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CHAPTER X.

SCHUYLER COLFAX.

General William Colfax, Washington’s Friend—Mr. Colfax his Grandson—Mr. Colfax’s Birth and Boyhood—Removes to Indiana—Becomes Deputy County Auditor—Begins to Deal with Politics—Becomes an Editor—The Period of Maximum Debt—Mr. Colfax’s First Year—He is Burnt Out—His Subsequent Success as an Editor—His Political Career as a Whig—Joins the Republican Party—Popularity in his own District—The Nebraska Bill—Mr. Colfax goes into Congress—The Famous Contest for Speakership—Mr. Colfax Saves his Party from Defeat—Banks Chosen Speaker—Mr. Colfax’s Great Speech on the Bogus Laws of Kansas—The Ball and Chain for Free Speech—Mr. Colfax Shows the Ball, and A. H. Stephens Holds it for him—Mr. Colfax Renominated Unanimously—His Remarkable Success in his own District—Useful Labors in Post Office Committee—Early for Lincoln for President—Mr. Colfax urged for Post Master General—His Usefulness as Speaker—The Qualifications for that Post—Mr. Colfax’s Public Virtues.

GENERAL WILLIAM COLFAX, the grandfather of Hon. Schuyler Colfax, was a citizen of New Jersey, and was the commanding officer of Gen. Washington’s life guards throughout the Revolutionary War. His holding that very confidential and responsible post is sufficient evidence of his steadiness, sense, courage and discretion. It is a further testimonial to the same effect, that Gen. Colfax latterly became one of the most intimate personal friends of the great revolutionary chieftain. Gen. Colfax’s wife was Hester Schuyler, a cousin of Gen. Philip Schuyler.

General Colfax’s son, Schuyler Colfax, the father of the Speaker, was an officer of one of the New York city banks, and died four months before his son was born.

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Schuyler Colfax was born in New York city, March 23, 1823, and was the only son of his widowed mother. He was taught in the common schools of the city—finished his education at the high school then standing in Crosby St., and at ten years had received all the school training he ever had. He now became a clerk in a store, and after three years removed to Indiana with his mother and her second husband, a Mr. Matthews. They settled in St. Joseph County. Here the youth for four years again served as clerk in the village of New Carlisle. When 17 years old he was appointed deputy county auditor, and for the better fulfilment of his official duties, he now removed to the county town, South Bend, where he has lived ever since.

Like almost every western citizen of any activity of body and mind, young Colfax took practical hold of political matters about as soon as he could vote. He talked and thought, and began to print his views from time to time in the local newspaper of the place. His peculiar faculty of dealing fairly and at the same time pleasantly, with men of all sorts, his natural sobriety and sensibleness of opinion, and his power of stating things plainly and correctly, made him what may be called a natural newspaper man. He was employed during several sessions to report the proceedings of the State Senate for the Indianapolis Journal, and in this position made many friends, and gained a good reputation for political information and ability as a writer.

In 1845, he became proprietor and editor of the “Saint Joseph Valley Register,” the local paper of his

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town, South Bend. This was the beginning of his independent career, and if hope had been absent, the prospect would have looked meagre enough. He was a youth of just over twenty-one, and he had two hundred and fifty subscribers. But the youthful editor had hope, and what was far more important, remarkable tact and capacity for his laborious profession. By good fortune and perseverance, he was able to tide over the first dangerous crisis for a poor man who undertakes a large literary enterprise—the period of maximum debt, so fatal to new periodicals. This is a point like the darkest hour just before day, when the newspaper or magazine is very likely steadily gaining in reputation and even in circulation, but when the circulation has not quite reached the paying point, and the paper bills have been postponed to the latest possible moment, while the constant outgoes for paying the journeymen, and for the other weekly office expenses, have kept up their monotonous drain. With Mr. Colfax this period was at the end of the first year of his paper, when he owed $1,375. The concern gradually became productive, however. A few years afterwards the office was burned down, and the uninsured editor was left to begin his business over again. He did so, and has earned a very comfortable living by it, though he is by no means a rich man.

Besides paying well, the “Register,” as conducted by Mr. Colfax, is entitled to the much higher praise of having been a useful, interesting and a morally pure paper, always on the side of what is good and right in morals and in society. It has been, for instance, constantly in favor of temperance reform; and it has

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always avoided the masses of vile detail which so many papers of respectable position manage to distribute in families under pretence that they must give full news of police reports and criminal trials.

Mr. Colfax was a Whig as long as there was a Whig party, and at its death, like all its members of clear heads, progressive tendencies, and decided character, he joined the Republican party. Before the rise of this great new organization, however, he had already risen to considerable influence in the Whig party, and had held several positions of political trust. In 1848 he was a delegate to the convention which nominated Gen. Taylor, and was one of its secretaries. In 1849 he was a member of the convention which revised the constitution of the State of Indiana, having been chosen in a manner especially honorable to him personally, as his district was politically opposed to him. Mr. Colfax, in this convention, was considered a judicious legislator, a ready debater and a fine speaker. A little after this time he declined a nomination to the Indiana Senate, for the sufficient reason that he could not afford at that time to be absent from his business.

Mr. Colfax’s first nomination for Congress was in 1851, and he was beaten, though only by 200 majority, in a district strongly opposed to him in politics. His competitor was that Dr. Graham N. Fitch who was afterwards the congenial yokefellow of Mr. Bright in the U. S. Senate, on the side of the South, during Mr. Buchanan’s presidency. Mr. Colfax’s friends were of opinion, however, that the fatal 200 against him were illegal votes, imported by means of a certain railroad then constructing in those parts, and from

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among the laborers employed upon it. In 1852 he was a delegate to the Whig National Convention that nominated Gen. Scott, and as at the convention of 1848, was a secretary. He declined a second congressional nomination, and his district, which he had lost by only 200, was now lost by 1,000.

The Thirty-Third Congress, whose legal existence covered the period from Dec. 5, 1853, to March 3, 1855, Franklin Pierce being President, passed the Nebraska Bill. Upon this, the North, driven at last to the wall, turned short about in its career of surrender, and set itself to put a limit to the spread of slavery. The old established professional politicians of those days did not understand this crisis, and very many of them did not know anything about the change of public opinion—or rather of public intention—that was going on, until to their immense surprise and disgust, an anti-slavery-extension constituency that they knew not of, suddenly voted them out of their offices. Such a bat-eyed politician was Mr. Colfax’s own representative in Congress at this time. Even after having been elected as a Free Soil Democrat, and after undergoing a special season of argument and entreaty by his friends and neighbors during a visit home while the Nebraska Bill was pending, the short-sighted legislator went back and voted for it. He very quickly reaped his reward, however. Had he known enough to take the opportunity of doing right, he would have found out that for once it was the way to temporal success, for unquestionably he would have been re-elected, and assuredly Mr. Colfax would have done his best to re-elect him. As it was, the energetic editor was at

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once selected by the anti-Nebraska men of that region to take the lead in punishing the delinquent. He was unanimously chosen candidate for Congress, and after the candid and jolly western fashion, the two nominees went round the district, yoked together for combat, like those duelists who are tied together by their left wrists and wield their knives with their right hands. The result was, Mr. Colfax’s election by 2,000 majority, the previous majority of his competitor having been 1,000 the other way.

When the Thirty-Fourth Congress met, Dec. 3d, 1855, there was a majority opposed to the administration, but this opposition was of materials inharmonious among themselves. The anti-Nebraska members, properly so called, numbered about 108, the administration men, or Democrats, about 75, the third party, or “Know Nothing” men about 40; and there were few who could not be classified. Now, the anti-Nebraska men alone had twenty less than the necessary majority (128) out of the 234 members of the House; and if the Know Nothings and Democrats should effect a complete union, they could choose a Speaker. Whether they would do so was the principal question of the famous contest for the Speakership which now ensued, which lasted from Dec. 3, 1855, to Feb. 2, 1856, two full months, and which resulted in the election of Mr. Banks—the first formal national triumph of the national anti-slavery sentiment. Its importance might be overlooked, but it was great, and lay in this: that the Speaker has power to constitute the committees of the House—who prepare and in very great measure decide, all its business—just as he pleases.

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Accordingly, if he were a pro-slavery man, past experience gave full guarantee that those committees would be so formed as to effectually silence the voice of the anti-slavery sentiment of the House, and to bejuggle the whole of its legislation into an apparent and deceitful endorsement of the administration. To resist this dangerous and humiliating result, required, under the circumstances, a good deal of courage, both moral and physical, and powers of endurance almost equal to the extremities of a siege; but the resolute phalanx of the anti-slavery men, cheered daily by their consciences within, and the earnest and increasing applause of every friend of man without, fought the battle bravely through.

During the contest, Mr. Colfax, who was a steady and unflinching soldier on the right side, served his cause at one very critical moment. It was the end of the first month of the struggle. There had been sixty or seventy ballots, and for the last thirty or forty of them the votes had been just about the same; for Banks, anti-Nebraska, 103 to 106; Richardson, Democratic, 74 or 75; Fuller, Know Nothing, 37 to 41; and Pennington, a second anti-Nebraska candidate, 5 to 8. Various experiments had been tried to relieve the dead-lock. It had been suggested that the lowest candidate should be dropped at each vote, until one of the last two must be chosen; that after three ballots, the candidate having the most votes should be elected; and other plans were submitted, but all to no effect. About the end of December, Mr. Campbell, of Ohio, elected as an anti-Nebraska man, but of a sufficiently singular sort, either very unwise or very un-

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sound, offered a resolution that Mr. Orr of South Carolina, “be invited to preside temporarily until a Speaker be elected.” This extremely sly contrivance came within a hair-breadth of succeeding; for it looked like a mere amicable expedient to facilitate business, while it was in fact almost certain that once in, the subtle and energetic Orr, aided by the whole South, the Democrats, most of the Know Nothings, and perhaps some weak brethren of the anti-slavery opposition, would stay in. A motion to lay Campbell’s resolution on the table failed by a majority of twenty; it looked as if Orr would be really Speaker in five minutes. Mr. Colfax now rose in the very nick of time, and made a motion which irresistibly reminds us of the device with which Hushai confounded the wisdom of Ahithophel. It was an amendment proposing to put the three contending parties on a fair equality during the contest, by allowing each to elect a temporary chairman, and these three to preside alternately in the order they might themselves agree upon. On this motion debate arose; there was a recess before any vote was reached; and the dangerous plan for making Orr Speaker was staved off. By next morning, Campbell’s friends succeeded in inducing him to withdraw his resolution, and the contest settled back to its monotonous course of roll-calls and adjournments, until the final adoption of a plurality rule by the administration men, who, when they did it, thought it would help them, and the consequent election of Banks, at the 134^th ballot, February 2d, 1856, by 103 to 100 for Aiken. The Know Nothings

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nearly all went to the Democratic side when the real pinch came.

It was during this session—June 21, 1856,—that Mr. Colfax delivered his well known and powerful speech on the bogus ”Laws” of Kansas, imposed on that State by the fraud and violence of the pro-slavery ruffians of those days. This speech, a word-for-word quotation of clause after clause of this infamous code, accompanied with a plain, sober and calmly toned explanation of the same, produced a very great effect, and was considered so able a summary of the case involved, that during the Presidential campaign of that year, a half million of copies of it were distributed among the voters of the United States. By way of driving quite home the truths of the case, Mr. Colfax, where he quoted the clause which inflicted imprisonment at hard labor with ball and chain, upon any one who should ever say “that persons have not the right to hold slaves in this Territory,” lifted from his desk and showed to the House an iron ball of the statutory dimensions (viz., 6 inches diameter, weighing about 30 lbs., apologizing for not also exhibiting the six-foot chain prescribed along with it. Alexander H. Stephens, afterwards Vice President of the Rebels, who sat close by, asked to take this specimen of pro-slavery jewelry for freemen, and having tested its weight, would have returned it. But Mr. Colfax smilingly asked him to hold it for him until he was through speaking, and while the pro-slavery leader dandled the decoration proposed by his friends for men guilty of free speech, Mr. Colfax, in a few telling sentences, showed that Washington and Jefferson and Webster and Clay had

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said the words which would have harnessed them, a quaternion of convicts, into the chain-gang of the border ruffians.

The close of this weighty speech is here quoted, not merely for the noble tone of its assertion of lofty principles, but also for the sake of showing the opportune manner in which, by citing one of the departed great men of our land, he at once added to his argument the strength of a mighty name, did justice to a man much spoken against but many noble traits, and also illustrated a striking peculiarity of Mr. Colfax himself—the warmth, strength and unending persistency of his friendship. He closed as follows:

“As I look, sir, to the smiling valleys and fertile plains of Kansas, and witness there the sorrowful scenes of civil war, in which, when forbearance at last ceased to be a virtue, the Free State men of the Territory felt it necessary, deserted as they were by their Government, to defend their lives, their families, their property, and their hearthstones, the language of one of the noblest statesmen of the age, uttered six years ago at the other end of this Capitol, rises before my mind. I allude to the great statesman of Kentucky, Henry Clay. And while the party which, while he lived, lit the torch of slander at every avenue of his private life, and libeled him before the American people by every epithet that renders man infamous, as a gambler, debauchee, traitor, and enemy of his country, are now engaged in shedding fictitious tears over his grave, and appealing to his old supporters to aid by their votes in shielding them from the indignation of an uprisen people, I ask them to read this language

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of his, which comes to us as from his tomb to-day. With the change of but a single geographical word in the place of “Mexico,” how prophetically does it apply to the very scenes and issues of this year! And who can doubt with what party he would stand in the coming campaign, if he were restored to us from the damps of the grave, when they read the following, which fell from his lips in 1850, and with which, thanking the House for its attention, I conclude my remarks.

“But if, unhappily, we should be involved in war, in civil war, between the two parties of this Confederacy, in which the effort upon the one side should be to restrain the introduction of slavery into the new Territories, and upon the other side to force its introduction there, what a spectacle should we present to the astonishment of mankind, in an effort not to propagate rights, but—I must say it, though I trust it will be understood to be said with no design to excite feeling—a war to propagate wrongs in the Territories thus acquired from Mexico! It would be a war in which we should have no sympathies, no good wishes—in which all mankind would be against us; for, from the commencement of the Revolution down to the present time, we have constantly reproached our British ancestors for the introduction of slavery into this country,’”

Mr. Colfax’s constituents, extremely satisfied with his course and abilities, renominated him by acclamation while he was in Washington this year, and he was re-elected after the usual joint canvass, although the presidential election of that fall went against his party. That such would be the result, Mr. Colfax had confi-

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dently predicted, as a consequence of the third-party nomination of Mr. Fillmore. But he worked with none the less zeal for his principles and his party. He had breadth and soundness and clearness of view enough to sight along the rising plane of the successive anti-slavery votes of 1844, 1848, 1852, and 1856, and to see that the Party of Freedom and Right was the Party of the Future; and while doubtless he would have been just as steadfast in doing right if he had no hope of a right-doing government, yet the very best of men works with a more cheery strength when, to use the words of the story, he can “see the chips fly.” It was with sentiments of lofty resolution that he wrote, some months before the Republican nomination was made, and just after that of Mr. Fillmore; “Whether the Republican ticket shall be successful or defeated this year, the duty to support it, to proclaim and defend its principles, to arm the conscience of the nation, is none the less incumbent. The Republican movement is based on Justice and Right, consecrated to Freedom, commended by the teachings of our Revolutionary Fathers, and demanded by the extraordinary events of our recent history, and though its triumphs may be delayed, nothing is more certain.”

In 1858 Mr. Colfax was again nominated by acclamation, and re-elected by a triumphant majority, and so he has been in every election since, carrying his district against untiring and desperate and enormous efforts directed against him specially as a representative man, not merely by his local opponents, but by the whole forces of every kind which the party opposed to his could concentrate within his district.

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Such a series of political successes shows not only the power of the public speaker, and the discretion of the politician, but shows also a hearty and vigorous unity of noble thoughts between the constituency and the representative, and also a magnetic personal attractiveness which holds fast forever any friend once made. Mr. Colfax hath friends, because he hath showed himself friendly.

During the 36^th Congress, (December, 1859, to March, 1861,) Mr. Colfax was chairman of the Committee on Post Offices and Post Roads, and did much and useful work in keeping alive and healthy the somewhat unwieldy machinery of that important institution. He was in particular, successful in promoting the extension of mail facilities among the new mining communities in the Rocky Mountain gold fields, and in procuring the passage of the very important bills for the Daily Overland Mail, and for the Overland Telegraph to San Francisco, by way of Pike’s Peak and Utah.

It was a matter of course that Mr. Colfax should go with all his heart into the great struggle of 1860. He felt and understood with unusual earnestness and clearness the importance of the principles involved, and the hazards of the political campaign. Into a paragraph or two written some time before the Chicago nomination, he condensed a whole code of political wisdom, and can now be seen to have pointed out Abraham Lincoln as the best candidate, by describing the political availability and ethical soundness of the position Mr. Lincoln then occupied. He wrote:

“We differ somewhat from those ardent cotemporaries who demand the nomination of their favorite rep-

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resentative man, whether popular or unpopular, and who insist that this must be done, even if we are defeated. We do agree with them in declaring that we shall go for no man who does not prefer free labor and its extension, to slave labor and its extension,—who though mindful of the impartiality which should characterize the Executive of the whole Union, will not fail to rebuke all new plots for making the government the propagandist of slavery, and compel promptly and efficiently the suppression of that horrible slave-trade which the whole civilized world has banned as infamous, piratical and accursed. But in a Republican National Convention, if any man could be found, North, South, East or West, whose integrity, whose life, and whose avowals rendered him unquestionably safe on these questions, and yet who could yet poll one, two or three hundred thousand votes more than any one else, we believe it would be both wisdom and duty, patriotism and policy, to nominate him by acclamation and thus render the contest an assured success from its very opening. We hope to see 1860 realize the famed motto of Augustine—“In essentials unity, in non-essentials liberty, in all things charity.”

That is very broad and sound sense. It was in exact accordance with this doctrine and with these intimations as to who was the right man, that Mr. Lincoln was nominated, according to the desire of Mr. Colfax’s heart; and in the coming campaign in his own very important state of Indiana, he did most valuable service in assuring the victory.

Upon Mr. Lincoln’s election, a very powerful influence, made up of public sentiment, the efforts of

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newspapers, the urgent recommendations of governors and legislatures, and in particular of the Republican presidential electors, members of legislature, congressmen, and whole body of voters of Indiana, united to press upon the new President the appointment of Mr. Colfax to the office of Post Master General. Mr. Lincoln however had resolved to make Hon. C. B. Smith, of Indiana, Secretary of the Interior, and could give no other Cabinet place to that State. But as long as he lived, he loved and respected and trusted Mr. Colfax; and it is on record that “he rarely took any steps affecting the interests of the nation without making his intentions known to Mr. Colfax, in whose judgment he placed the utmost confidence.”

Continuing in Congress, Mr. Colfax served with efficient and patriotic fervor in his place, and in December, 1863, was chosen, and has since remained speaker. In this extremely responsible, important and laborious place, his official career has been openly visible to all men, while only those among whom he presides can competently appreciate the rare personal and acquired qualifications which he has so ably exercised—the even good temper, the exhaustless patience, the calm prompt presence of mind, the immense range of honest questions and sly quirks of parliamentary law which he must have at his tongue’s end; even the vigorous health and enduring physical frame which enable him to sit through session after session, day after day, without losing his readiness or decisiveness of thought and action.

He has, however, maintained and even increased his reputation as a wise and just legislator, a most useful

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public servant, a shrewd and kindly chairman, and a skillful parliamentarian. His duties have not been in their nature so brilliant as the deeds of our great commanders by land or by sea; nor so prominent even as the labors of some civilian officials; but they have been such as to require the greatest and most solid and useful of the civic virtues, courage, integrity, forethought, justice, and steady inexhaustible industry.

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CHAPTER XI.

EDWIN M. STANTON.

Rebel Advantages at Opening of War—They knew all about the Army Officers—Early Contrast of Rebel Enthusiasm and Union Indifference—Importance of Mr. Stanton’s Post—His Birth and Ancestry—His Education and Law Studies—County Attorney—State Reporter—Defends Mr. McNulty—Removes to Pittsburg—His Line of Business—The Wheeling Case—He Removes to Washington—His Qualifications as a Lawyer—He Enters Buchanan’s Cabinet—His Unexpected Patriotism—His Own Account of the Cabinet at News of Anderson’s Move to Sumter—The Lion before the Old Red Dragon—Appointed Secretary of War—“Bricks in his Pockets”—Stanton’s Habitual Reserve—His Wrath—“The Angel Gabriel as Paymaster”—Anecdotes of Lincoln’s Confidence in Stanton—Lincoln’s Affection for him—The Burdens of his Office—His Kindness of Heart within a Rough Outside—The Country his Debtor.

Mr. Greeley, in his History of the American Conflict, gives a survey of the advantages possessed by the rebels at the commencement of the war, in the martial character of their leaders. Jefferson Davis was a regularly educated graduate of West Point, who had been five years at the head of the War Department of the United States, and while in that situation had matured his future plans. He and his successor, Floyd, up to the year 1861, had arranged the United States military service to suit themselves, and left it in precisely the best condition for their designs. “They knew every officer in the United States service, knew the military value of each, whom to call away and organize to lead their own forces, and who, even if loyal, would serve their purposes better being left in our armies than taken into theirs.”

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“On the other hand, President Lincoln, without military education or experience, found himself suddenly plunged into a gigantic and to him unexpected war, with no single member of his cabinet even pretending to military genius or experience, and with the offices of his army filled to his hand by the chiefs of the rebellion. Whereas the whole rebel officers were enthusiasts who had forsaken all old connections to join the new army, the officers remaining were some of them old and feeble, like Scott, and others of that moderate kind of nature which inclines to remain stationary with the old institutions, rather than to make a fiery forward movement. Some two hundred of the very bravest and most skilful of our army officers went over to the new cause, to which they carried all the enthusiasm of youth and hope. Lincoln, in fact, was in the condition of a man who should be put to a naval race in an old ship from which his competitors had taken their pick of all the best sails, spars and hands.

“It is notorious that during the first year or two of the war, while with every Confederate officer the rebellion was an enthusiasm and a religion, for which he was willing at any moment to die, there were on the Union side many officers, and those of quite high rank, who seemed to take matters with extreme coolness, and to have no very particular enthusiasm for fighting at all. These officers seemed to consider secession as a great and unlucky mistake—a mistake, too, for which they seemed to think the intemperate zeal of the Black Republicans was particularly in fault, and their great object seemed to be to conduct the war with as little fighting as possible, using most con-

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ciliatory language, and always being sure to return fugitive slaves whenever they could get a good opportunity, thus apparently expecting in some favorable hour to terminate hostilities with another of those grand compromises which had been tried with such signal success in years past.”

The advancement of Stanton to the post of Secretary of War, was a movement made after it became somewhat more a settled point than at first appeared, that war should mean war.

His position during the whole war was, next to that of the President, the most important, responsible and influential civil post in the United States, and his services as an organizer, an administrative and executive officer, and as a fearless, energetic, resolute, powerful, and patriotic citizen, were perhaps as nearly indispensable to the success of the nation in the war as those of any other one man. Yet the recorded materials for preparing an account of him are excessively scanty; far more so than for any of his companions in the chief offices of Mr. Lincoln’s cabinet. This fact is in a certain sense a very creditable one to him; since it is the result of his life-long practice not to talk about himself, and not to talk about his work, but only to do it.

Edwin M. Stanton was born at Steubenville, in Ohio, in the year 1815. His ancestors were of the Quaker persuasion, as were those of Mr. Lincoln and Attorney General Bates. His parents removed to Ohio from Culpepper county, in the mountain region of Virginia. Stanton received the usual school training of a country boy, became a student of Kenyon College, in 1833, but

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only remained a year and left. This was the end of his scholastic education. It is easy, to those who know the decisive, impetuous, self-reliant nature of the man, and who remember the rough, plain, independent atmosphere of the backwoods country where he grew up, to imagine how easily any supposed indignity from his instructors would drive him out of their precincts, or how readily he would give up the idea of further studies as unnecessary, if his supply of money failed. However this was, he took up an employment which allowed him to continue some kind of mental training, for he became a bookseller’s clerk at Columbus. He also studied law, and in 1836 was admitted to the bar. He first opened an office at Cadiz, Harrison county, Ohio, and his robust force and direct sense quickly gave him the best of whatever practice the country afforded. He became the county prosecuting attorney in about a year; in another he had removed to the larger business center of his native place, Steubenville. His practice rapidly increased, and during three years from 1839 he was Reporter of the Ohio Supreme Court decisions. During his career at Steubenville, he was the counsel of Caleb J. McNulty, clerk of the House of Representatives, on his trial for embezzling public money, and cleared him. This case made a good deal of noise in its day.

In 1848, his business still increasing, Mr. Stanton removed again, this time to Pittsburg, where he remained until 1857, becoming without question the first lawyer at that bar, and beginning to be employed in many of that important and vigorously contested class of cases which are carried up to the United States Supreme

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Court at Washington. One of these, the Wheeling Bridge case, is perhaps that in which Mr. Stanton gained his greatest reputation as a lawyer. It is a curious illustration of his carelessness about his reputation, that not long ago, when an intimate personal friend of Mr. Stanton wanted a copy of his argument in this case to use in a biographical sketch, the Secretary was unable to furnish it.

In 1857 he removed once more, to Washington, still following his business. This now began to consist largely of heavy patent cases, a peculiar and difficult but very gainful department of legal practice. It is observable that the class of cases in which Mr. Stanton has been prominent, are those in which the executive mental faculties have most to do with the subject-matter—patent cases, land cases, vigorous controversies between great corporations about travelled routes or conflicting rights. Such cases arise among executive men, and Mr. Stanton’s immense endowment of executive energy qualifies him to succeed easily in dealing with them.

Mr. Stanton was naturally a Democrat; the vigorous traits of his character harmonizing spontaneously with the rough, aggressive energy of the Jacksonians. Probably his politics may have had some influence in causing Attorney-General Black to employ him, in 1858, to go to California and argue for the United States some very important land claim cases there. At any rate, if he had not been a Democrat, and a thoroughgoing one, he would not have been selected by Mr. Buchanan in December, 1860, to succeed Mr. Black as

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Attorney-General, when on Mr. Cass’ resignation Mr. Black became Secretary of State.

The gang of treasonable schemers who were in those days using their high positions to bind the country hand and foot, as securely as they could, in preparation for secession, undoubtedly had reckoned that in the new Attorney-General, if they did not find an ally, they would not encounter an obstacle. But his patriotism was of a very different kind from that of too many of his party. When the question before him, instead of being one of high or low tariff, or of one or another sort of currency, became a question whether he should go with his party in permitting his country to be ruined, or should join with all true patriots irrespective of party considerations, to preserve his country, he did not hesitate at all. He neither made allowances for the disreputable fright of old Mr. Buchanan, nor the far more disreputable schemes of the traitors who were bullying the feeble and helpless Old Public Functionary; but stood firmly amongst them all, a fearless and determined defender of the rights of the national government.

Mr. Stanton once gave a curious and striking sketch of the manners of Mr. Buchanan’s cabinet in those days. While speaking of the results of Anderson’s move to Sumter, he remarked:

“This little incident was the crisis of our history—the pivot upon which everything turned. Had he remained in Fort Moultrie, a very different combination of circumstances would have arisen. The attack on Sumter, commenced by the South, united the North, and made the success of the Confederacy im-

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possible. I shall never forget our coming together by special summons that night. Buchanan sat in his arm chair in a corner of the room, white as a sheet, with the stump of a cigar in his mouth. The dispatches were laid before us; and so much violence ensued that he had to turn us all out of doors.”

What sort of a scene, and what sort of language and goings on are covered under that phrase of Mr. Stanton’s, those who are familiar with the manners of the old Red Dragon of slavery, under moments of excitement, may imagine. Oaths and curses, threats of cutting out hearts and tearing out bowels, were usual amenities, forms of argumentation and statement quite familiar, on such occasions. Mr. Stanton, as any one may see by a glance at his head, is one of those men built on the lion pattern, a man who never knew what fear was—a man, also, awful and tremendous in powers of wrath and combativeness, and we may be sure at this moment the lion stood at bay, and that his roar in answer to the dragon’s hiss, was something to shake the cabinet and frighten poor Mr. Buchanan quite out of his proprieties. We may be sure the traitors did not go without a full piece of Stanton’s mind, stormed after them with shot and shell, worthy a future Secretary of the War Department.

Mr. Stanton’s appointment as Secretary of War was January 20, 1862; his predecessor, Mr. Cameron, having resigned a week before. This appointment was probably in a great measure due to the fresh recollection of the fearless vigor with which Mr. Stanton, along with Messrs. Dix and Holt, had asserted the rights of the nation under Buchanan. Mr. Lincoln, in making

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his selection, had the double good fortune of appointing a man of first-class merit for the position, and one whose “section” was in the right part of the country. It is on record that “in answering some questions on the subject, he observed that his first wish had been to choose a man from a border state, but that he knew New England would object; that on the other hand he would have also been glad to choose a New Englander, but he knew the Border States would object. So on the whole he concluded to select from some intervening territory, ‘and to tell you the truth, gentlemen,’ he added, ‘I don’t believe Stanton knows where he belongs himself!’ Some of the company now said some thing about Mr. Stanton’s impulsiveness, to which Mr. Lincoln replied with one of those queer stories with which he used to answer friends and enemies alike; ‘Well,’ said he, ‘we may have to treat him as they are sometimes obliged to treat a Methodist minister I know of out West. He gets wrought up so high in his prayers and exhortations that they are obliged to put bricks in his pockets to keep him down. We may be obliged to serve Stanton the same way, but I guess we’ll let him jump a while first!’”

The existence of the country was bound up in the war, and it was a matter of course that the War Department should attract the greatest part of Mr. Lincoln’s solicitude and attention, and that he should be more frequently and confidentially in intercourse with its Secretary, than with the other Departments of the Government. Mr. Lincoln and Mr. Stanton had never met, it is said, until when the Secretary received his commission from the President; nor had Mr. Stanton

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any knowledge of the intention to appoint him until the day before the nomination.

Mr. Stanton’s Secretaryship is a noble record of vast energy, untiring labor, thorough patriotism, and fervent and unfailing courage. Mr. Lincoln, a shrewd and wise judge of men, knew him familiarly, and loved and valued him more and more the longer and closer was their intercourse. Indeed, Mr. Stanton is probably a man closely shut up and inexpressive of his good and loveable traits and sentiments, beyond almost any one living; and it must have required the whole tremendous pressure and heat of the war, to soften his iron crust sufficiently to let even the keen eyed President find out how human and noble a heart was silently beating inside. The most interesting of the scanty anecdotes which are in existence about the Secretary are such as show the unlimited trust which Mr. Lincoln came to bestow upon him, or the rough and vigorous utterances by which he customarily revealed when he revealed at all, anything in the nature of feelings on his official duties or in reference to the war. Like many other men of real goodness hidden beneath a rugged outside, Mr. Stanton’s most utterable sentiment was wrath, and he often, as it were, shot out a sentiment of goodness inside of a bullet of anger, as a gruff benefactor might fling a gift at his intended beneficiary. Such was the “jumping” which Mr. Lincoln proposed to allow, before keeping down his energetic Secretary with bricks in his pockets. Such was the strong figure in which one day he conveyed to a brother Secretary his views on the fitness of appointees. Mr. Usher, when Secretary of the Interior, once asked

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Mr. Stanton to appoint a “young friend,” paymaster in the army. “How old is he?” asked Stanton, in his curt manner. “About twenty-one, I believe,” said Mr. Usher; “he is of good family and of excellent character.” “Usher,” exclaimed Mr. Stanton, in peremptory reply, “I would not appoint the Angel Gabriel a paymaster if he was only twenty-one!”

There was just as much unceremoniousness, and even very much peremptory force and earnestness in the vigorous rebuke which Mr. Stanton administered to Mr. Lincoln on the night of March 3, 1865, for the unseasonable favors which he was inclined to offer to the rebels, to the detriment of justice and of the paramount rights of the nation. On this occasion, while the last bills of the session were under examination for signing, and while the President and all with him were enjoying the expectation of to-morrow’s inauguration, a dispatch came in from Grant, which stated his confidence that a few days must now end the business with Lee and Richmond, and spoke of an application made by Lee for an interview to negotiate about peace. Mr. Lincoln intimated pretty clearly an intention to permit extremely favorable terms, and to let his General-in-Chief negotiate them; even to an extent that overpowered the reticent habits of his Secretary of War, who, after holding his tongue as long as he could, broke out sternly:

“Mr. President, to-morrow is inauguration day. If you are not to be the President of an obedient and united people, you had better not be inaugurated. Your work is already done, if any other authority than yours is for one moment to be recognized, or any terms

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made that do not signify that you are the supreme head of the nation. If generals in the field are to negotiate peace, or any other chief magistrate is to be acknowledged on this continent, then you are not needed and you had better not take the oath of office.”

“Stanton, you are right,” said the President, his whole tone changing. “Let me have a pen.”

Mr. Lincoln sat down at the table, and wrote as follows:

“The President directs me to say to you that he wishes you to have no conference with General Lee, unless it be for the capitulation of Lee’s army, or on some minor or purely military matter. He instructs me to say that you are not to decide, discuss, or confer upon any political question; such questions the President holds in his own hands, and will submit them to no military conference or conventions. In the mean time you are to press to the utmost your military advantages.”

The President then read over what he had written, and then said:

“Now Stanton, date and sign this paper, and send it to Grant. We’ll see about this peace business.”

An account which appeared in a Cincinnati paper during the war, of a curious transaction at Washington, shows that Mr. Lincoln was as steady in trusting to Mr. Stanton’s own wisdom in action, as he was ready to acknowledge the justice of the Secretary’s reproofs on a question of constitutional propriety. This account is as follows:

“While the president was on his way back from Richmond, and at a point where no telegraph could reach the steamer upon which he was, a dispatch of

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the utmost importance reached Washington, demanding the immediate decision of the President himself. The dispatch was received by a confidential staff officer, who at once ascertained that Mr. Lincoln could not be reached. Delay was out of the question, as important army movements were involved. The officer having the dispatch went with it directly to Mr. Stanton’s office, but the Secretary could not be found. Messengers were hastily dispatched for him in all directions. Their search was useless, and a positive answer had been already too much delayed by the time it had occupied. With great reluctance the staff officer sent a reply in the President’s name. Soon after, Mr. Stanton entered himself, having learned of the efforts made to find him. The dispatch was produced, and he was informed by the officer sending the answer, of what had been done.

“’Did I do right?’ said the officer to the Secretary.

“’Yes, Major,’ replied Mr. Stanton, ‘I think you have sent the correct reply, but I should hardly have dared to take the responsibility.’

“At this the whole magnitude of the office and the great responsibility he had taken upon himself, seemed to fall upon the officer, and almost overcame him; and he asked Mr. Stanton what he had better do, and was advised to go directly to the President, on his return, and state the case frankly to him. It was a sleepless night to the officer, and at the very earliest hour consistent with propriety he went to the White House.”

Here the officer, scarcely even by the accidental interposition of the President’s son, was able to reach him, as there were strict orders for his privacy just

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then. At last, he entered the President’s room, and, the story continues,

“The dispatch was shown him, and the action upon it stated frankly and briefly. The President thought a moment and then said, “Did you consult the Secretary of War, Major?’ The absence of the Secretary at the important moment was then related to Mr. Lincoln, with the subsequent remark of Mr. Stanton, that he thought the right answer had been given, but that himself would have shrunk from the responsibility.

“Mr. Lincoln, on hearing the story, rose, crossed the room, and taking the officer by the hand, thanked him cordially, and then spoke of Mr. Stanton as follows:

“’Hereafter, Major, when you have Mr. Stanton’s sanction in any matter, you have mine, for so great is my confidence in his judgment and patriotism, that I never wish to take an important step myself without first consulting him.’”

Only a few days before his death, Mr. Lincoln gave a still more striking testimony of the affectionate nature of his regard for Mr. Stanton. This was when Mr. Stanton tendered him his resignation of the War Department, on the ground that the work for whose sake he had taken it, was now done.

“Mr. Lincoln,” says a witness, “was greatly moved by the Secretary’s words, and tearing in pieces the paper containing the resignation, and throwing his arms about the Secretary, he said, ‘Stanton, you have been a good friend and a faithful public servant, and it is not for you to say when you will no longer be needed here.’ Several friends of both parties were

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present on this occasion, and there was not a dry eye that witnessed the scene.”

Mr. Stanton occupied a situation of torturing responsibility and distracting cares. He bore burdens of perplexity and doubt and apprehension such as might tax the stoutest nerves. His only mode of meeting and repelling the dashing waves of hourly solicitations and the thousand agencies which beset a man in his position, was to make himself externally as rugged and stern as a rock.

But those who knew him intimately, as did Lincoln, and as did many others who were drawn towards him, interiorly, during the wrench of the great struggle, knew that deep within there was a heart, warm, kind, true and humbly religious—deeply feeling his responsibilities to God, and seeking with honest purpose to fulfil his duties in the awful straits in which he was placed. To a lady for whom he had performed in the way of his office some kindness, and who expressed gratitude, he writes:

“In respect to the matter in which you feel a personal interest and refer to with kind expressions of gratitude towards myself, I am glad that in the discharge of simple duty I have been able to relieve an anxious care in the heart of any one, and much more in the hearts of persons, who although personally unknown to me, I have been accustomed from early youth to reverence.

“In my official station I have tried to do my duty as I shall answer to God at the Great Day, but it is the misfortune of that station—a misfortune that no one else can comprehend the magnitude of, that most of

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my duties are harsh and painful to some one, so that I rejoice at an opportunity, however rare, of combining duty with kindly offices.”

It remains to be seen what further services, if any, Mr. Stanton will render to his country in a public capacity. Should he again be a public servant, it will be as it has been, the United States, and not he, who will be the obliged party.

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CHAPTER XII.

FREDERICK DOUGLASS.

The Opportunity for Every Man in a Republic—The Depth Below a White Man’s Poverty—The Starting Point whence Fred Douglass Raised Himself—His Mother—Her Noble Traits—Her Self-Denial for the sake of Seeing him—She Defends him against Aunt Katy—Her Death—Col. Loyd’s Plantation—The Luxury of his own Mansion—The Organization of his Estate—“Old Master’—How they Punished the Women—How Young Douglass Philosophized on Being a Slave—Plantation Life—The Allowance of Food—The Clothes—An Average Plantation Day—Mr. Douglass’ Experience as a Slave Child—The Slave Children’s Trough—The Slave Child’s Thoughts—The Melancholy of Slave Songs—He Becomes a House Servant—A Kind Mistress Teaches him to Read—How he completed his Education—Effects of Learning to Read—Experiences Religion and Prays for Liberty—Learns to Write—Hires his Time, and Absconds—Becomes a Free Working-Man in New Bedford—Marries—Mr. Douglass on Garrison—Mr. Douglass’ Literary Career.

The reader will perceive, in reading the memoirs which we have collected in the present volume, that although they give a few instances of men who have risen to distinction from comfortable worldly circumstances, by making a good use of the provision afforded them by early competence and leisure, yet by far the greater number have raised themselves by their own unaided efforts, in spite of every disadvantage which circumstances could throw in their way.

It is the pride and the boast of truly republican institutions that they give to every human being an opportunity of thus demonstrating what is in him. If a man is a man, no matter in what rank of society he is born, no matter how tied down and weighted by poverty and all its attendant disadvantages, there is nothing in our American institutions to prevent his rising

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to the very highest offices in the gift of the country. So, though a man like Charles Sumner, coming of an old Boston family, with every advantage of Boston schools and of Cambridge college, becomes distinguished through the country, yet side by side with him we see Abraham Lincoln, the rail splitter, Henry Wilson, from the shoemaker’s bench, and Chase, from a New Hampshire farm. But there have been in our country some three or four million of human beings who were born to depth of poverty below what Henry Wilson or Abraham Lincoln ever dreamed of. Wilson and Lincoln, to begin with, owned nothing but their bare hands, but there have been in this country four or five million men and women who did not own even their bare hands. Wilson and Lincoln, and other brave men like them, owned their own souls and wills—they were free to say, “Thus and thus I will do—I will be educated, I will be intelligent, I will be Christian, I will by honest industry amass property to serve me in my upward aims.” But there were four million men and women in America who were decreed by the laws of this country not to own even their own souls. The law said of them—They shall be taken and held as chattels personal to all intents and purposes. This hapless class of human beings might be sold for debt, might be mortgaged for real estate, nay, the unborn babe might be pledged or mortgaged for the debts of a master. There were among these unfortunate millions, in the eye of the law, neither husbands nor wives, nor fathers nor mothers; they were only chattels personal. They could no more contract a legal marriage than a bedstead can

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marry a cooking-stove, or a plough be wedded to a spinning wheel. They were week after week advertised in public prints to be sold in company with horses, cows, pigs, hens, and other stock of a plantation.

They were forbidden to learn to read. The slave laws imposed the same penalty on the man who should teach a slave to read as on the man who willfully put out his eyes. They had no legal right to be Christians, or enter the kingdom of heaven, because the law regarded them simply as personal property, subject to the caprice of an owner, and when the owner did not choose to have his property be a Christian, he could shut him out from the light of the gospel as easily as one can close a window shutter.

Now if we think it a great thing that Wilson and Lincoln raised themselves from a state of comparatively early disadvantage to high places in the land, what shall we think of one who started from this immeasureable gulf below them?

Frederick Douglass had as far to climb to get to the spot where the poorest free white boy is born, as that white boy has to climb to be president of the nation, and take rank with kings and judges of the earth.

There are few young men born to competence, carried carefully through all the earlier stages of training, drilled in grammar school, and perfected by a four years’ college course, who could stand up on a platform and compete successfully with Frederick Douglass as an orator. Nine out of ten of college educated young men would shrink even from the trial, and yet Frederick Douglass fought his way up from a

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nameless hovel on a Maryland plantation, where with hundreds of others of the young live stock he shivered in his little tow shirt, the only garment allowed him for summer and winter, kept himself warm by sitting on the sunny side of out buildings, like a little dog, and often was glad to dispute with the pigs for the scraps of what came to them to satisfy his hunger.

From this position he has raised himself to the habits of mind, thought and life of a cultivated gentleman, and from that point of sight has illustrated exactly what slavery WAS, (thank God we write in the past tense,) in an autobiography which most affectingly presents what it is to be born a slave. Every man who struck a stroke in our late great struggle—every man or woman who made a sacrifice for it—every one conscious of inward bleedings and cravings that never shall be healed or assuaged, for what they have rendered up in this great anguish, ought to read this autobiography of a slave man, and give thanks to God that even by the bitterest sufferings they have been permitted to do something to wipe such a disgrace and wrong from the earth.

The first thing that every man remembers is his mother. Americans all have a mother at least that can be named. But it is exceedingly affecting to read the history of a human being who writes that during all his childhood he never saw his mother more than two or three times, and then only in the night. And why? Because she was employed on a plantation twelve miles away. Her only means of seeing her boy were to walk twelve miles over to the place where he was, spend a brief hour, and walk twelve miles

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back, so as to be ready to go to work at four o’clock in the morning. How many mothers would often visit their children by such an effort? and yet at well remembered intervals the mother of Frederick Douglass did this for the sake of holding her child a little while in her arms, lying down a brief hour with him.

That she was a woman of uncommon energy and strength of affection this sufficiently shows, because as slave mother she could do him no earthly good—she owned not a cent to bring him. She could not buy him clothes. She could not even mend or wash the one garment allotted to him.

Only once in his childhood did he remember his mother’s presence as being to him anything of that comfort and protection that it is to ordinary children. He, with all the other little live stock of the plantation, were dependent for a daily allowance of food on a cross old woman whom they called Aunt Katy. For some reason of her own, Aunt Katy had taken a pique against little Fred, and announced to him that she was going to keep him a day without food. At the close of this day, when he crept shivering in among the other children, and was denied even the coarse slice of corn bread which all the rest had, he broke out into loud lamentations. Suddenly his mother appeared behind him—caught him in her arms, poured out volumes of wrathful indignation on Aunt Katy, and threatened to complain to the overseer if she did not give him his share of food—produced from her bosom a sweet cake which she had managed to procure for him, and sat down to wipe away his tears and see him

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enjoy it. This mother must have been a woman of strong mental characteristics. Though a plantation field hand, she could read, and if we consider against what superhuman difficulties such a knowledge must have been acquired, it is an evidence of wonderful character. Douglass says of her that she was tall and finely proportioned. With affecting simplicity he says: “There is in Pritchard’s Natural History of Man, p. 157, the head of a figure the features of which so resemble those of my mother, that I often recur it with something of the feeling which I suppose others to experience when looking on the pictures of dear departed ones.”

The face alluded to is copied from a head of Rameses the great Egyptian king of the nineteenth dynasty. The profile is European in its features, and similar in class to the head of Napoleon. From all these considerations, we have supposed that the mother of Douglass must have been one of that Mandingo tribe of Africans who were distinguished among the slaves for fine features, great energy, intelligence and pride of character. The black population of America is not one race. If slaveholders and kidnappers had been busy for years in Europe stirring up wars in the different countries, and sending all the captives to be sold in America, the mixture of Swedes, Danes, Germans, Russians, Italians, French, might all have gone under the one head of Whitemen, but they would have been none the more of the same race. The negroes of this country are a mixture torn from tribes and races quite as dissimilar. The Mandingo has European features, a fine form, wavy, not woolly hair, is intelligent, vig

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orous, proud and brave. The Guinea negro has a coarse, animal head, is stupid, dirty, cunning. Yet the argument on negro powers is generally based on some such sweeping classification as takes the Guinea negro for its type.

The father of Frederick Douglass was a white man, who, he never knew—it would have been of no advantage to him had he known—but there is reason to think that those fine intellectual gifts, that love of liberty, and hatred of slavery which have led him to the position he now occupies among freemen, were due to the blood of his mother. That silent, noble black woman, whose wrongs were borne in such patience, whose soul must so often have burned within her, whose affections were stronger than weariness, and whose mind would possess the key of knowledge even though she gained it at such terrible sacrifices and hazards, she is to be honored as the mother of Garrison is, as having lived in her son and being the true author and inspirer of all that is good and just in him.

After a few short interviews the communication between Douglass and his mother ceased. She was taken sick, had a long illness and died without a word or message, or any token passing between her and her child. He running wild, a dirty little animal on the distant plantation, she suffering, wasting, dying in silence—going into the great Invisible where so many helpless mothers have gone to plead for their children before God.

The plantation of Col. Loyd, on which Fred Douglass was raised, was a representative fact illustrating what may be known of slavery. There might be

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seen a large airy elegant house, filled with every luxury and comfort, the abode of hospitality and leisure. Company always coming and going—bountiful tables spread with every delicacy of sea and land—choice cookery, old wines, massive plate, splendid curtains and pictures, all combined to give the impression of a joyous and abundant life. Fifteen well dressed, well trained servants, chosen for good looks and good manners, formed an obsequious army of attendants behind the chairs of guests at the dinner hour, or waited on them in their private apartments.

The shrubbery, the flower gardens, the ample lawns, were laid out with European taste, the stables had studs of the finest blood horses at the disposal of guests—all was cultivation, elegance and refinement.

Col. Loyd was supposed to own a thousand slaves, and what the life was on which all this luxury and elegance was built, the history of Douglass and his mother may show. Col. Loyd owned several contiguous farms or plantations, each one under an overseer, and all were under the general supervision of an agent who lived on the central plantation and went by the name among the slaves of Old Master. Between this man and his family, and Col. Loyd and his family, there was none of the intercourse of equals. No visits were ever exchanged, and no intercourse except of a necessary business character ever took place. The owner and his family had nothing to do with the management of the estates any further than to enjoy and dispense the revenues they brought; in all the rest was left to “Old Master and the Overseers.” The estate was as secluded

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from all influence of public opinion, and the slaves were as completely in the power of the overseers, as the serfs in the feudal ages. Even the vessels which carried the produce of the plantation to Baltimore, were owned by Col. Loyd. Every man and boy by whom these vessels were worked, excepting the captains, were Col. Loyd’s property. All the artizans on all the places, the blacksmiths, wheel wrights, shoe makers, weavers and coopers, also were pieces of property belonging to Col. Loyd. What chance was there for laws or for public sentiment, or any other humanizing influence, to restrain absolute power in a district so governed?

One of the earliest lessons in the practical meaning of slavery was taught to the child by hearing the shrieks and groans of a favorite Aunt Esther, under the lash of Old Master. She was a finely formed, handsome woman, and had the presumption to prefer a young slave man to her master, and for this she was made the victim of degradation and torture.

On another occasion he saw a young girl who came from one of the neighboring plantations, with her head cut and bleeding from the brutality of the overseer, to put herself under the protection of Old Master. Though the brutality of her treatment was perfectly evident, he heard her met only with reproaches and oaths and ordered to go back at once or expect even severer treatment. This was a part of an unvarying system. It was a fixed rule, never to listen to complaints of any kind from a slave, and even when they were evidently well founded, to affect to disregard them. That the slave was to have no appeal in any

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case from the absolute power of the overseer, was a fundamental maxim of the system.

Endowed by his mother with an intelligent and thoughtful organization, young Douglass began early to turn in his mind the dark question, “Why am I a slave?” On this subject he pushed enquiries among his little play-fellows and the elderly negroes, but could get no satisfactory solution, except that some remembered that their fathers and mothers were stolen from Africa. When not more than seven or eight years old these thoughts burned in him, whenever he wandered through the woods and fields, and a strong determination to become a freeman in future life took possession of him. It may have been inspired by the invisible guardianship of that poor mother, who, unable to help in life, may have been permitted higher powers in the world of spirits.

The comments which Douglass makes on many features of slave life, as they affected his childish mind, are very peculiar, and show slavery entirely from an inside point of view.

In regard to the physical comforts of plantation life, he gives the following account:

“It is the boast of slaveholders that their slaves enjoy more of the physical comforts of life than the peasantry of any country in the world. My experience contradicts this. The men and the women slaves on Col. Loyd’s plantation received as their monthly allowance, eight pounds of pickled pork or their equivalent in fish. The pork was often tainted and the fish of the poorest quality. With this, they had one bushel of unbolted Indian meal, of which quite fifteen per cent

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was fit only for pigs; with this one pint of salt was given, and this was the entire monthly allowance of a full grown slave, working constantly in the open field, from morning till night, every day of the month, except Sundays. This was living on a fraction more than a quarter of a pound of poor meat per day, and less than a peck of corn meal per week, and there is no work requiring more abundant supply of food to prevent physical exhaustion, than the field work of a slave.

“So much for food. Now as for raiment. The yearly allowance of clothing for slaves on this plantation, consisted of two linen shirts, one pair of tow trowsers for summer, a pair of trowsers and jacket of slazy workmanship for winter, one pair of yarn stockings, and one pair of coarse shoes. The slave’s entire apparel could not have cost more than eight dollars a year. Children not yet able to work in the field had neither shoes, stockings, jackets or trowsers given them. Their clothing consisted of two coarse tow linen shirts per year, and when these failed, they went literally naked till next allowance day. Flocks of children from five to ten years old might be seen on Col. Loyd’s plantations as destitute of clothing as any little heathen in Africa and this even in the frosty month of March.

“As to beds to sleep on, none were given—nothing but a coarse blanket, such as is used in the North to cover horses—and these were not provided for little ones.

“The children cuddled in holes and corners about the quarters, often in the corners of the huge chimneys with their feet in the ashes to keep them warm.”

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An average day of plantation life is thus given:

“Old and young, male and female, married and single, drop down together on the clay floor of the cabin each evening with his or her blanket. The night however is shortened at both ends. The slaves work often as long as they can see, and are late in cooking and mending for the coming day, and at the first grey streak of morning are summoned to the field by the driver’s horn.

“More slaves are whipped for oversleeping than for any other fault. The overseer stands at the quarter door, armed with his cowhide, ready to whip any who may be a few minutes behind time. When the horn is blown, there is a rush for the door, and the hinder-most one is sure to get a blow from the overseer. Young mothers working in the field were allowed about ten o’clock to go home and nurse their children. Sometimes they are obliged to take their children with them and leave them in the corners of the fences, to prevent loss of time. The overseer rides round the field on horseback. A cowskin and a hickory stick are his constant companions. The slaves take their breakfast with them and eat it in the field. The dinner of the slave consists of a huge piece of ash cake, that is to say, unbolted corn meal and water, stirred up and baked in the ashes. To this a small slice of pork or a couple of salt herring were added. A few moments of rest is allowed at dinner, which is variously spent. Some lie down on the “turning row” and go to sleep. Others draw together and talk, others are at work with needle and thread mending their tattered garments; but soon the overseer comes dashing in upon

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them. Tumble up—tumble up is the word, and now from twelve o’clock till dark, the human cattle are in motion, wielding their clumsy hoes, inspired by no hope of reward, no sense of gratitude, no love of children, no prospect of bettering their condition, nothing save the dread and terror of the driver’s lash. So goes one day and so comes another.” This is slavery as remembered by a cultivated, intelligent man who was born and bred a slave.

In regard to his own peculiar lot as a child on this plantation, he says: “I was seldom whipped, and never severely, by my old master. I suffered little from any treatment I received, except from hunger and cold. I could get enough neither of food or clothing, but suffered more from cold than hunger. In the heat of summer or cold of winter alike I was kept almost in a state of nudity—no shoes, stockings, jacket, trowsers—nothing but a coarse tow linen shirt reaching to the knee. This I wore night and day. In the daytime I could protect myself pretty well by keeping on the sunny side of the house, and in bad weather in the corner of the kitchen chimney. The great difficulty was to keep warm at night. I had no bed. The pigs in the pen had leaves, and horses in the stable had straw, but the children had nothing. In very cold weather I sometimes got down the bag in which corn was carried to the mill, and got into that. My feet have been so cracked by the frost that the pen with which I am writing might be laid in the gashes.

“The manner of taking our meals at old master’s, indicated but little refinement. Our corn-meal mush, when sufficiently cooled, was placed in a large wooden

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tray, or trough, like those used in making maple sugar here in the north. This tray was set down, either on the floor of the kitchen or out of doors on the ground; and the children were called, like so many pigs; and like so many pigs they would come, and literally devour the mush—some with oyster shells, some with pieces of shingles, and none with spoons. He that ate fastest got most, and he that was strongest got the best place; and few left the trough really satisfied. I was the most unlucky of any, for Aunt Katy had no good feeling for me; and if I pushed any of the other children, or if they told her anything unfavorable of me, she always believed the worst, and was sure to whip me.”

The effect of all this on his childish mind is thus told:

“As I grew older and more thoughtful, I was more and more filled with a sense of my wretchedness. The cruelty of Aunt Katy, the hunger and cold I suffered, and the terrible reports of wrong and outrage which came to my ear, together with what I almost daily witnessed, led me, when yet but eight or nine years old, to wish I had never been born. I used to contrast my condition with the blackbirds, in whose wild and sweet songs I fancied them so happy! Their apparent joy only deepened the shades of my sorrow. There are thoughtful days in the lives of children—at least there were in mine—when they grapple with all the great primary subjects of knowledge, and reach in a moment, conclusions which no subsequent experience can shake. I was just as well aware of the unjust, unnatural, and murderous character of slavery,

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when nine years old, as I am now. Without any appeal to books, to laws, or to authorities of any kind, it was enough to accept God as a father, to regard slavery as a crime.”

Douglass’ remarks on the singing of slaves are very striking. Speaking of certain days of each month when the slaves from the different farms came up to the central plantation to get their monthly allowances of meal and meat, he says that there was always great contention among the slaves as to who should go up with the ox team for this purpose. He says:

“Probably the chief motive of the competitors for the place, was a desire to break the dull monotony of the field, and to get beyond the overseer’s eye and lash. Once on the road with an ox team, and seated on the tongue of his cart, with no overseer to look after him, the slave was comparatively free; and, if thoughtful, he had time to think. Slaves are generally expected to sing as well as to work. A silent slave is not liked by masters or overseers. ‘Make a noise,’ ‘make a noise,’ and ‘bear a hand,’ are the words usually addressed to the slaves when there is silence amongst them. This may account for the almost constant singing heard in the southern states. There was generally more or less singing among the teamsters, as it was one means of letting the overseer know where they were, and that they were moving on with the work. But on allowance day, those who visited the great house farm were peculiarly excited and noisy. While on their way, they would make the dense old woods, for miles around, reverberate with their wild notes. These were not always merry be-

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cause they were wild. On the contrary, they were mostly of a plaintive cast, and told a tale of grief and sorrow. In the most boisterous outbursts of rapturous sentiment, there was ever a tinge of deep melancholy. I have never heard any songs like those anywhere since I left slavery, except when in Ireland. There I heard the same wailing notes, and was much affected by them. It was during the famine of 1845-6. In all the songs of the slaves there was ever some expression in praise of the great house farm; something which would flatter the pride of the owner and possibly, draw a favorable glance from him.

“I am going away to the great house farm,

O yea! O yea! O yea!

My old master is a good old master,

O yea! O yea! O yea!

* * * * * * *

“I did not, when a slave, understand the deep meanings of those rude, and apparently incoherent songs. I was myself within the circle, so that I neither saw nor heard as those without might see and hear. They told a tale which was then altogether beyond my feeble comprehension; they were tones, loud, long and deep, breathing the prayer and complaint of souls boiling over with the bitterest anguish. Every tone was a testimony against slavery, and a prayer to God for deliverance from chains. The hearing of those wild notes always depressed my spirits, and filled my heart with ineffable sadness. The mere recurrence, even now, afflicts my spirit, and while I am writing these lines, my tears are falling. To those songs I trace my first glimmering conceptions of the

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dehumanizing character of slavery. I can never get rid of that conception. Those songs still follow me, to deepen my hatred of slavery, and quicken my sympathies for my brethren in bonds.”

When Douglass was ten years old a great change took place in his circumstances. His old master sent him to Baltimore to be a family servant in the house of a family connection.

He speaks with great affection of his new mistress, Miss Sophia Auld. It is the southern custom for the slave to address a young married lady always by this maiden title. She had never before had to do with a slave child, and seemed to approach him with all the tender feelings of motherhood. He was to have the care of her own little son, some years younger, and she seemed to extend maternal tenderness to him. His clothing, lodging, food were all now those of a favored house boy, and his employment to run of errands and take care of his little charge, of whom he was very fond. The kindness and benignity of his mistress led the little boy to beg her to teach him to read, and the results are thus given:

“The dear woman began the task, and very soon, by her assistance, I was master of the alphabet, and could spell words of three or four letters. My mistress seemed almost as proud of my progress, as if I had been her own child; and supposing that her husband would be as well pleased, she made no secret of what she was doing for me. Indeed, she exultingly told him of the aptness of her pupil, of her intention to persevere in teaching me, and of the duty which she felt it to teach me at least to read the Bible. Here

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arose the first cloud over my Baltimore prospects, the precursor of drenching rains and chilling blasts.

“Master Hugh was amazed at the simplicity of his spouse, and probably for the first time, he unfolded to her the true philosophy of slavery, and the peculiar rules necessary to be observed by masters and mistresses, in the management of their human chattels. Mr. Auld promptly forbade the continuance of her instruction; telling her, in the first place, that the thing itself was unlawful; that it was also unsafe, and could only lead to mischief. To use his own words, further, he said, ‘If you give a nigger an inch, he will take an ell; he should know nothing but the will of his master, and learn to obey it. Learning would spoil the best nigger in the world; if you teach that nigger’—speaking of myself—‘how to read the Bible, there will be no keeping him; it would forever unfit him for the duties of a slave, and as to himself, learning would do him no good, but probably a great deal of harm—making him disconsolate and unhappy. If you learn him now to read, he’ll want to know how to write; and this accomplished, he’ll be running away with himself.’ Such was the tenor of Master Hugh’s oracular exposition of the true philosophy of training a human chattel; and it must be confessed that he very clearly comprehended the nature and the requirements of the relation of master and slave. His discourse was the first decidedly anti-slavery lecture to which it had been my lot to listen. Mrs. Auld evidently felt the force of his remarks; and, like an obedient wife, began to shape her course in the direction indicated by her husband. The effect of his words

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on me was neither slight nor transitory. His iron sentences, cold and harsh, sunk deep into my heart, and stirred up not only my feelings into a sort of rebellion, but awakened within me a slumbering train of vital thought. It was a new and special revelation, dispelling a painful mystery, against which my youthful understanding had struggled, and struggled in vain, to wit: the white man’s power to perpetuate the enslavement of the black man. ‘Very well,’ thought I, ‘knowledge unfits a child to be a slave.’ I instinctively assented to the proposition; and from that moment I understood the direct pathway from slavery to freedom.”

But the desire of learning, once awakened, could not be hushed, and though Douglass’ mistress forebore his teaching, and even became jealously anxious to prevent his making further progress, he found means to continue the instruction. With a spelling-book hid away in his bosom, and a few crackers in his pocket, he continued to get daily lessons from the street boys at intervals when he went back and forth on errands. Sometimes the tuition fee was a cracker, and sometimes the lesson was given in mere boyish good will. At last he made money enough to buy for himself, secretly, a reading book, “The Columbian Orator.” This book was prepared for schools during the liberty-loving era succeeding the American revolution, when southern as well as northern men conspired to reprobate slavery. There consequently young Fred found most inspiring documents. There was a long conversation between a master and a slave where a slave defended himself for running away by quoting the language of

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the Declaration of Independence. Douglass also says of this book:

“This, however, was not all the fanaticism which I found in this Columbian Orator. I met there one of Sheridan’s mighty speeches on the subject of Catholic Emancipation, Lord Chatham’s speech on the American war, and speeches by the great William Pitt and by Fox. These were all choice documents to me, and I read them over and over again, with an interest that was ever increasing, because it was ever gaining in intelligence; for the more I read them the better I understood them. The reading of these speeches added much to my limited stock of language, and enabled me to give tongue to many interesting thoughts, which had frequently flashed through my soul, and died away for want of utterance.”

All this knowledge and expansion of mind, of course produced at first intellectual gloom and misery. All the results of learning to read, predicted by the master, had come to pass. He was so morose, so changed, that his mistress noticed it, and showered reproaches upon him for his ingratitude. “Poor lady,” he says, “she did not know my trouble and I dared not tell her—her abuse felt like the blows of Balaam on his poor ass, she did not know that an angel stood in the way.”

“My feelings were not the result of any marked cruelty in the treatment I received; they sprung from the consideration of my being a slave at all. It was slavery—not its mere incidents—that I hated. I had been cheated. I saw through the attempt to keep me in ignorance; I saw that slaveholders would have gladly

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made me believe that they were merely acting under the authority of God, in making a slave of me, and in making slaves of others; and I treated them as robbers and deceivers. The feeding and clothing me well, could not atone for taking my liberty from me.”

About this time Douglass became deeply awakened to religious things, by the prayers and exhortations of a pious old colored slave who was a drayman. He could read and his friend could not, but Douglass, now newly awakened to spiritual things, read the Bible to him, and received comfort from him. He says, “He fanned my already intense love of knowledge into a flame by assuring me that I was to be a useful man in the world. When I would say to him, how can these things be, his simple reply was, ‘trust in the Lord.’ When I told him that I was a slave FOR LIFE, he said: ‘The Lord can make you free, my dear. All things are possible with him, only have faith in God. If you want your liberty, ask the Lord for it in faith, and HE WILL GIVE IT TO YOU.’” Cheered by this advice, Douglass began to offer daily and earnest prayers for liberty.

With reference to this he began to turn his thoughts towards acquiring the art of writing. He was employed as waiter in a ship yard, and watching the initial letters by which the carpenters marked the different parts of the ship, and thus in time acquired a large part of the written alphabet. This knowledge he supplemented by getting one and another boy of his acquaintance on one pretence of other, to write words or letters on fences or boards. Then he surreptitiously copied the examples in his little master’s copy-book at home, when his mistress was safely out of the

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house, and finally acquired the dangerous and forbidden gift of writing a fluent, handsome current hand.

He had various reverses after this as he grew in age and developed in manliness. He was found difficult to manage, and changed from hand to hand like a vicious intractable horse. Once a celebrated negro breaker had a hand upon him, meaning to break his will and reduce him to the condition of a contended animal, but the old story of Pegasus in harness came to pass. The negro breaker gave him up as a bad case, and finally his master made a virtue of necessity, and allowed him to hire his own time. The bargain was that Douglass should pay him three dollars a week, and make his own bargains, find his own tools, board and clothe himself. The work was that of caulker in a ship yard. This, he says, was a hard bargain; for the wear and tear of clothing, the breakage of tools and expenses of board made it necessary to earn at least six dollars a week, to keep even with the world, and this per centage to the master left him nothing beyond a bare living.

But it was a freeman’s experience to be able to come and go unwatched, and before long it enabled him to mature a plan of escape, and the time at last came when he found himself a free colored citizen of New Bedford, seeking employment, with the privilege of keeping his wages for himself. Here, it was that reading for the first time the Lady of the Lake, he gave himself the name of Douglass, and abandoned forever the family name of his old slaveholding employer. Instead of a lazy thriftless young man to be supported

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by his earnings, he took unto himself an affectionate and thrifty wife, and became a settled family man.

He describes the seeking for freeman’s work as rapturous excitement. The thought “I can work, I can earn money, I have no master now to rob me of my earnings,” was a perfect joyous stimulus whenever it arose, and he says, “I sawed wood, dug cellars, shoveled coal, rolled oil casks on the wharves, helped to load and unload vessels, worked in candle works and brass foundries, and thus supported myself for three years. I was, he says, now living in a new world, and wide awake to its advantages. I early began to attend meetings of the colored people, in New Bedford, and to take part in them, and was amazed to see colored men making speeches, drawing up resolutions, and offering them for consideration.”

His enthusiasm for self-education was constantly stimulated. He appropriated some of his first earnings to subscribing for the Liberator, and was soon after introduced to Mr. Garrison. How Garrison appeared to a liberated slave may be a picture worth preserving, and we give it in Douglass’ own words.

“Seventeen years ago, few men possessed a more heavenly countenance than William Lloyd Garrison, and few men evinced a more genuine or a more exalted piety. The Bible was his text book—held sacred, as the word of the Eternal Father—sinless perfection—complete submission to insults and injuries—literal obedience to the injunction, if smitten on one side to turn the other also. Not only was Sunday a Sabbath, but all days were Sabbaths, and to be kept holy. All sectarism false and mischievous—the regen-

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erated, throughout the world, members of one body, and the HEAD Jesus Christ. Prejudice against color was rebellion against God. Of all men beneath the sky, the slaves, because most neglected and despised, were nearest and dearest to his great heart. Those ministers who defended slavery from the Bible, were of their ‘father the devil;’ and those churches which fellowshipped slaveholders as Christians, were synagogues of Satan, and our nation was a nation of liars. Never loud or noisy—calm and serene as a summer sky, and as pure. ‘You are the man, the Moses, raised up by God, to deliver his modern Israel from bondage,’ was the spontaneous feeling of my heart, as I sat away back in the hall and listened to his mighty words; mighty in truth—mighty in their simple earnestness.”

From this time the course of Douglass is upward. The manifest talents which he possessed, led the friends of the Anti-Slavery cause to feel that he could serve it better in a literary career than by manual labor.

In the year 1841, a great anti-slavery convention was held at Nantucket, where Frederick Douglass appeared on the stage and before a great audience recounted his experiences. Mr. Garrison followed him, and an immense enthusiasm was excited—and Douglass says: ‘That night there were at least a thousand Garrisonians in Nantucket.” After this the general agent of the Anti-Slavery Society came and offered to Douglass the position of an agent of that society, with a competent support to enable him to lecture through the country. Douglass, continually pursuing the work of self-education, became an accomplished speaker and writer. He visited England, and was received with

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great enthusiasm. The interest excited in him was so great that several English friends united and paid the sum of one hundred and fifty pounds sterling, for the purchase of his liberty. This enabled him to pursue his work of lecturer in the United States, to travel unmolested, and to make himself every way conspicuous without danger of recapture.

He settled himself in Rochester, and established an Anti-Slavery paper, called Frederick Douglass’ Paper, which bore a creditable character for literary execution, and had a good number of subscribers in America and England.

Two of Frederick Douglass’ sons were among the first to answer to the call for colored troops, and fought bravely in the good cause. Douglass has succeeded in rearing an intelligent and cultivated family, and in placing himself in the front rank among intelligent and cultivated men. Few orators among us surpass him, and his history from first to last, is a comment on the slavery system which speaks for itself.

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CHAPTER XIII.

PHILIP H. SHERIDAN.

Sheridan a Full-Blooded Irishman—The Runaway Horse—Constitutional Fearlessness—Sheridan Goes to West Point—Sheridan’s Apprenticeship to War—The Fight with the Apaches at Fort Duncan—He is Transferred to Oregon—Commands at Fort Yamhill in the Yokima Reservation—The Quarrel among The Yokimas—Sheridan Popular with Indians—He thinks he has a Chance to be Major Some Day—Sheridan’s Shyness with Ladies—He Employs a Substitute in Waiting on a Lady—Sheridan’s Kindness and Efficiency in Office Work—He Becomes a Colonel of Cavalry—His Shrewd Defeat of Gen. Chalmers—Becomes Brigadier—The Kentucky Campaign against Bragg—Sheridan Saves the Battle of Perrysville—Saves the Battle of Murfreesboro—Gen. Rousseau on Sheridan’s Fighting—Sheridan at Missionary Ridge—Joins Grant as Chief of Cavalry—His Raids around Lee—His Campaign in the Valley of Virginia—He Moves across and Joins in the Final Operations—His Administration at New Orleans—Grant’s Opinion of Sheridan.

MAJOR-GENERAL PHILIP HENRY SHERIDAN is a full-blooded Irishman by descent, though American by birth. He was born in poverty. So large a share of American eminent men have been born poor, that it might almost be said that in our country poverty in youth is the first requisite for success in life.

Sheridan’s parents, after remaining a few years at the east, moved to Ohio, where their son grew up with very little schooling, and under the useful necessity of working for a living. There is a story current of his having been put upon a spirited horse when a boy of five, by some mischievous mates, and ran away with to a tavern some miles off. He stuck fast to the horse, though without saddle or bridle, and without size or strength to use them if he had them. It was

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by a mere chance that he arrived safe, and when lifted off by the sympathizing family of the inn, the little fellow admitted that he was shaken and sore with his ride, but he added, “I’ll be better to-morrow, and then I’ll ride back home.” The incident is of no great importance in itself, but it shows that even then the boy was already constitutionally destitute of fear. He seems to have been made without the peculiar faculty which makes people take danger into the account, and try to keep at a distance from it. The full possession of this deficiency (if the phrase is not too direct a contradiction in terms,) is quite uncommon. Admiral Nelson had it, as was shown, very much in Sheridan’s own style, in his boyhood. The future victor of Trafalgar had strayed away from home, and got lost. When he had been found and taken home, a relative remarked, “I should have thought that fear would have kept you from going so far away.” “Fear?” said the young gentleman quite innocently; “Fear? I don’t know him!” He never afterwards made his acquaintance, either; nor, it would seem, has Sheridan.

When young Sheridan received his appointment to a cadetship at West Point, he was driving a water-cart in Zanesville, Ohio. The person who actually procured the appointment was Gen. Thomas P. Ritchey, member of Congress from Sheridan’s district. The candidate was very young for the appointment, and very small of his age, insomuch that his friends considered it extremely doubtful whether he would be admitted. He was, however, and passed through the regular West Point course, in the same class with Gen-

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erals McPherson, Scofield, Terrill, Sill and Tyler, and with the rebel general Hood, who was so fearfully beaten by Thomas at Nashville. His scholarship was not particularly remarkable, and as is often the case with pupils who have no particular want of courage, high health and spirits, or of the bodily and mental qualities for doing things rather than for thinking about it, he experienced various collisions of one and another kind, with the strict military discipline of the institution.

He graduated in June, 1853, and as there was at the moment no vacant second lieutenancy, he was given a brevet appointment, and sent out in the next autumn to Fort Duncan on the Rio Grande, at the western edge of Texas, and in the region haunted by two of the most ferocious and boldest of the tribes sometimes called on the frontier the “horse Indians”—the Apaches and Camanches.

From this time until the rebellion, Lieutenant Sheridan was serving, not exactly his apprenticeship to his trade of war, but what would in Germany be called his wanderjahre—his years as wandering journeyman. It was an eight years of training in hardships and dangers more incessant and more extreme than perhaps could be crowded into any life except this of the American Indian-fighter; and doubtless its wild experiences did much to develop the bodily and mental endurance and the coolness and swift energy which have characterized Sheridan as a commander.

For two years Sheridan was at Fort Duncan, and was then promoted to first lieutenant, transferred to the Fourth Regiment, and after some delay in New

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York waiting for some recruits, he accompanied them by sea to the Pacific coast, and immediately on reaching San Francisco was placed in command of the escort for a surveying expedition employed on a branch of the Pacific Railroad. On this duty, and afterwards in command of posts or on scouts and expeditions up and down those remote and wild regions, the time passed until the outbreak of the war in 1861.

In the fights and adventures of this rough life, Sheridan’s soldierly qualities were often exhibited. While at Fort Duncan, being outside the fort with two men, the three were surprised by a gang of a dozen or more Apaches, whose chief, taking it for granted that the three had surrendered, jumped down from his horse, to tie them up and have them carried off. As he did so, Sheridan, quick as lightning, sprang up in his place, and goaded the wild mustang at full speed to the fort. On reaching it, he called instantly to arms, snatched a pair of pistols, and without dismounting or waiting to see who followed, wheeled and flew back as swiftly as he had come. His two men were fighting stoutly for their lives. Sheridan dashed up and shot the chief. The soldiers, following hard after him, charges the savages, and in a moment the discomfited Apaches were ridden down, dispersed and most of them killed.

During Sheridan’s stay in Oregon, his commanding officer, Major Rains, (afterwards the rebel General Rains,) made a campaign against the Yokima Indians, in which Sheridan did right good service, and so conspicuously at the affair of the Cascades on the Columbia, April 28, 1856, as to be mentioned in general

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orders with high praise. The Indians having been subdued, were placed on a tract called the Yokima Reservation, and Sheridan was appointed to command a detachment of troops posted among them, to act substantially as their governor. He erected a post called Fort Yamhill, and remained there for two or three years, ruling his wild subjects with a good deal of success, and being quite popular with them, as well as praised and trusted by his own superiors. An eyewitness has told the story of an occurrence at Fort Yamhill, a good deal like the affair of the Apaches at Fort Duncan, and which equally illustrates the swift and vehement courage with which Sheridan always does his soldier’s work. One day a quarrel arose in the camp of the Yokimas, outside the fort. These turbulent savages have no more self-control than so many tigers, and in a moment their knives were out, and a bloody battle-royal was opened. Sheridan was near enough to see that there was a fight, but happened to be alone. He put spurs to his horse, hurried to the fort, ordered what few soldiers were in sight to follow him, turned, set spurs to his horse again, and dashed off for the Indian camp at the very top of his speed; bare headed, sword in hand, without once looking round to see if he were followed; and he charged headlong into the fray, riding through the desperate Indian knife-fight as though it were a field of standing grain. The soldiers felt the powerful magnetism of their leader, just as Sheridan’s soldiers have always felt it; and, our informant said, every man of them drove on, just like his leader, without looking behind to see if anybody followed. In they went, striking

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right and left, and in a moment or two, they had charged once or twice through the fight, and it was quelled.

Sheridan was an efficient manager of these Indians, and was popular with them, too. Their wild, keen instincts appreciate courage and energy, sense and kindness, quite as readily as do civilized men.

When the rebellion broke out, Sheridan was ordered East, and on May 14, 1861, was commissioned captain in the Thirteenth Regular Infantry. He was soon sent to Missouri, where his first actual service in the war was a term of office as president of a board for auditing military claims. He was soon, however, sent into the field as chief quartermaster and commissary under Gen. Curtis, and in that capacity served through the brilliant and victorious, but terribly severe campaign in which the desperate battle of Pea Ridge was fought. At this time his professional ambition was not very high, for he observed one day that “he was the sixty-fourth captain on the list, and with the chances of war might soon be a major.”

Sheridan is, however, thoroughly modest, and among ladies is—or was—even excessively bashful. There is an amusing story on this point about this very campaign. It is, that Sheridan, too bashful to seek for himself the company of a certain young lady near Springfield, used to furnish a horse and carriage to a smart young clerk of his, conditionally that the said clerk should take the young lady out to drive and entertain her—very much as Captain Miles Standish is said to have once deputed John Alden on a similar errand. The clerk did so, while Captain Sheridan

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stood in the door and experienced a shy delight in seeing how well the substitute did duty. No end is known for this story—except, indeed, that Captain Sheridan did not marry the lady.

There is on record some reminiscences of Sheridan’s character as an officer in this campaign, which paint him in a very agreeable light, as at once energetic and thorough in duty, and kindly in feeling and manner. It was a fellow-officer who thus wrote:

“The enlisted men on duty at headquarters, or in his own bureau, remember him kindly. Not a clerk or orderly but treasures some act of kindness done by Captain Sheridan. Never forgetting, nor allowing others to forget, the respect due to him and his position, he was yet the most approachable officer at headquarters. His knowledge of the regulations and customs of the army, and of all professional minutiae, were ever at the disposal of any proper inquirer. Private soldiers are seldom allowed to carry away as pleasant and kindly recollections of a superior as those with which Captain Sheridan endowed us. * * * No man has risen more rapidly with less jealously, if the feelings entertained by his old associates of the Army of the Southwest are any criterion.”

Sheridan’s next service was as General Halleck’s chief quartermaster in the Corinth campaign. Halleck seems to have thought very well of Sheridan from the first, though apparently rather as a trustworthy organizer and manager, than as such a military son of thunder as he has turned out to be. After a time the nature of the war in those parts occasioned a great demand for cavalry officers, and Sheridan being pitched

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upon for one, was on May 27, 1862, commissioned colonel of the 2d Michigan Cavalry, and was at once sent into the field to help impede the retreat of the rebels when they should evacuate Corinth.

In this and other similar work of that campaign, Sheridan became at once known to the army and to his superiors as a splendid officer, and from that time forward he rose and rose, up to the very last scene of the Virginia campaign, where he wielded the troops that struck the most telling of the final blows against Lee.

His first important service was to take part in Elliott’s Booneville expedition. In June he had a cavalry combat with the butcher Forrest, and beat him, and was made acting brigadier. In July, having two regiments with him, he was attacked by the rebel Chalmers with six thousand men. Sheridan’s position was strong enough, but he saw that he would shortly be surrounded and starved out by mere weight of numbers. So he contrived a neat and effective surprise; risky, it is true; but it is exactly the character of an able commander to take risks at the right time, and not lose. Sheridan sent round to the enemy’s rear, by a long detour, a force of about ninety troopers, with instructions to fall on at a given time, when he would attack in concert with them. This was done; the bold squad fired so fast from their repeating carbines that the rebels, startled and perplexed, could not estimate on the probable number attacking them, and were thrown into confusion. At this moment, Sheridan charged in front with his whole force, and in his own manner, and Chalmers’ men, instantly breaking, fled in total rout, and were pursued twenty miles, leav-

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ing the whole road strewn with weapons, accoutrements and baggage thrown away in their flight. General Grant, at this time Sheridan’s department commander, reported in strong commendation of Sheridan’s conduct in this affair, and asked a brigadier’s commission for him, which was accordingly given, dated July 15^th, the day of Chalmers’ first attack. Sheridan seems to like to be attacked. He is sure of himself and of his men, conscious of his own coolness, view of the field, recognition of the “critical five seconds,” and promptness in moving, and he prepares a return stroke apparently quite as gladly as he administers a first assault.

When, in the summer of 1862, General Bragg advanced by a line far east of the Union forces in the valley of the Mississippi, with the idea of reaching the Ohio, and carrying the war into the North, Grant sent Sheridan to Buell, commanding in Kentucky, who gave him a division and placed him in command of Louisville. Here Sheridan in one night completed a tolerable line of defence, and waited with confidence for an attack, but Bragg never got so far. On Bragg’s retreat was fought the battle of Perrysville, which was given by the rebel leader to gain time for his trains to escape from the rapid pursuit of the Union army. In this battle, Sheridan with his division held the key of the Union position, repulsed several desperate assaults, and twice, charging in his turn, drove the rebels from their positions before him. His division lost heavily, but he inflicted heavier losses on the rebels, and his prompt tactics and keen fighting saved the Union army from defeat.

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In the terrible fight of Stone river, or Murfreesboro’, Sheridan’s part, instead of being merely creditable or handsome, was glorious and decisive. But for him, that great battle would have been a tremendous defeat. How desperate the need of the crisis that Sheridan met there, and how well he met it, may somewhat appear from the terms used by the best historian thus far of that battle, in prefacing the detailed account which he gives of the fighting of Sheridan and his men. Mr. Swinton says:

“The difference between troops is great; the difference between officers is immensely greater. While the two right divisions of McCook were being assailed and brushed away, an equal hostile pressure fell upon his left division (Sheridan’s). But here a quite other result attended the enemy’s efforts; for not only were the direct attacks repulsed with great slaughter, but when the flank of the division was uncovered by the withdrawal of the troops on its right, its commander effecting a skilful change of front threw his men into position at right angles with his former line, and having thus made for himself a new flank, buffeted with such determined vigor and such rapid turns of offence, that for two hours he held the Confederates at bay—hours precious, priceless, wrenched from fate and an exultant foe by the skill and courage of this officer, and bought by the blood of his valiant men. This officer was Brigadier-General P. H. Sheridan.”

Few fights were ever more splendidly soldierly than this of Sheridan’s. We cannot detail it; but when left with his flank totally uncovered, and where he would have been perfectly justified in retreating, he

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changed front under fire—the most difficult of all military manoeuvres, repulsed the triumphant enemy four times, held his ground until all three of his brigade commanders were shot; fought until all his ammunition was gone, and no more to be had; then took to charging with the cold steel; and when at last he had to retreat, he brought off in good order the force that was left, “with compact ranks and empty cartridge boxes,” having lost seventeen hundred and ninety-six brave men, and having gained the time which saved the battle; and reporting to Rosecrans, he said with sorrow, “Here is all that are left.” The hot blooded Rousseau, who had been sent with his reserves into the dark, close cedar thickets where Sheridan was fighting, described the scene in words that enable the imagination to conceive what must have been the reality of which a soldier spoke thus:

“I knew it was hell in there before I got in, but I was convinced of it when I saw Phil Sheridan, with hat in one hand and sword in the other, fighting as if he were the devil incarnate, or had a fresh indulgence from Father Tracy every five minutes.”

Father Tracy was Rosecrans’ chaplain—Rosecrans and Sheridan both being Catholics. It may be added that those who know Sheridan’s battle manners, may perhaps suspect that he needed indulgence for some offence in words as well as deeds. Gen. Sheridan was made major-general for his services at Murfreesboro’.

We cannot do more than hastily sum up the later and even more brilliant portion of Sheridan’s splendid career; and indeed it is so much better known that the task is the less needful. Sheridan was active and

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useful during Rosecrans’ advance on Chattanooga. At the defeat of Chickamauga, his services were so conspicuous in making the best of a bad matter, that Rosecrans in his report, “commended him to his country.”

Grant now succeeded Rosecrans, and gained the battle of Chattanooga, Monday, Nov. 23, 1863. In the storming of the Missionary Ridge, which was the central glory of that fight, Sheridan and his men bore a conspicuous part. When Grant was made Lieutenant General, he quickly ordered Sheridan to report at Washington. Sheridan went, not knowing whether for praise or blame, and was placed in command of all the cavalry of the Army of the Potomac. When Grant crossed the Rapidan, and began that bloody and toilsome, but shattering and finally decisive series of movements which ended with the surrender of the Rebellion, Sheridan and his horsemen were employed in reconnoitering and guarding trains. May 9^th, he set out on a rail around the rear of Lee’s army, in which he cut up communications, destroyed supplies, and rescued prisoners; beat the rebel cavalry, killing its leader, J. E. B. Stuart; penetrated within two miles of Richmond, thoroughly frightening the rebel capital; extricated his force from a very difficult position on the Chickahominy, by his peculiar style of swift manoeuvre and furious fighting; and came safe through at last to Butler’s headquarters.

On another similar expedition in June, he severely damaged the rebel routes of supply to Richmond from the north and west; and for some time after that, his cavalry were overrunning the country south of Peters-

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burg and Richmond, while Grant was establishing himself in the lines before Petersburg.

Sheridan’s great historic campaign in the Valley of Virginia was the crowning glory of his splendid career in the war; a career perhaps more brilliant with the gleams of battles than that of any other commander. This fatal valley had from the very beginning of the war been the opprobrium of the Union armies. From it came General Johnston and those forces that reinforced Beauregard at Bull Run, and turned that hap-hazard fight into a victory for the rebels. Through it, alternating with the ground east of the Blue Ridge, the rebels moved backward and forward, as they chose, like a checker-player in the “whip-row.” In it, one Union commander after another had been defeated and made to look ridiculous; and it was the road along which every invasion of the North, east of the mountains, was laid out, as a matter of course.

Sheridan turned this den of disgraces into a theatre all ablaze with victories. He was appointed to the command Aug. 7, 1864; for six or seven weeks simply covered the harvests from the rebel foragers; during September was at last given leave by Grant to deliver battle; September 19^th, defeated Early at Winchester; September 22d, defeated him again at Fisher’s Hill, whither he had retreated; and when the rebel commander retreated again to the far southern passes of the Blue Ridge, Sheridan laid the southern part of the valley thoroughly waste, to prevent the enemy from finding support in it; on the 19^th of October, after his army had been surprised by the persevering Early, defeated, and driven in disorder five miles, Sheridan

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faced it about, and turned the defeat into the most dramatic, brilliant and famous of all his victories.

In February of the following year, Sheridan took a place in that vast ring of bayonets and sabers with which Grant sought to envelop the remaining armies of the rebellion. On the 27^th of that month, he moved rapidly up the valley of his victories, ran over what was left of Early’s force, smashed it and captured two-thirds of it almost without stopping, then crossed the Ridge, destroyed the James river canal, and breaking up railroads and bridges as he went, rode across the country to White House, and thence once more joined Grant below Petersburg. Last of all, in the final campaign from March 29^th to Lee’s surrender on April 9^th, Sheridan and his troops were the strong left hand of Grant in all those operations; thrust furthest out around Lee, feeling and feeling after him, clutching him whenever there was a chance, crushing him like a vice at every grasp, and throttling him with relentless force, until the very power of further resistance was gone, and that proposed charge of Sheridan’s which was stopped by Lee’s flag of truce, would really have been made upon an almost helpless and disorganized mass of starving, worn-out soldiers and disordered wagon-trains.

General Sheridan’s administration as military governor at New Orleans, was a surprise to his friends, from its exhibition of broad and high administrative qualities. Yet there is much that is alike in the abilities of a good general and a good ruler. Gen. Grant is a very wise judge of men, and his brief and characteristic record of his estimate of Sheridan might

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have justified hopes equal to the actual result. To any one remembering also his early days of authority over the Yokimas in Oregon, it would doubtless have done so; for a Yokima community and the community of an “unreconstructed” southern rebel city are a good deal alike in many things. What Grant said of Sheridan was as follows, and was sent to Secretary Stanton just after Cedar Creek, and a little while before Sheridan’s appointment as Major-General in the Regular Army, in place of McClellan, resigned:

“CITY POINT, Thursday, Oct. 20, 8 p. m.

HON. E. M. STANTON, etc.:

I had a salute of one hundred guns from each of the armies here fired in honor of Sheridan’s last victory. Turning what bid fair to be a disaster into a glorious victory, stamps Sheridan what I always thought him, one of the ablest of generals.

U. S. GRANT, Lieutenant-General.”

The extraordinary series of popular ovations which have attended Sheridan’s recent tour through part of the North, have proved that he is profoundly admired, honored and loved by all good citizens; and unless we except Grant, probably Sheridan is the most popular—and deservedly the most popular—of all the commanders in the war. Such a popularity, and won not by words but by deeds, is an enviable possession.

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CHAPTER XIV.

WILLIAM T. SHERMAN.

The Result of Eastern Blood and Western Developments—Lincoln, Grant, Chase and Sherman Specimens of it—The Sherman Family Character—Hon. Thomas Ewing adopts Sherman—Character of the Boy—He Enters West Point—His Peculiar Traits Showing thus Early—How he Treated his “Pleb”—His Early Military Service—His Appearance as First Lieutenant—Marries and Resigns—Banker at San Francisco—Superintendent of Louisiana Military Academy—His Noble Letter Resigning the Superintendency—He Foresees a Great War—Cameron and Lincoln Think not—Sherman at Bull Run—He Goes to Kentucky—Wants Two Hundred Thousand Troops—The False Report of his Insanity—Joins Grant; His Services at Shiloh—Services in the Vicksburg Campaigns—Endurance of Sherman and his Army—Sherman’s estimate of Grant—How to live on the enemy—Prepares to move from Atlanta—The Great March—His Courtesy to the Colored People—His Foresight in War—Sherman on Office-Holding.

Many men of a very lofty grade of power and excellence have arisen in our country, among a class who may be described as of Eastern blood but Western development. They have themselves been born at the East, or else their parents had either lived there or had been trained in the ways of the East. Then, growing up in the freer atmosphere, the more spontaneous life, the larger scale of being, of the West, they have as it were, themselves enlarged in mind, and have seemingly become better fitted to cope with vast executive problems. Thus, President Lincoln was of Eastern Quaker blood; General Grant, of Connecticut blood; Secretary Chase, of New Hampshire blood; General Sherman, of Connecticut blood; but they were all either of Western birth or else trained up in Western habits of thought, sentiment and action. The

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West is larger. Stronger, freer, than the East, and it affords a better opportunity for great, spontaneous and powerful men.

Perhaps no family in the whole United States was better adapted to first-class men by this process than the Shermans’. For generations they have been strong, practical, thoughtful minds, employed in the highest occupations, laborious and efficient in action, pure and lofty in moral tone and character. Roger Minot Sherman, the Revolutionary statesman, was of this stock, though not in the same direct line with the General. General Sherman’s grandfather, Hon. Taylor Sherman, was long a judge in Connecticut, and his father, Hon. Charles R. Sherman, was also a judge, having occupied the bench of the Superior Court of Ohio during the last six years of his life. He died in 1829, leaving his widow in narrow circumstances, with eleven children. Of these, Charles T. Sherman, the eldest, has since been a successful lawyer at Washington; William Tecumseh, the General, was the sixth, and John, the energetic, loyal and useful Senator from Ohio, the seventh. The name of Tecumseh was given in consequence of Judge Sherman’s admiration of the noble qualities of that famous chief.

Thomas Ewing, the eminent Whig politician, speaker and statesman, had been an intimate personal friend of Judge Sherman, and when the boy, in those days commonly called by the unlovely nickname of “Cump,” from his Indian name of Tecumseh, was about nine years old, Mr. Ewing kindly adopted him and assumed the entire charge of his support and education.

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Mr. Ewing, in speaking to one of General Sherman’s biographers of his character as a boy, described him as not particularly noticeable otherwise than as a good scholar and a steady, honest, intelligent fellow. He said that he “never knew so young a boy who would do an errand so promptly and correctly as he did. He was transparently honest, faithful, and reliable. Studious and correct in his habits, his progress in education was steady and substantial.”

In 1836, Mr. Ewing was a member of Congress from Ohio, and having the right to nominate a cadet at West Point, he offered the appointment to his adopted son, who gladly accepted it, and went successfully through the course of study, graduating in 1840. It is a good illustration of the wholesome stringency of the discipline there, that Sherman’s class was a hundred and forty strong when it entered, but only forty-two were left to graduate. The rest had fainted by the way for lack of knowledge or energy, or had been dismissed for some fault. In this “Gideon’s band” of forty-two, Sherman stood sixth. A short extract from one of his letters while a cadet shows a curious specimen of the same mixture of peremptory sternness in exacting duties and substantial kindness to those who deserved it but no others, which have so often been noted in him since. He writes about the freshman who was according to custom under his particular charge, by the local appellation of a “pleb,” as follows:

“As to lording it over the plebs, * * * I had only one, whom I made, of course, tend to a pleb’s duty, such as bringing water, policing the tent, clean-

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ing my gun and accoutrements and the like, and repaid in the usual and cheap coin—advice; and since we have commenced studying, I make him bone (i. e. study,) and explain to him the difficult parts of algebra and the French grammar, since he is a good one and a fine fellow; but should he not carry himself straight I should have him found (i. e., rejected at examination) in January and sent off, that being the usual way in such cases, and then take his bed, table and chair, to pay for the Christmas spree.” It is evident that while he was well enough satisfied to help his “fine fellow,” he would not have cried much while he saw him turned away if for sufficient cause, or when he proceeded to confiscate his scanty furniture.

Sherman was commissioned at graduating, Second Lieutenant in the third U. S. Artillery; in November 1841 joined his company at Fort Pierce, in East Florida; in January 1842 became First Lieutenant, and served successfully at different points in Florida, at Fort Morgan on Mobile Point, Fort Moultrie in Charleston Harbor, and other posts in the South, for some years. During this time the natural elevation of his character saved him from the frivolous or shameful indulgences too often fallen into by officers on garrison duty; he read and studied works on his profession, acquainted himself with the common law, and amused himself with petting birds and beasts, fishing, hunting and occasionally with visiting.

When the Mexican War broke out he was at first sent to recruiting duty, but he quickly set to work to beg for active service, and on June 29, 1846, he at last received an order to join his company at New York,

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on the way to California, to meet Kearny’s expedition across the plains. He set out the very next day, without waiting to visit even Miss Ewing, his guardian’s daughter, to whom he was engaged, and sailed with his company in the storeship Lexington, under the command of Lieut. Theodorus Bailey, now Rear-Admiral. General Ord and General Halleck were fellow lieutenants with Sherman, and sailed with him. An account written by a shipmate during this voyage, thus describes Sherman:

“The first lieutenant was a tall, spare man, apparently about thirty years of age, with sandy hair and whiskers, and a reddish complexion. Grave in his demeanor, erect and soldierly in his bearing, he was especially noticeable for the faded and threadbare appearance of his uniform. * * * He was characterized at this time by entire devotion to his profession in all its details. His care for both the comfort and discipline of his men was constant and unwearied.”

His California campaigns were not very adventurous, but he became reputed an excellent business officer in his staff appointment as assistant adjutant-general. Returning in 1850, he married Miss Ewing, May 1^st, of that year. In September he was made a commissary of subsistence with the rank of Captain; in March 1851, was commissioned brevet Captain, “for meritorious services in California,” and in September 1853, seeing no prospects in the army that satisfied him, he resigned, and became manager of Lucas, Miner & Co’s branch banking house at San Francisco.

It is probable that the superintendency of the Louisiana State Military Academy, which with a salary of

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$5,000 was offered to him and accepted in 1860, was intended to secure his own co-operation in case of secession, or at least his services in training southern officers. But his term of office was not long; although as has been sarcastically observed, “since then, he has had the opportunity to still further educate his former pupils.” He had not been in his new post a half year, when, foreseeing the necessary result of the counsels of the South, and not waiting for the overt act which almost all other good citizens needed to open their eyes, he decided upon his course, and wrote to Governor Moore a letter which has been often printed, but which cannot be too often printed; a noble and simple avowal of patriotic principle and duty. It was as follows:

January 8, 1861.

“GOVERNOR THOMAS O. MOORE, Baton Rouge, Louisiana:

“Sir:—As I occupy a quasi-military position under this State, I deem it proper to acquaint you that I accepted such a position when Louisiana was a State in the Union, and when the motto of the seminary was inserted in marble over the main door, ‘By the liberality of the General Government of the United States. The Union: Esto Perpetua.’

“Recent events foreshadow a great change, and it becomes all men to choose. If Louisiana withdraws from the Federal Union, I prefer to maintain my allegiance to the old Constitution as long as a fragment of it survives, and my longer stay here would be wrong in every sense of the word. In that event, I beg you will send or appoint some authorized agent to take charge of the arms and munitions of war here belong-

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ing to the State, or direct me what disposition should be made of them.

“And furthermore, as president of the Board of Supervisors, 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.

With great respect, &c.,

(Signed,) W. T. SHERMAN.”

The rebels had lost their general. His resignation was at once accepted, and Sherman went to St. Louis, where he had left his family, and impatient of idleness, became superintendent of a street railroad company, and so remained until after the surrender of Sumter.

He now went to Washington and offered his services to Government. Secretary Cameron replied, “The ebullition of feeling will soon subside; we shall not need many troops.” Mr. Lincoln replied, “We shall not need many men like you; the storm will soon blow over.” In short, Sherman could not make anybody believe him, and he experienced a good deal of the disagreeable fate of prophets of evil; and not for the last time either. But he was totally unmoved in his conviction; he refused to have any thing to do with raising three-months’ men, saying, “You might as well attempt to put out the flames of a burning house with a squirt-gun;” and he still vainly urged the government with all his might to fling the whole military power of the country at once upon the rebellion and

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crush the beginning of it. When, however, the regular army was enlarged, Sherman applied for a command in the new force, and Gen. McDowell readily procured him a commission as Colonel of the 13^th Regular Infantry, and in the meanwhile, the regiment not being yet raised, he served as brigadier in the battle of Bull Run, under Gen. Tyler, commanding a division.

In this defeat, Sherman and his brigade did very creditably. His promptitude in going into action, and his good fighting, were of great use in gaining the advantages of the beginning of the battle; he did not retreat until ordered to do so, and retired in comparatively good order. He used his natural freedom and plainness of speech in observing upon the conduct of his own officers and men during the battle, and made enemies thereby; but he had so clearly shown himself a good and ready soldier, that when his brother the Senator and the Ohio delegation urged his appointment as brigadier-general of volunteers it was soon given him, and after remaining in the Army of the Potomac until September, 1861, he was sent to Kentucky, as second in command under Gen. Anderson, commanding the department. A month afterwards, Anderson’s health having broken down, Sherman succeeded him.

In a few days, Mr. Secretary Cameron, and Adjutant-General Lorenzo Thomas, came to Louisville, in a hurry to have the new department commander beat the rebels and secure Kentucky to the Union. Sherman knew war, almost intuitively; he knew the resources and the spirit of the rebels, and the military characteristics of Kentucky, and of Tennessee behind

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it. “How many troops,” asked the Secretary of War, “do you require in your department?” “Sixty thousand,” answered Sherman, “to drive the enemy out of Kentucky; two hundred thousand to finish the war in this section.” This seems to have struck the two inquirers as sheer nonsense; and in the adjutant-general’s report, which—as if to help the rebels to as full information as possible—was at once printed in all the newspapers, with full particulars of the state of the armies at the west, Sherman’s estimate was barely announced, without explanation or comment. All those persons who understood less of war than Sherman, now at once set him down for a man of no sense or judgment. A disreputable newspaper correspondent, enraged at Sherman for some reason, seized the opportunity to set afloat a story that Sherman was actually crazy, and the lie was really believed by multitudes all over the United States. The war-prophet was misunderstood and despised again, even more remarkably than when he foretold a long war, before Bull Run. Sherman’s official superiors so far sympathized with this clamor as to supersede him by Gen. Buell, and to send him to Gen. Halleck, who had faith enough left in him to put him in charge of the recruiting rendezvous at Benton Barracks, St. Louis.

Here he remained, hard at work on mere details, all winter. When Grant, having taken Fort Henry, came down the Tennessee, and turning about, ascended the Cumberland, to attack Donelson, Gen. Sherman was ordered to Paducah, to superintend the sending forward of supplies and reinforcements, a duty which he performed with so much speed and efficiency, that

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Gen. Grant reported himself “greatly indebted for his promptness.”

After Donelson, Sherman was appointed to the fifth of the six divisions in which Grant organized the army with which he advanced by Nashville to Shiloh; the greenest of all the divisions, no part of it having been under fire, or even under military discipline. At the battle of Shiloh, Sherman’s troops, with the magnificent inborn courage of the western men, green as they were, fought like veterans; and his and McClernand’s divisions were the only part of Grant’s army that at all held their ground, and even this was only done after twice falling back to new positions, in consequence of the giving way of troops on either hand. It was with Sherman that Grant agreed, before he knew of the close approach of reinforcements, to attack in the morning; and after the disappointed Beauregard had retreated next day, it was Sherman who moved his division in pursuit; although the exhausted and disorganized condition of the troops prevented continuing the pursuit. He was severely wounded by a bullet through the left hand on the first day of the fight; bandaged the wound and kept on fighting; was wounded again the next day, and had three horses shot under him, but rode out the battle on the fourth. Though the very first battle in which he had held an independent command—for it was to a great degree such—so thoroughly was he master of the “profession in all its details,” to which he had seemed so devoted when a lieutenant on shipboard, that he seems to have found no embarrassment in using all the resources which any commander could have em-

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ployed in his place. Halleck, a man sparing of compliments, in asking that Sherman should be made major-general of volunteers, said: “It is the unanimous opinion here that Brigadier-General W. T. Sherman saved the fortunes of the day on the 6^th, and contributed largely to the glorious victory of the 7^th.”

And General Grant, whose noble friendship with Sherman, beginning about this time, has continued unbroken ever since, spoke subsequently in still more decided and generous terms, when asking for Sherman a commission as brigadier in the regular service. He wrote to the War Department:

“At the battle of Shiloh, on the first day, he held, with raw troops, the key point of the landing. It is no disparagement to any other officer to say, that I do not believe there was another division commander on the field who had the skill and experience to have done it. To his individual efforts I am indebted for the success of that battle.”

During the following operations against and around Corinth, Sherman and his division did most excellent service. He had now received his commission as a major-general of volunteers. When Grant became commander of the Department of the Tennessee, in July, 1862, at the time of Halleck’s appointment as general-in-chief, he placed Sherman in command of the bitterly perseveringly rebel city of Memphis, which Sherman governed sternly, shrewdly, thoroughly and well, under the laws of war, until autumn.

In Grant’s first attempt against Vicksburg, Sherman’s attack by Chickasaw Bluffs, was an important

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part of the plan. It failed, because the other parts—Grant’s march in consequence of the surrender of Holly Springs, and Banks’ movement from New Orleans for other reasons—did not succeed; but Grant, in afterwards examining the ground, said that Sherman’s arrangement was “admirable.”

The capture of the strong rebel fort at Arkansas Post, January 11, 1863, was a suggestion of General Sherman’s, who commanded the land force which carried the fort, after one day’s fire, with the hearty help of Admiral Porter’s fleet.

In Grant’s successive attempts against Vicksburg, Sherman was an indefatigable and most efficient helper. In the final move across the river south of the place, Sherman co-operated by amusing the enemy with a false attack at Haines’ Bluff, which was kept up with great ostentation during two days, a large rebel force being thus detained from going down the river to oppose Grant’s crossing there. In the series of marches and battles that cut off Johnston from Pemberton, destroyed the military importance for the time being of the city of Jackson, and drove Pemberton into the lines of Vicksburg; and during the siege, in effectually preventing any chance of relief from Johnston, Sherman’s services were constant and valuable. Instantly upon the surrender, he moved his army corps against Jackson, where Johnston had halted, and by way of finish to the campaign, drove him out, and thoroughly broke up the railroad lines meeting there. We quote again Grant’s frank acknowledgement of the services of his great lieutenant:

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“The siege of Vicksburg and last capture of Jackson and dispersion of Johnston’s army entitle Gen. Sherman to more credit than generally falls to the lot of one man to earn. His demonstration at Haines’ Bluff, * * * his rapid marches to join the army afterwards; his management at Jackson, Mississippi, in the first attack; his almost unequaled march from Jackson to Bridgeport, and passage of Black River; his securing Walnut Hills on the 18^th of May, attest his great merit as a soldier.”

General Sherman’s commission as brigadier in the regular army, dated July 4, 1863, the day of the fall of Vicksburg, reached him August 14^th, following; and we quote a passage of his letter to General Grant on the occasion, for the pleasant purpose of recording it near Grant’s expressions of obligation to Sherman:

“I had the satisfaction to receive last night the appointment as brigadier-general in the regular army, with a letter from General Halleck, very friendly and complimentary in its terms. I know that I owe this to your favor, and beg to acknowledge i and add, that I value the commission far less than the fact that this will associate my name with yours and McPherson’s in opening the Mississippi, an achievement the importance of which cannot be over-estimated.

“I beg to assure you of my deep personal attachment, and to express the hope that the chances of war will leave me to serve near and under you till the dawn of that peace for which we are contending, with the only purpose that it shall be honorable and lasting.”

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Rosecrans was defeated at Chickamauga by Bragg, Sept. 19^th and 20^th, 1863. On this, Grant was placed in command of the whole Military Division of the Mississippi, and Sherman under him over the Department of the Tennessee. He was at once set to march his troops four hundred miles across to Grant at Chattanooga; accomplished it with wonderful energy, skill and speed; commanded Grant’s left at the battle of Chattanooga, beginning the fight, and sustaining and drawing the rebel attacks until their center was weakened enough to enable the Union center under Thomas to storm Missionary Ridge, and win the battle. After the victory and the enemy’s pursuit, Sherman’s force was sent straightway northward a further hundred miles, to relieve Burnside, now perilously beset in Knoxville. Colonel Bowman thus powerfully states the task which this energetic and enduring commander and army performed:

“A large part of Sherman’s command had marched from Memphis, had gone into battle immediately on arriving at Chattanooga, and had had no rest since. In the late campaign officers and men had carried no luggage and provisions. The week before, they had left their camps, on the right bank of the Tennessee, with only two days’ rations, without a change of clothing, stripped for the fight, each officer and man, from the commanding general down, having but a single blanket or overcoat. They had now no provisions save what had been gathered by the road, and were ill supplied for such a march. Moreover, the weather was intensely cold. But twelve thousand of their fellow-soldiers were beleaguered in a mountain

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town eighty-four miles distant; they needed relief, and must have it in three days. This was enough. Without a murmur, without waiting for anything, the Army of the Tennessee directed its course upon Knoxville.”

This vigorous forced march was entirely successful; Longstreet, after one violent and vain assault against Burnside’s works, fled eastward into Virginia, and Sherman, returning and placing his troops in camp to rest and refresh, returned to Memphis. While there, March 10, 1864, he received that simple and noble letter from Grant, acknowledging the latter’s obligations to Sherman and McPherson, which we have copied in our chapter on General Grant. We quote Sherman’s reply, which is indeed not less interesting than the letter as a display of frank and manly friendship, and which moreover contains one of Sherman’s characteristic prophecies, viz., the final allusion to the winding up of the war by the “Great March,” and the siege of Richmond, when the West should once more have been made sure:

“DEAR GENERAL:—I have your more than kind and characteristic letter of the 4h inst. I will send a copy to General McPherson at once.

“You do yourself injustice and us too much honor in assigning to us too large a share of the merits which have led to your high advancement. I know you approve the friendship I have ever professed to you, and will permit me to continue, as heretofore, to manifest it on all proper occasions.

“You are now Washington’s legitimate successor, and occupy a position of almost dangerous elevation; but

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if you can continue, as heretofore, to be yourself, simple, honest and unpretending, you will enjoy through life the respect and love of friends, and the homage of millions of human beings, that will award you a large share in securing to them and their descendants a government of law and stability.

“I repeat, you do General McPherson and myself too much honor. At Belmont you manifested your traits—neither of us being near. At Donelson, also, you illustrated your whole character. I was not near, and General McPherson in too subordinate a capacity to influence you.

“Until you had won Donelson, I confess I was almost cowed by the terrible array of anarchical elements that presented themselves at every point; but that admitted a ray of light I have followed since.

“I believe you are 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 is the simple faith in success you have always manifested, which I can liken to nothing else than the faith a Christian has in the Saviour.

“This faith gave you victory at Shiloh and Vicksburg. Also, when you have completed your preparations, you go into battle without hesitation, as at Chattanooga—no doubts—no reverses; and I tell you 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 help me out, if alive.

“My only point of doubts was in your knowledge of grand strategy, and of books of science and histo-

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ry; but I confess, your common sense seems to have supplied all these.

“Now, as to the future. Don’t stay in Washington. Come West; take to yourself the whole Mississippi Valley. Let us make it dead sure—and I tell you, the Atlantic slopes and Pacific shores will follow its destiny, as sure as the limbs of a tree live or die with the main trunk. We have done much, but still much remains. Time and time’s influences are with us. We could almost afford to sit still, and let these influences work.

“Here lies the seat of the coming empire, and from the West, when our task is done, we will make short work of Charleston and Richmond, and the impoverished coast of the Atlantic.

Your sincere friend,

W. T. SHERMAN.”

When Grant was appointed Lieutenant-General, Sherman succeeded him in the great command of the Department of the Mississippi; and accompanying Grant from Nashville to Cincinnati on the road of the former to Washington, the two great commanders on the way and at the Burnet House in Cincinnati, agreed together upon the whole main structure of that colossal campaign which during the following thirteen months smote into annihilation all that remained of the military power of the rebellion.

Sherman at once set to work to accumulate stores sufficient for a campaign, and his own statements of his motives and views in so doing, are so comically like his doctrines about his “pleb” when a cadet at West

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Point, that we quote a couple of passages. Having put a stop to the government issues of rations to the poor of East Tennessee, he says:

“At first my orders operated very hardly, but * * * no actual suffering resulted, and I trust that those who clamored at the cruelty and hardships of the day have already seen in the result a perfect justification of my course.”

Seeing it himself, it is moreover clear that if they did not, it would not particularly distress him. In stating how he proposed to live if he marched into Georgia, he is as independently and rigidly just:

“Georgia has a million of inhabitants. If they can live, we should not starve. If the enemy interrupt my communications, I will be absolved from all obligations to subsist on my own resources, but feel perfectly justified in taking whatever and wherever I can find. I will inspire my command, if successful, with my feelings, and that beef and salt are all that are absolutely necessary to life, and parched corn fed General Jackson’s army once, on that very ground.”

All things being ready, Sherman moved from Chattanooga on May 6^th, 1864, and by a series of laborious marches, skillful manoeuvres and well fought battles, flanked or drove Johnston backwards from one strong post to another, until on the 17^th of July, Jefferson Davis greatly simplified and shortened Sherman’s problem by putting the rash and imcompetent Hood in the place of the skillful and persevering soldier who had with less than half Sherman’s force, by using the natural advantages of the country, made him take seventy-two days to advance a hundred miles, and at the end

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of that time actually had more troops than at first, while Sherman had many less. In fact, Johnston was on the very point of making a dangerous attack on Sherman at the right point, when Hood took command, at once attacked on the wrong one, and was defeated. Still advancing, Sherman manoeuvred Hood out of Atlanta; saw that mad bull of a general set off some months later, head down and eyes shut, on his way to dash himself against the steady strength of Thomas at Nashville; and turning back to Atlanta, he prepared for his Great March to the Sea.

He had already cleaned Atlanta clean of rebels; exporting all of them within their own military lines, and meeting their own and also Hood’s appeals, respectively piteous and enraged, with sarcastic answers in his own inimitable style of cold sharp just reasoning. He made the city nothing but a place of arms; and having almost exactly the force of all arms that he had required for his purpose—for his Cassandra days were over, and his country was by this time glad and prompt to believe him and give him the tools he needed to do its work with—he issued his orders of march on November 9^th; sent his last dispatch from the interior to Washington, on the 11^th; his army was cut free from its former communications next day; on the 14^th it was concentrated at Atlanta; next day two hundred acres of buildings, including all but the private dwellings of the city were burned or blown up; a Massachusetts brigade, its band playing the wonderful “John Brown” folk-song, was the last to leave the city; and with all the railroads effectually ruined behind it, and a parting message to General

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Thomas that “All is well,” all organized, provisioned, and stripped down to the very last limit of impediments, “the Lost Army” and its great leader set their faces southward and disappeared from the sight of their loyal countrymen for four weeks.

We cannot here repeat the well known and romantic story of the Great March. With scarcely any serious opposition, Sherman, an unsurpassed master in the art of moving great armies, deluded what few opponents there were, with feints and marches on this side and on that, or brushed them away if they stood, and pierced straight through the very heart of the rebellion to Savannah; stormed Fort McAllister, opened communication with the fleet, drove Hardee out of Savannah, and presented the city and 25,000 bales of cotton, a “Christmas present” to President Lincoln; then turning northward, resumed his deadly way along the vitals of the confederacy, doing exactly what he had foretold in his letter to Grant; and sure enough, they did between them, “make short work of Charleston and Richmond and the impoverished coast of the Atlantic.” The surrender of Lee was quickly followed by that of Johnston, and except for the small force which for a short time remained in arms beyond the Mississippi, the rebellion was ended.

We cannot even give specimen extracts of the many strongly and clearly worded papers written by General Sherman during his military career, as general orders, directions for the government of captured places or property, or discussions of points of military or civil law. But we must transcribe the noblest compliment which the great soldier ever received; the

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testimony of the colored clergyman, Rev. Garrison Frazier, at Savannah, during the conferences there for organizing the freedmen, to the merits of General Sherman towards the race. Mr. Frazier said:

“We looked upon General Sherman prior to his arrival as a man in the providence of God specially set apart to accomplish this work, and we unanimously feel inexpressible gratitude to him, looking upon him as a man that should be honored for the faithful performance of his duty. Some of us called on him immediately upon his arrival, and it is probable he would not meet the Secretary with more courtesy than he met us. His conduct and deportment towards us characterized him as a friend and a gentleman. We have confidence in General Sherman, and think whatever concerns us could not be under better management.”

Of Sherman’s characteristics as a general, we shall also give one single trait illustrating the most wonderful of them all—his almost divining foresight. We have more than once showed how he foresaw only too much for his own comfort; but in the present instance he kept the matter to himself. It was, a preparation when the war broke out for that very march which he foretold in his letter to Grant and afterwards made. This preparation consisted in his obtaining from the Census Bureau at Washington a map of the “Cotton States,” with a table giving the latest census returns of the cattle, horses and other products of each county in them. On the basis of this he studied the South for three years; and when the time for the march came, he knew substantially the whole resources of the country he was to pass through.

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General Sherman’s negotiations with Johnston, their disapproval by Government, and his quarrel in consequence with General Halleck and Secretary Stanton were unfortunate; but it would be utterly absurd to admit for a moment that his motives in what he did were other than the very best; and his own explanation of the affair shows that he was following out a policy which would have been in full harmony with President Lincoln’s own feelings, as communicated to Sherman on the subject.

Perhaps General Sherman may some day be selected for some high civil office. He is a man perhaps only of too lofty character and too brilliant genius to be harnessed into political traces. He was once nominated for something or other at San Francisco, but when the “committee” came to tell him, he answered sarcastically, “Gentlemen, I am not eligible; I am not properly educated to hold office!” Col. Bowman observes, “This nomination was the commencement of his political career, and his reply was the end of it.” It is true in too many cases that a true soldier, like a good citizen, will find his very virtues the insurmountable obstacles to political success. This is perhaps likely to remain the case unless the rule shall come into vogue that nobody shall have an office who lets it be known that he wants it.