TRIBUTES.
A NATIONAL OUTBURST OF GRIEF--THE PRESIDENT'S MESSAGE TO
CONGRESS--THE SENATE'S MEMORIAL RESOLUTIONS--SENATOR HAWLEY'S
EULOGY--A TOUCHING TRIBUTE FROM A SOUTHERN SENATOR--SPEECHES
BY SENATORS WHO WERE ALSO SOLDIERS--ELOQUENT WORDS FROM
LAWRENCE BARRETT--JUDGE GRESHAM RECALLS SHERMAN'S PROPHETIC
WORDS--A COMPARISON BETWEEN SHERMAN AND LEE--GENERAL SLOCUM'S
REMINISCENCES--CHAUNCEY DEPEW ON SHERMAN IN SOCIAL LIFE.
During General Sherman's last illness the entire nation listened with
anxious suspense to every word of news that came from his home, and
millions of hearts hourly offered fervent prayers for his recovery. The
announcement of his death was not unexpected, for it had been known
for several days that recovery was impossible; but it was none the
less a shock to the public. Everywhere expressions of grief were heard
and emblems of mourning were seen. Flags were placed at half-mast and
buildings draped in black; bells were tolled and memorial meetings
held. Messages of sympathy and condolence came to his family by mail
and telegraph from every part of the world. Only a few irreconcilable
spirits here and there in the South spoke against him, and made his
death an occasion for venting their spleen against the patriot who had
subdued the rebellion.
When the news of Sherman's death reached Washington, the President,
who had himself been an officer in Sherman's army in Georgia, sent a
message announcing the fact to Congress, in which he said:
"The death of William Tecumseh Sherman is an event that will bring
sorrow to the heart of every patriotic citizen. No living American was
so loved and venerated as he. To look upon his face, to hear his name,
was to have one's love of country intensified. He served his country,
not for fame, not out of a sense of professional duty, but for love
of the flag and of the beneficent civil institutions of which it was
the emblem. He was an ideal soldier, and shared to the fullest the
_esprit de corps_ of the army; but he cherished the civil institutions
organized under the Constitution, and was a soldier only that these
might be perpetuated in undiminished usefulness and honor. He was in
nothing an imitator.
"A profound student of military science and precedent, he drew
from them principles and suggestions, and so adapted them to novel
conditions that his campaigns will continue to be the profitable study
of the military profession throughout the world. His general nature
made him comrade to every soldier of the great Union Army. No presence
was so welcome and inspiring at the camp-fire or commandery as his.
His career was complete; his honors were full. He had received from
the Government the highest rank known to our military establishment,
and from the people unstinted gratitude and love. No word of mine can
add to his fame. His death has followed in startling quickness that
of the Admiral of the Navy; and it is a sad and notable incident that
when the Department under which he served shall have put on the usual
emblems of mourning, four of the eight Executive Departments will be
simultaneously draped in black, and one other has but to-day removed
the crape from its walls."
Senator Hawley, of Connecticut, at once offered the following
resolutions, which were unanimously adopted by the Senate:
"_Resolved_, That the Senate receive with profound sorrow the
announcement of the death of William Tecumseh Sherman, late General of
the armies of the United States.
"_Resolved_, That the Senate renews its acknowledgment of the
inestimable services which he rendered to his country in the day of its
extreme peril, laments the great loss which the country has sustained,
and deeply sympathizes with his family in its bereavement.
"_Resolved_, That a copy of these resolutions be forwarded to the
family of the deceased."
Mr. Hawley said: "Mr. President, at this hour, the Senate, the
Congress and the people of the United States are one family. What we
have been daily expecting has happened; General Sherman has received
and obeyed his last order. He was a great soldier by the judgment
of the great soldiers of the world. In time of peace he had been a
great citizen, glowing and abounding with love of country and of all
humanity. His glorious soul appeared in every look, gesture and word.
The history of our country is rich in soldiers who have set examples
of simple soldierly obedience to the civil law and of self-abnegation.
Washington, Grant, Sheridan and Sherman lead the list. Sherman was
the last of the illustrious trio who were by universal consent the
foremost figures in the armies of the Union in the late war. Among the
precious traditions to pass into our history for the admiration of the
old and the instruction of the young was their friendship, their most
harmonious co-operation, without a shadow of ambition or pride. When
General Grant was called to Washington to take command of the armies of
the Union, his great heart did not forget the men who stood by him."
Here Mr. Hawley read the letter from Grant to Sherman, written at that
time, expressing thanks to him and McPherson as the men, above all
others, to whom he owed success, and Sherman's letter, in reply, saying
that General Grant did himself injustice and them too much honor.
Mr. Hawley closed his remarks, his voice frequently giving way from
grief and emotion, by reading the following passages from Bunyan's
"Pilgrim's Progress": "After this it was noised about that Mr.
Valiant-for-Truth was taken with a summons. When he understood it he
called for his friends and told them of it. Then said he, 'I am going
to my fathers; and though with great difficulty I got hither, yet now
I do not repent me of all the trouble I have been at to arrive where
I am. My sword I give to him that shall succeed me in my pilgrimage,
and my courage and skill to him that can get them. My marks and scars
I carry with me, to be a witness for me that I have fought His battles
who will now be a rewarder.' When the day that he must go hence was
come many accompanied him to the river side, into which as he went he
said: 'Death, where is thy sting?' And as he went down deeper he said:
'Grave, where is thy victory?' So he passed over and all the trumpets
sounded for him on the other side."
Senator Morgan, of Alabama, said: "On this occasion of National
solemnity I would lead the thoughts and sympathies of the American
Senate back to those days in our history when General Sherman was, by
a choice greatly honorable to his nature, a citizen of the State of
Louisiana, and presided over a college for the instructions of Southern
youth in the arts of war and the arts of peace. Those were not worse
days than some we have seen during the last half of this century. In
those days, notwithstanding the conditions of the South, in view of
its institutions inherited from the older States of the East, every
American was as welcome in Louisiana and the South as he was elsewhere
in the Union. We are gradually and surely returning to that cordial
state of feeling which was unhappily interrupted by the Civil War.
"Our fathers taught us that it was the highest patriotism to defend
the Constitution of the country. But they had left within its body
guarantees of an institution that the will of the majority finally
determined should no longer exist and which put the conscience of the
people to the severest test. Looking back now to the beginning of
this century and to the conflict of opinion and of material interests
engendered by those guarantees, we can see that they never could have
been stricken out of the organic law except by a conflict of arms. The
conflict came, as it was bound to come, and Americans became enemies,
as they were bound to be, in the settlement of issues that involved so
much of money, such radical political results and the pride of a great
and illustrious race of people. The power rested with the victors at
the close of the conflict, but not all the honors of the desperate
warfare. Indeed, the survivors are now winning honors, enriched with
justice and magnanimity, not less worthy than those who won the battles
in their labors to restore the country to its former feeling of
fraternal regard and to unity of sentiment and action and to promote
its welfare. The fidelity of the great General who has just departed in
the ripeness of age, and with a history marked by devotion to his flag,
was the true and simple faith of an American to his convictions of duty.
"We differed with him and contested campaigns and battlefields with
him; but we welcome the history of the great soldier as the proud
inheritance of our country. We do this as cordially and as sincerely as
we gave him welcome in the South, as one of our people, when our sons
were confided to his care, in a relation that (next to paternity) had
its influence upon the young men of the country. The great military
leaders on both sides of our Civil War are rapidly marching across the
border to a land where history and truth and justice must decide upon
every man's career. When they meet there, they will be happy to find
that the honor of human actions is not always measured by their wisdom
but by the motives in which they had their origin. I cherish the proud
belief that the heroes of the Civil War will find that, measured by
this standard, none of them on either side were delinquent, and they
will be happy in an association that will never end--and will never
be disturbed by an evil thought, jealousy or distrust. When a line so
narrow divides us from those high courts in which our actions are to
be judged by their motives, and when so many millions now living, and
increasing millions to follow, are to be affected by the wisdom of our
enactments, we will do well to give up this day to reflection upon our
duties and (in sympathy with this great country) to dedicate the day to
his memory. In such a retrospect we shall find an admonition that an
American Senate should meet, on this side of the fatal line of death,
as the American Generals meet on the other side, to render justice to
each other and to make our beloved country as happy, comparatively, as
we should wish the great beyond to be to those great spirits."
Senator Manderson said that as the hours of the last two or three days
passed away he had not had the heart to make such preparation for the
event which he had feared and dreaded, as might seem to be meet and
appropriate. The death of General Sherman came (although one might have
been prepared for it) as the unexpected. It was a day of mourning and
grief. Here, at the Capital of the Nation, lay the body of the great
Admiral, the chief of the Navy; and in New York was being prepared for
the last sad rites the corpse of the greatest military genius which
the Nation had produced. General Sherman had been great not only as a
military leader, but he had been great as a civilian. Who was there
that had heard him tell of the events of his wonderful career who had
not been filled with admiration and respect for his abilities? It
seemed to him that General Sherman was perhaps the only man in the
North who, in the early days of the war, seemed to appreciate what the
terrible conflict meant It was recollected how it was said in 1861
that he must be insane to make the suggestions which he made. These
suggestions were so startling to the country that he (Mr. Manderson)
did not wonder that men doubted General Sherman's sanity. Like men of
great genius, he seemed to have lived in that debatable ground existing
between the line of perfect sanity and insanity'.
After a review of General Sherman's military career, opening at Shiloh
and closing at Atlanta, Mr. Manderson read General Sherman's letter
to the Mayor and Common Council of Atlanta, beginning: "We must have
peace, not only at Atlanta, but in all America."
In conclusion. Mr. Manderson said: "General Sherman was estimable as
a citizen, and as fully appreciated the duties of a civilian, as he
was admirable as a soldier. But this strife, which we have watched for
the last few days, has ceased. The conflict has ended. The Nation has
witnessed it. Sixty millions of people have stood in silence, watching
for the supreme result. Death, ever victorious, is again a victor. A
great conqueror is himself conquered. Our Captain lies dead. The pale
lip sayeth to the sunken eye: 'Where is thy kindly glance? And where
thy winning smile?'"
Senator Davis said he could hardly trust himself to speak. He had been
a soldier under General Sherman, and had received acts of kindness from
him when he was a subaltern. As the years had gone by, and the widening
avenues of life had opened up ways of promotion, that acquaintance had
ripened into friendship, and, he might say, into intimacy. He had first
seen General Sherman at the siege of Vicksburg, twenty-eight years
ago, when he was the very incarnation of war; but to-day that spirit
had taken up its rest in the everlasting tabernacle of death. It was
fit that the clanging of the great city should be hushed in silence,
and that the functions of government should be suspended while the
soul of the great commander was passing to Him who gives and Him who
takes away. No more were heard the thunders of the captains, and the
shouting. The soul of the great warrior had passed and was standing in
judgment before Him who was the God of Battles, and was also the God of
Love.
Senator Pierce, as one of the soldiers who had served under General
Sherman in the Army of the Tennessee, gave some reminiscences of the
war and paid a glowing eulogy to his old commander.
Senator Evarts said that the afflicting intelligence of the death of
General Sherman had touched the Senate with the deepest sensibilities;
that that grief was not a private grief; nor was it limited by any
narrower bounds than those of the whole country. The affections of the
people toward its honorable and honored men did not always find a warm
effusion, because circumstances might not have brought the personal
career, the personal traits, the personal affectionate disposition
of great men, to the close and general observation of the people at
large. But of General Sherman no such observation could be truly made.
Whatever of affection and of grief Senators might feel was felt,
perhaps, more intensely in the hearts of the whole people. To observers
of his death, as they had been of his life, General Sherman had been
yesterday the most celebrated living American. He was now added to
that longer and more illustrious list of celebrated men of the country
for the hundred years of National life. One star differed from another
star in glory, but yet all of those stars had a glory to which nothing
could be added by eulogy, and from which nothing could be taken away by
detraction. They shone in their own effulgence, and borrowed no light
from honor or respect. It had been said already that General Sherman
was the last of the commanders. If those who had passed out of life
still watched over and took interest in what transpired in this world
(and no one doubted it), what great shades must have surrounded the
death-bed of General Sherman! And who could imagine a greater death-bed
for a great life than that which had been watched over in a neighboring
city during the week? It had been reserved for him (Mr. Evarts) at the
declining hour of the day, as a Senator from the State which General
Sherman had honored by his late home, and in which he had died, to
move, out of respect to his memory, that the Senate do now adjourn.
Lawrence Barrett, the eminent actor, paid this eloquent tribute to his
friend in the columns of _The New York Tribune_:
"The funeral cortege has passed. The emblems of war, which had
for many years been laid aside, have once again been seen sadly
embellishing the soldierly equipage whereupon the lifeless body rests.
Old comrades, lifelong friends, statesmen and great civilians have
followed the mournful pageant with fruitless regrets. The instruments
which in battle days sounded to the charge or the retreat, which sang
reveille to the waking morn or gave the sternest good-night, when all
was well; which through a quarter of a century of peace have greeted
the retired warrior at feast and civic parade with harmonies upon his
achievements--these now beat the last mournful cadences leading to an
earthly camping-ground beneath whose sod the mortal remains of our
great soldier shall rest beside his loved ones, forever dead to triumph
or threnody.
"The last of the immortal trio has joined his waiting comrades. Already
in the fields of the blessed one may believe that their spirits sadly
regard our simple tributes to the earthly casket which holds the dust
of Sherman. The mourning thousands who have lined the highway of the
sad procession have gone to their homes with a tenderer reflection
upon the meanings of existence and death. And even as his valor in
the written story had awakened a stronger patriotism than had before
existed, so in his death and in the last tributes paid to the hero a
fresher and purer sense of patriotic duty springs up in our hearts to
link us to the inheritance he helped to gain.
"History will gather up and weave into enduring form the achievements
of the soldier and the statesman. In that final summary sectional
prejudice and personal bias may bear their natural parts. Only in a
remote future, when all the sorrowful effects of the great Civil War
have lost their nearness--only when its beneficence in knitting closer
the bonds of friendship and National brotherhood shall be recognized,
when no newly-made grave sends up reproachful reminders to bereaved
hearts, only then can the hero's place be immutably fixed on the heroic
calendar. To the scholar and the sage may be left that office. The
records of his military life, his general orders, his plans, his deeds,
will guide the historian into a proper estimate of the dead soldier's
station in the military Valhalla.
"But how shall the innumerable civic deeds of this dead man be recorded
or find place for reference? In the musty archives of no war office
are they registered. Upon no enduring parchment are they written.
They would escape definition in the attempt to define them. They
are engraved upon hearts still living--they sweeten the lives still
unsummoned--they are too sacred for utterance. Yet they are the crown
of Sherman's achievement. Wherever this man's hand was extended it
brought glad strength; wherever his voice was heard it aroused emotions
of grateful tenderness; wherever his form was seen it gladdened loving
eyes. He survived a civil war for a quarter of a century--to show to us
that the soldier's armor is less becoming than the garb of civil life,
that the pomp and circumstance of war are loud preludes of beneficent
peace.
"No intrusion of personal relation shall sully this poor testament to
the dead. No one can claim the inheritance of such a large-hearted
bounty. But in the name of the drama which he loved, in the names of
the actors whom he respected, it is proper that no tardy recognition
should follow his death. He had a scholar's love for what was highest
in the art--whether in the walk of tragedy or comedy. He had a warm
affection for those who labored in this atmosphere. He had also a large
sympathy for those performances which afford recreation and amusement
to the largest class of the community. His voice was never hushed
when called to aid in the needs of the player. He was no ordinary
first-nighter. He had a simple and affecting belief that his presence
might be useful to those who were seeking public suffrage across
the foot-lights, and he could not but know that his indorsement was
valuable and trustworthy. He was one of the incorporators of 'The
Players,' upon whose muster-roll no nobler name appears. His imposing
character gave dignity to those deliberative meetings out of which that
organization grew into its present useful life.
"And should contemporary history fail to do him justice--should
the bitterness of the Civil War make a just estimate of his worth
impossible in biographical annals--should envy or malice deface the
white shaft which should symbolize his deeds--then the dramatist will
lovingly bear up the garments of his glory--keep them from soil within
that Valhalla where Cæsar and Alexander, Frederick and Gustavus, live
imperishably enshrined. Therein shall be cherished the insignia and
the characteristics of the most notable figure of modern or ancient
soldiery.
"Again in future nights shall we see the pomp and glory of Union making
war--once again its gallant leader shall pass before the eyes of a
curious posterity in the drama's immortal keeping, and the gallant
spirit whose influence in life so often attended the presentment of
Cæsar and Antony and Cassius and the Roman group shall, in death,
mingle with their essence, tenderly restored by the dramatists whom he
inspired, by the actors whom he loved."
[Illustration: HEAD OF PROCESSION COMING DOWN BROADWAY, NEW YORK CITY.]
Said Walter Q. Gresham, United States Judge: "I belonged to General
Sherman's command when he entered Kentucky, at Louisville, in the
summer of '61, since which time we have maintained an unbroken
friendship.
"Besides being a man of great genius he was generous, frank and
confiding. No officer of high rank whom I met during the war was more
patient than General Sherman with subordinates, so long as he believed
that they were trying to do their duty; and no officer was more
merciless in dealing with shirks, cowards and pretenders.
"In brilliancy of conception and boldness of execution, perhaps he
had no equal on either side during the civil war. Like other great
and successful men he encountered the envy and jealousy of those less
gifted and magnanimous than himself.
"He was intensely patriotic and always willing to endure hardship and
privation. His patriotism was of that intense kind that he would at
any time have willingly sacrificed his life for the cause he served so
brilliantly and well. His great courage, generosity, frankness, and
patriotism endeared him to all the officers and men who served under
him, and in every State of the Union they are now mourning his loss.
"I spent some time with him at his home in New York three weeks ago
last Sunday. He was then well, cheerful, and bright. He indulged much
during the afternoon in reminiscence, and related a number of incidents
of the war which I had forgotten. He mentioned a large number of mutual
army friends who had died, and remarked:
"'Gresham, we will join them soon.'"
Ex-President Hayes paid this tribute to his military genius:
"The only comparison of value that I choose to offer comes from abroad.
We hear in regard to Sherman, from the French generals nothing but
praise; from the German generals the same; from the English, General
Wolseley speaks of him in terms that are altogether complimentary.
Says Wolseley, however, 'Lee was a great general, and next to him was
Sherman.' I would change the order. I admit for Lee a great character,
accomplishments as a soldier and as a man, praise in every way except
his unfortunate lack of wisdom. I do not now speak of motives, but
of the military genius who was the military genius of the war. Place
Lee where Sherman was. Place Sherman where Lee was. Place Lee at
Chattanooga, even with Sherman's army. Would he have found his way to
Atlanta, and at Atlanta cut loose from his base of supplies and entered
upon the wild march for the sea three hundred miles away? I believe no
man lacking the genius of Sherman would have entered on that march to
the sea. But come nearer home. Lee had the same opportunity, only it
was ten times better than that Sherman had at Atlanta. Suppose Sherman
had been in command of the army of Lee. Washington at that time lay
completely in the power of an enterprising and daring commander, and
with Washington captured, intervention from abroad would have come.
I do not predict final defeat, for throughout all the action the
finger of God was present, guiding and directing. I cannot believe
that under any circumstances the cause of liberty and union could have
failed, but at Washington was the chance of victory, and Lee failed
to take it. More than that, he went to the Potomac, crossed it, and
our disorganized army, without a commander, being divided between
Pope and McClellan, was ten days behind him, and he marched on into
Pennsylvania; and what did he do, and what would Sherman have done?
Lee did not dare to lose communication with his base of supplies, and
was driven back from Antietam with a divided army. Had Sherman been at
the head of that army, and that distance between him and the pursuing
forces, he would have gone to Philadelphia, Pittsburg, Buffalo,
Cleveland, Cincinnati, and then cut his road back into Virginia. A
little band of 4000 men under Morgan went through Ohio and Indiana,
and Lee, with his great army, with nothing before him but wealth and
supplies and cities able to pay tribute for not being burned, is not to
be compared with Sherman."
General Slocum said: "I have been acquainted with General Sherman since
the beginning of the war. I first met him at Bull Run and afterward
in the West, when my corps was sent there to reinforce Rosecrans. At
that time he was tall and angular and his general appearance was much
the same as it was in later life. My services with him began just
before the capture of Atlanta. In that campaign the minutest details
were attended to by General Sherman himself. Details as to the exact
amount of ammunition to be taken by each corps, the exact amount of
stores of each and every kind, were specified in his orders. During
the campaign he alternated between General Howard and myself, riding
with General Howard one day and with me the next. He was a great
and most interesting talker, and the pleasantest days that I spent
during the war were those when I was accompanied by General Sherman.
He had been stationed at Charleston before the war and was familiar
with the topography of South Carolina. He had information that no
maps contained. He seldom forgot anything that could ever be of any
use to him to remember. Once I thought I would test his knowledge by
introducing the subject of the manufacture of salt, a subject with
which I thought I was perfectly familiar, having lived at Syracuse. I
found that he knew more about it than I did. He said that his wife had
some relatives there, and that years before he had visited them and
had been taken through the salt works. Not a fact connected with the
manufacture of salt had escaped his memory.
"Sherman was greatly beloved by his soldiers, partly for their success
under him and partly for his kind treatment of them. He rarely
consulted his subordinates, however, though he accepted suggestions
when he thought them good. Still he was intolerant of negligence or
carelessness, and punished it severely. He was not a bigoted man on
the subject of religion. I am confident that while he felt deeply
disappointed at his son's becoming a Roman Catholic priest, the
disappointment was due more to his having abandoned a profession which
General Sherman had set his heart upon his following. He wanted his
oldest son to become a lawyer. The son studied for that profession and
the opening of his career was exceedingly brilliant.
"General Sherman told me frequently that he wished to have nothing to
do with politics, and after General Grant had been elected President
he told me that he thought Grant had made a mistake, as his reputation
as a soldier was worth more than any office. The last time I saw him
was at the New England dinner in this city. We sat side by side, and he
referred to the subject, and spoke of the number of bright men he had
seen ruined by politics."
Chauncey Depew also knew Sherman well, particularly in his later years,
in New York. "He was," said Mr. Depew, "at once the most distinguished
and delightful figure in our metropolitan society. He seemed to have a
most elastic constitution, and endured an amount of social obligation
which would have tired out and used up many a younger and stronger
man. He loved to be in the company of men and women. I think he dined
out every night of his life, and very often he would be found at late
suppers, especially theatrical suppers.
"He was, easily, at any table, at the head wherever he sat, and had a
wonderful faculty for entertaining conversation. No person ever heard
him say a disagreeable thing. With the most positive, pronounced and
aggressive opinions on all questions, and never concealing them, he so
stated them as never to offend an adversary. His attention to ladies
was a most delightful exhibition of knightly and soldierly courtesy.
There was in his manner and speech something of deference, respect and
admiration, which conveyed a more signal compliment than can be wrought
in phrase or flattery. At a night supper where the guests were mostly
theatrical people he was, in his joyous hilarity, like a boy. In the
speech which he invariably made there was much of the fatherly feeling
of an old man rejoicing in the artistic success of his auditors, and
to those who deserved it, whether actors or actresses, a neatly turned
compliment which expressed all that a trained dramatic critic could
say, and became in the recollection of the happy recipient the best
memory of his or her life.
"I have been with him at hundreds of public dinners, and in studying
closely his mental methods and habits of speech, have come to
regard him as the readiest and most original talker in the United
States. I don't believe that he ever made the slightest preparation,
but he absorbed apparently while thinking and while carrying on a
miscellaneous conversation with those about him, the spirit of the
occasion, and his speech, when he finished, seemed to be as much of
a surprise to himself as it was to the audience, and the work of a
superior and exceedingly active intelligence which included him as well
as the rest among its auditors.
"Most men, and I have met several, who had this faculty, were cans of
dynamite, whose explosion was almost certain to produce most disastrous
results. But General Sherman rarely failed in striking out a line of
thought different from and more original than any other speaker, and
in sometimes giving utterance to the boldest thought, yet always in
harmony with the occasion.
"I recall the last two times that I met him as especially significant
of his conversational talent and power of public speech on a sudden
call. I sat near him at the dinner given in his honor by ex-Chief
Justice Daly about a month ago. General Sherman rarely talked about
himself, but on this occasion he became reminiscent and entertained us
for more than an hour with free-hand sketches of his adventures on the
plains in early days, and of the original people whom he met among the
early settlers. These recollections if taken down at the moment would
have proved an invaluable contribution to the history of the period
covering the growth of transportation on the plains, from the wagon
to the railroad, and the story of the bold and adventurous spirits
who were the pioneers of Western civilization, many of whom he knew
personally.
"The last time I met him he promised, after a dinner to which he was
engaged, to do me the favor, though he said it was asking a good deal
at his time of life, to come into the Yale Alumni Association dinner
and say a word to the guests. His appearance there, about half-past 11,
was an event which the alumni of Yale who were present, most of whom
were young men who had never seen him before, will remember as long as
they live.
"I have felt for many years that, in the interests of the period during
which he was one of the most conspicuous actors, and with one exception
the most conspicuous, he ought always to have been accompanied by a
stenographer.
"I have known most of the men who have been famous in the country, in
every walk of life, in the last twenty-five years sufficiently well
to hear them frequently talk in a free and confidential way. General
Sherman is one of the few who never bore you, whose conversation is
always interesting, and no matter how long he talks, he leaves you
eager and hungry for more. I was with him at the time I delivered
the oration before the Army of the Potomac at Saratoga. I was with
him from 10 o'clock in the morning until 6 in the afternoon, and he
talked without cessation for the whole period. It was a test that few
men could have stood, and the three others who were with him in the
carriage only regretted that day was limited by the light."