundred yards ahead." Sherman had lost 9,299 men; nearly two thousand in killed and missing, and over seven thousand wounded. The enemy's loss was a little over half that number.
From June 10 to July 3 an almost constant battle was waged about Kenesaw Mountain, with a loss on our side of nearly eight thousand, and the Confederate loss considerably less.
An amusing remark came to Sherman's ear at Kenesaw. One of the Confederate soldiers said to another, "Well, the Yanks will have to git up and git now, for I heard General Johnston himself say that General Wheeler had blown up thetunnelnear Dalton, and that the Yanks would have to retreat, because they could get no more rations."
"Oh," said the listener, "don't you know that old Sherman carries aduplicatetunnel along?"
The enemy were constantly driven back towards Atlanta. On July 22 a bloody battle was fought nearAtlanta, usually called the Battle of Atlanta, in which the brave General McPherson was killed in the hottest of the fight when passing from one column to another. He rode into a wood, and soon his horse returned, wounded, bleeding, and riderless. His body was recovered, with his gauntlets on and boots outside his pantaloons, but his pocket-book with his papers was gone. The spot where he fell was soon retaken by our men, and the pocket-book and its contents were found in the haversack of a prisoner of war, captured at the time.
McPherson was only thirty-four years old, over six feet high, universally beloved, and apparently destined for a great future. Sherman could not look long upon the body. "Better start at once, and drive carefully," said the bluff but tender-hearted general to McPherson's staff, as he covered the body with the flag. It was taken home to Clyde, Ohio, where it was received with great honor, and buried near his mother's house in a small cemetery, part of which is the family orchard where he played when a boy.
General John A. Logan took the command after the death of McPherson, and fought bravely. The attack was made upon his line seven times, and seven times repulsed.
Sherman was often in extreme danger. Once, when he, Logan, and a few others were talking together, a minie-ball passed through Logan's coat-sleeve, scratching the skin, and struck Colonel Taylor in the breast. A memorandum-book saved his life. At another time a cannon-ball passed over Sherman's shoulder and killed the horse of an orderly behind. Another ball took off the head of a negro close by Sherman.
The month of July was an extremely hot one, but thesoldiers had been in almost constant conflict. Our loss in that month was about ten thousand men, and that of the enemy perhaps greater by a few hundreds.
Sherman's men tore up railroad-tracks, made bonfires of the ties, wrapped the heated rails round trees and telegraph poles, and left them to cool,—such rails could not be used again,—and filled up deep cuts with trees, brush, and earth, commingled with loaded shells, so arranged that they would explode if disturbed. Thus the devastation of war went on.
Atlanta was full of foundries, arsenals, and machine-shops, and was called the "Gate City of the South." "I knew that its capture," says Sherman, "would be the death-knell of the Southern Confederacy."
Sept. 2 Atlanta could bear the Federal guns no longer, was evacuated by the enemy, and our troops marched into the city with great rejoicing. The losses during these four months had been over thirty thousand on each side.
President Lincoln wrote to Sherman: "The marches, battles, sieges, and other military operations, that have signalized the campaign, must render it famous in the annals of the war, and have entitled those who have participated therein to the applause and thanks of the nation."
Grant wrote from City Point, Va., "In honor of your great victory, I have ordered a salute to be fired withshottedguns from every battery bearing on the enemy.... I feel that you have accomplished the most gigantic undertaking given to any general in this war."
Sherman at once required all the citizens and families resident in Atlanta to leave the city and go North or South as they chose, with a reasonable amount offurniture and bedding. This order was denounced by Hood, who had relieved Johnston, as unprecedented and cruel. A bitter correspondence took place, in which Sherman said, "War is cruelty, and you cannot refine it.... You might as well appeal against the thunder-storms as against these terrible hardships of war. They are inevitable; and the only way the people of Atlanta can hope once more to live in peace and quiet at home, is to stop the war, which can only be done by admitting that it began in error and is perpetuated in pride....