1872
LETTER FROM GENERAL SHERMAN--VISIT AMERICA--SANDS OF BREMEN--
STORMS AT SEA--ELIHU WASHBURNE--BANQUET TO HIM ON SHIP--I AM
A GUEST AT THE SHERMAN HOME--MRS. SHERMAN--ARRANGE TO TAKE
MISS SHERMAN TO EUROPE--MEET MR. BLAINE--MY SONG IS SUNG IN
THE SHERMAN HOME--CONVERSATIONS WITH SHERMAN--MEET PRESIDENT
GRANT--HOW I HAPPENED TO BE IN THE REBEL ARMY ONCE--LETTERS
FROM GENERAL SHERMAN.
_October, 1872._--As I had now been absent from home just three years,
I secured a few weeks’ leave to visit the United States. Dr. Terry was
to go along. I arranged to sail on the “Deutschland,” from Bremen, Oct.
10th. Early in September General Sherman wrote me from Ireland, asking
me to bring his daughter Minnie (now Mrs. Fitch) back with me to Europe.
“DUBLIN, Sunday, Sept. 1, 1872.
“DEAR BYERS: As you can well understand, I have been kept busy
and have not had a chance to write letters, save to my home. My
trip is now drawing to a close, and by Thursday next we will
be at Queenstown ready to take the steamer Baltic for home. I
have letters from my family by which I learn that my daughter
Minnie is very anxious to spend the winter in Europe. I remember
that you proposed to come to Washington about this time, and if
you have gone this letter will not find you at Zurich, and I
shall hear of you on our side; but if this letter reaches you,
please write me at Washington, as I would prefer she should make
the trip across with you, and remain with you until she finds
General and Mrs. Graham, who are somewhere in Italy. I know you
would do this for me, and it only depends on your coming and the
conclusion Minnie arrives at after I reach home. I am perfectly
willing she should spend a winter in Europe, and only desire that
she have the personal supervision of some friend of mine. She
could easily join some party in New York, but she desires to stop
long enough in some place to perfect herself in French, and to
observe the customs and manners of strangers.
“I hope ere this Mrs. Byers has passed the first dread ordeal of
mother, and that you have now a child to think of and dream about.
“Please give her my best congratulations and wishes for her
continued health. Believe me, always your friend,
“W. T. SHERMAN.”
When I went through the flat, sandy region of North Germany, to take
the Bremen steamer, I thought I had never seen so desolate a country in
my life. It was a rainy, windy day, and the train was slow, the scene
sad; everybody looked poor. Women by hundreds, with red handkerchiefs
on their heads, were out in the fields, digging potatoes in the rain
and wind. The villages were sorry-looking places. Some day, when the
Mojave desert in America has villages scattered all over it, and a poor
American peasantry, the descendants of our children, dig potatoes from
the drifting sand, the scene will be like that long stretch of ugliness
in the rear of Bremen.
Our steamer stopped at Southampton for a day and a night. So Dr. Terry
and I took a run over to the Isle of Wight. To this hour, I think, I
never saw so lovely an island or a place where I should so like to
live. Its clean roads and pretty hedges and beautiful trees, its quiet
English villages, its rambles, interested us much. And then there
was the blue sea beating all around it, and, passing it in the near
distance, the ships of all nations. At the point was the lighthouse
and the rocks, and nearer, the noble downs. Here were the rocks and
the waves that Tennyson had looked at and walked beside for half his
life--the scenes that made his poetry. Not far away was Farringford,
the poet’s home. The whole island, that sunny day, seemed like a dream.
The next evening, at twilight, on our vessel’s deck, far out at sea, I
lingered and looked at the Isle of Wight, the lighthouse and the dim,
gray crags, with the waves beating against them.
We were twelve days reaching New York, and had storms and hurricanes
half the way over. The “Deutschland” survived them all, only to go to
the bottom, on a later voyage, with three hundred people. That was in
the Channel. One day, on this, our New York voyage, everything seemed
to be going to pieces, and for an hour or so I knew how it felt to be
very close to death. I was more alarmed than I had ever been in any
battle. In war, one expects death almost. Here it was different. Not
a human being could keep his feet a moment. There was more than one
said good-by to comrades that day, as he supposed, forever. I had but
one friend on board, Dr. C. T. Terry of New York, who lived in Zurich
for many years, and with whom I had made hundreds of foot excursions
in the mountains. He was a dentist, possibly in his calling not second
to Dr. Evans in Paris. He had come to Switzerland a poor youth, and,
by honor, skill and diligence, had amassed a fortune. He, like myself,
had left a wife and child behind in Zurich. In the midst of the
hurricane, we shook hands, and in a few words agreed what should be
done, should either survive. Had that ship gone down, I would certainly
not be writing here. No lifeboat there but was being torn to pieces;
nothing of human hands could have withstood that sea’s fury another
hour. But it was a grand sight spite of the terror. It was ten in the
morning, snowing, and the sun shining, every minute, turn about.
As the hurricane eased up, I hung on to a rope by the bridge, and miles
away could see lofty white-caps, their shining crowns lighted by the
sun, lift themselves and thunder together, or roll on toward us till
they would strike the ship. The sea was rolling in deep, green valleys,
and, as the ship would leap across these watery gorges, the view right
and left was indescribably grand. I looked at the awful ocean, and
thought of Switzerland. It was as if the valleys of the Alps had turned
to green, rushing waters, and the mountains had commenced falling. I
would almost take the risk again, to see so grand a sight.
_October, 1872._--The morning after the storm, the sea was still
running high, but passengers could keep their feet and, if well enough,
talk together.
Pretty soon, a very large, grand-looking man, with a sea cloak about
him, came on deck. “And who is he?” I said to the captain. “Why, that’s
your _greatest_ American,” he replied. “That’s the man who cared for
the Germans in the siege of Paris. That’s Minister Washburne, the
friend of Germany.” Sure enough, on a day’s notice, Mr. Washburne had
come aboard when we touched at Southampton. He had been sick in his
cabin till this moment. He guessed the storm had shaken the bile out
of him, he said, when I introduced myself to him. He had been too sick
to know the danger we had been in. Now he stayed on deck and was well.
Mr. Washburne was General Grant’s first and truest friend. Without
his tireless support, from Galena to Appomattox, the name of General
Grant had not gone farther than his father’s tannery. Genius must have
somebody to open the door for it. Washburne did it for Grant. John
Sherman, in the House and Senate, did it for his illustrious brother.
Barras did it for Napoleon. Even a cannon ball, rolling down hill, has
to be started by somebody.
* * * * *
It is the last day of the voyage. The captain gave a banquet last night
to Mr. Washburne. All Germans are deep in their gratitude to him for
his work in Paris.
Many speeches were made at the table, many toasts drunk. When Mr.
Washburne rose to speak, he looked like the picture of Daniel Webster.
The same large head, the same intellectual countenance. He looked like
a statesman, not a politician. He was of the kindest manners, and loved
to talk of the people he had known. I had the pleasure of walking for
hours daily with him, up and down the deck, sometimes far into the
night. He had been Lincoln’s friend, as well as Grant’s, and there was
no end to the incidents he could tell of the great President. I regret
now that I did not write them down. He also talked of the Commune
in Paris, whose horrors he had witnessed. He believed socialism and
mobism a disease. In Paris it was infectious. He told me much of his
youth out West. He went to Galena a poor boy, and when he studied law
in an office, making fires as pay for use of books, he had nothing
but a buffalo robe to sleep on, spread on the office floor. Later,
he was a Cabinet Minister. He was a true Republican, through and
through. Hobnobbing with the nobility of France had made no snob of
him. He asked me to make him acquainted with Terry. “I like and honor
such men,” he said; “they are the salt of the earth, these self-made
Americans. They are what makes a republic possible.”
A very rich American lady on the steamer with us was carrying in her
trunks several dozen kid gloves, and asked him to help her get “easy”
through the Custom House. He refused indignantly, adding, “And what
right have you, a rich woman, madame, more than my wife, who never
owned so many gloves in her whole life, to slip things through the
custom-house? The law expects, compels, her to pay duty on her two or
three pairs, and, trust me to see to it, you shall pay duty on your
trunk full.” She left him in high dudgeon, when he turned to me and
said: “It is just such rich, ostentatious people evading law that is
making the poorer classes mad and discontented with government.”
“Lincoln,” he said, “has been the people’s friend more than any other
man since Jesus Christ.”
On reaching New York, Mr. Arthur and others of the custom-house came
out with a tug to meet him, and take him ashore. I was asked to go
along in the tug.
Mr. Washburne went to the Fifth Avenue Hotel. “Now don’t you go because
I do,” he said to me. “It is a useless waste of money. I go because I
have to. Come and see me there to-morrow.” I went on the morrow and
was introduced to Mr. Blaine, who had, I thought, the most magnetic
personality of any man I ever saw. I thought, when he grasped my hand,
he had mistaken me for some old-time friend, but shortly I saw the same
hearty good-will toward all who entered the room. He knew how to make
friends, and to keep them. What a golden secret! I never forgot that
handshake.
_November, 1872._--For a week or so now I was in Washington, a guest in
General Sherman’s home, then on I Street, corner of 3rd. He and Mrs.
Sherman cordially insisted that whenever I came to Washington, I should
make their house my home. This I often did, not at Washington only, but
later at St. Louis and New York as well. Mrs. Sherman was always one of
my sincerest and firmest friends.
[Illustration: General Sherman.--_Page 67._]
[Illustration: Mrs. General Sherman.--_Page 67._]
“Don’t talk religion with her, though,” said the General to me one
morning in his study, after breakfast. “She is a very zealous Catholic,
and you----” “I am a zealous nothing,” I interrupted. “I like Catholics
the same as other good Christians, and have gotten over the notion that
all the salt of the earth is in the creed I accidentally was born in.”
“Then you are all right. As for myself, it’s no difference,” he went
on. “Why, I guess, I don’t believe in anything; so in this room talk
as you please.” Mrs. Sherman was a thousand times more than a good
Catholic. She was in every sense a good woman. Here, as at her other
later homes, she had a little room arranged as an office, where she
worked and studied out plans for helping the poor. Probably no woman in
the United States ever spent more time and money in doing good. Few had
more true friends. Her religious zeal was well known, and never abated.
She thoroughly believed the Catholic church the best church.
She was extremely bright and kind in her ways. The army officers all
liked her, and her house stood open to every friend.
I recall one evening how she and the General gave a supper to the
staff. All were in uniform. She had not invited them to come; she had
just _told_ them to come, and they came with their wives. Two or three
civilians were present, Mr. Church, a famous war-song singer, and
myself among them. After the supper there was some instrumental music
in the drawing-room. “And now,” said Mrs. Sherman, “Mr. Church is going
to honor us with a song.” My verses, “Sherman’s March to the Sea,” were
still popular in the country, being sung everywhere. Mr. Church stepped
to the front of the piano and sang the song in such a voice as I had
never heard it sung in before. The splendid rendering of the music,
his great, fine, patriotic tones, that sounded like the coming of an
army with banners, moved everyone in that room deeply. For a moment, I
entirely forgot that the words were my own. All applauded, so did I;
why not? So did the General. Then a guest stepped forward and made a
little speech. “I am happy,” said he; “I speak for all. What a pleasure
we have had--the first song of the war, sung by the first war-song
singer in the land, in the presence of the one who wrote it, and in the
home of the Commander who made the March.”
General Sherman, too, made a little speech, praising the music, the
words, the singer, and then he added: “Without this song, the campaign
never would have had its picturesque name. Now,” said he, “I want Mr.
Church to sing that other favorite song of mine, ‘Old Soldier, You’ve
Played Out Your Time.’”
They were rugged verses Mr. Church now sang, and striking music, but,
privately, I almost thought it a little cynical in the General to agree
with the words that declared an unknown grave in a ditch a desirable
ending for the true soldier. “But that’s it, that’s it,” said the
General. “Do your duty, have a good time and win glory, but don’t kick
when the end comes. That song is the true picture of a soldier’s life.”
It was a memorable evening, but, I fear, not half a dozen of that happy
company are on earth now. Yet it seems so few years back. The voices
of all of them still seem to sound in my ear. I write down the little
record before the last memory fades. That night at General Sherman’s
house was an echo of the war days.
When the company left that night, the General asked me up to his little
room. He was smoking constantly. The conversation turned on the origin
of the “March to the Sea.” “Yes, I know,” he said, “some of Grant’s
friends are claiming that he suggested that, but no one ever heard
Grant himself utter one word to claim it. True, he was chief commander
over all the armies, when I cut loose for the South; but it would be
just as senseless to attribute it to the President, who was over all
of us, as to attribute it to Grant. Lincoln’s letter to me, after the
event, shows how completely he knew who originated the idea of my
changing base and putting my army down by the ocean; and a letter from
Lee, written after the war, shows what _he_ thought of the importance
of my getting this water base, and of its sequence, the march north in
the Carolinas. ‘The moment he reaches the Roanoke,’ said Lee, ‘Richmond
is untenable, and I leave it.’”
One May morning (1864), away back by Chattanooga, a certain General
Warner asked General Sherman, privately, what he was going to do when
he got his army away down to Atlanta, without supplies, and with a
lot of rebels behind. General Sherman suddenly stopped his pacing the
floor, knocked the ashes from his cigar, and said, “_Salt water._” “Do
you mean Savannah or Charleston?” said the astonished staff officer.
“_Yes_,” replied Sherman, “I do.” _That_ was the origin of the “March
to the Sea.”
General Warner related the whole details of this conversation, in a
letter to General Sherman’s wife. Lincoln congratulated the great
leader, and added, “_None of us, I believe, went further than to
acquiesce._” One of the interesting autograph letters of the war is
that one to Sherman, saying: “I congratulate you on the splendid
results of your campaign, the like of which is not heard of in past
history. (Signed) U. S. Grant.”
“Well,” said the General at last, laughing, as he gave the fire a great
stir with the poker: “I suppose they won’t hardly doubt as to who
really _made_ the march.”
* * * * *
_November, 1872._--Went out to my home in Iowa and visited my
relatives. While there, received a couple of notes from General
Sherman, saying Miss Sherman was getting ready to join me on my trip
back to Europe, the 14th of December, by the “Celtic.”
“WASHINGTON, D. C., Nov. 5, 1872.
“DEAR BYERS: I wrote to Mr. Sparks, agent, of the White Star
Line, soon after you left us, but he had gone out on the plains.
He is just back, and writes me promptly, offering the most
liberal terms, more than I deem it prudent to accept. He offers
the best rooms in any of his ships, and ‘to accept your ticket on
the Bremen Line in exchange.’ I knew he would be glad to favor
me, but I always prefer to pay the usual price, and to accept
as a favor ‘preferable accommodations.’ Now, I have written to
Sparks that I prefer to pay full passage for Minnie, and merely
suggest for you that he charge you the usual fare to Paris, $95,
and take your ticket at its cost, $63. This would leave you $32
to pay, and this will embrace railroad tickets from Liverpool to
Paris. I also named the ‘Celtic,’ the finest ship afloat, which
sails Dec. 14, and I guarantee she will put you in Liverpool in
8-1/2 days, and in Paris Dec. 24, giving you barely time to take
Christmas dinner with Mrs. Byers at Zurich. Write me as soon as
you can that I may close the bargain. We will expect you to come
to stay with us as long as you please before starting.
“I take it for granted you vote to-day, and will then have a full
month to see your folks and come to us. Of course, I don’t like
to hurry you, but this programme seems so fair I trust it will
suit your convenience.
“My best regards to your father.
Truly yours,
“W. T. SHERMAN.”
* * * * *
“WASHINGTON, D. C., Nov. 22, 1872.
“DEAR BYERS: I now have a letter from Mr. Sparks, agent of the
White Star Line, saying he has all ready for your and Minnie’s
most comfortable passage in the ‘Celtic.’ Dec. 14, next. So I
shall expect you here by the 10th of December, and will accompany
you to New York and see you off.
“He also reports that the ‘Celtic’ has just made the run from
New York to Queenstown in 8 days and 12 hours, with bad coal. So
you may safely count on reaching Paris inside of ten days. Truly
yours,
W. T. SHERMAN.”
Shortly, I went back to the General’s home at Washington. He took me
to see President Grant. He seemed to have free access wherever he
pleased to go, for, although others were waiting in the reception-room,
he passed them with a bow, and conducted me into the cabinet-room.
General Grant sat quite alone at the end of the historic table. The
warmth of his reception showed very quickly how intimate the two great
leaders were.
* * * * *
The President asked me some questions about the service abroad, and my
replies seemed to gratify him. Then there was a hint that Mr. Horace
Rublee, the American Minister at Bern, was about to resign and come
home. I had known that from Mr. Rublee direct, and I had quite an
ambition to secure the place. Why not? I had performed the duties more
than once in the Minister’s absence, and the proposed promotion seemed
perfectly natural. General Grant gave me every encouragement to believe
that I should shortly have the post.
Shortly the President arose and asked General Sherman to let him know
at once when the resignation of Rublee should be sent in. He saw no
reason why I should not be promoted to the post.
“It looks like a very sure thing,” said the General to me as we left
the White House.
Alas, and alack! Mr. Rublee went home on a leave, found his affairs
different from what he had anticipated, and did not resign at all. He
simply got his leave extended and extended, and drew the pay, nearly to
the end of Grant’s term. My best good chance was gone.
_December 9, 1872._--Went with the General and Mrs. Sherman to hear
McDonald, the Scotch novelist, lecture on Burns. General Sherman
introduced the speaker, and, in a little speech, showed his own
familiarity with the Scotch bard. I knew this well enough, for I had
seen him reading Burns by the hour. McDonald commenced with great
feeling and enthusiasm. Once I had heard Charles Dickens read, but it
seemed to me here, to-night, was a man more sincere with his subject.
There was no effort at effect. I recall Dickens in his dress suit, his
enormous white shirt front, his big, red rose on his lapel, his dainty,
foppish movements on the stage, his undisguised pauses and signals for
applause, as much as to say: “That is good; now clap your hands.” With
McDonald, all was different, all sincere. Burns seemed to be there in
person that night.
After the lecture we sat up till midnight, telling reminiscences of
the war. The year before, in our home at Zurich, we had spoken of an
escape I had once made from the prison pen at Macon, and of how near I
had come to changing the whole siege of Atlanta. He asked me for some
more of the details. I had been captured from his army in the assault
on Missionary Ridge, and had endured many months of imprisonment at
Libby. When they put us in the stockade at Macon, I resolved on getting
away. The first time I tried it, the guards fired and killed another
officer, who happened to be near me, in the dark. Then, by hook and
crook, I got hold of a gray rebel uniform, and in this disguise, one
bright July morning, walked over the dead line, past the guards, and,
eventually, got off into the rebel army at Atlanta, a hundred miles
away. For ten days I walked up and down among the troops, the forts,
observing the position of the besieged army. I dared not stop, or
rest, or sleep. If spoken to, or stopped, I was forever just going to
the Ninth Alabama, where I claimed to belong. Naturally, I never went
near that regiment. My intent was to collect all information possible
concerning the rebel troops and forts, and then, in the excitement of
the first battle, escape through the lines. I well knew the value my
knowledge now could be to Sherman. I had dozens of incidents every day
that for a moment put my life in peril. Once I saw the lines of the
enemy so thinned, Sherman’s army could have entered almost without a
shot. Then came the terrible battle of the 22d of July. I followed the
Rebel troops in the attack on Sherman’s rear, but failed to make my
escape. The next morning I changed my course, and, passing their left
flank, and down close by the Chattahoochie river, there in the woods,
within sight of the Union banners, was captured as a spy. Every stitch
of my clothing was searched. I was brutally treated and sent to Hood’s
headquarters for trial. Unfortunately for me, some of the very officers
who captured me had seen me in one of the forts the preceding Sunday.
Army headquarters were fixed on the green lawn of a city mansion. The
officers’ desks were out on the grass, and the papers describing me
as a dangerous spy were put into one of the pigeonholes. These had
been shown to me on my way to headquarters by a foolish guard. All
was excitement, for fighting was still going on. As for me, I was put
into a little tent, with two deserters, who were to be shot the next
morning. During the night, one of these condemned boys got out of the
tent on some pretext, and, when morning came, and I was brought out
for a hearing, all the incriminating papers were gone. There was not
a particle of proof as to who I was. I instantly acknowledged myself
to be a Union soldier, and claimed the rights of a prisoner of war.
The astonished officials reminded me that they had a right to shoot
me, I being discovered inside their lines in their uniform; that only
a few months previous our General Rosecrans had shot two Southern
officers for doing what I was now doing. I was in great peril, when
a Colonel Hill, Chief Provost Marshal of their army, said, for the
present, anyway, I should be put back among the prisoners at Macon.
Almost the same night, I was selected, with some two hundred others, to
be taken to Charleston, to be put under the fire of the Yankee fleet,
then bombarding the city. The barbarism of the act, the excitement and
confusion soon following, led to a complete forgetfulness of me. I
never heard again of the charges against me.
General Sherman had listened to the story in perfect silence. Then
rising and giving the coals in the fire a violent stir with the poker,
he exclaimed: “By God! that was an experience. Had you gotten through
the lines that day, it might have changed everything. It might have
saved ten thousand lives.”[2]
_Christmas Eve._--The voyage on the “Celtic” is over, and to-night
finds Miss Sherman and myself in Merry England.
I soon left Miss Sherman with friends in Paris, and hurried home to
Switzerland. Later, after some rambling in Italy, she came and spent a
month with us in our home by the lake. Two or three letters from her
father at this time, though purely personal, are not without interest:
“WASHINGTON, D. C., Jan. 3, 1873.
“DEAR BYERS: We have all written to Minnie several times, but, I
fear, we have overlooked the fact that you must have separated
in Paris soon after Christmas, but I hope she was thoughtful
enough to write you our several general messages of respect and
fond wishes. I was in New York last Monday, Dec. 23d; called at
the office of the White Line, and got the agent, Mr. Sparks,
to promise to give me the first possible news of the ‘Celtic.’
That night I was at the New England dinner at Delmonico’s, and
received a note from Sparks saying the ‘Celtic’ was reported off
Queenstown that night at 10:30, and that is all I know of her,
and of the details of your passage, up to the present moment.
The next morning I telegraphed to Mrs. Sherman here, and to your
father at Oskaloosa. All the ships that came over at the same
time report heavy westerly weather, so I suspect you had a rough
passage after passing the banks of Newfoundland, though the
westerly wind rather favored your speed. My supposition is that
you did not enter Queenstown, but put the mails on some tug that
went outside, and that you put into Liverpool the 24th, too late
for London or Paris for Christmas Day, and I hope you found out
General Fairchild and spent the day with him and Mrs. Fairchild.
We will begin to look for letters from Minnie about Monday
next--this is Thursday. The weather in all North America has been
severe since you left us, except for two or three days after you
sailed. The ground is covered with heavy snow. Yesterday (New
Year’s) was, however, strictly observed, and we had a full house
of visitors all day.
“All my folks are well, and send to you and Mrs. Byers and the
baby all sorts of messages of love and respect. Yours truly,
W. T. SHERMAN.”
* * * * *
“WASHINGTON, D. C., Jan. 21, 1873.
“DEAR BYERS: I was very glad to receive your letter of Dec. 29,
from Zurich, and I see why you were unusually anxious to reach
Zurich, with a clerk deranged, and short in his accounts. I am
glad, of course, his deficiency has been so promptly covered by
his father, as I suppose you are personally liable for his act.
“We have several letters from Minnie, telling us of her voyage
and safe arrival in Paris.
“The weather all December was so bad here that we feared you had
a hard time, but, on the whole, ten days was a good trip at that
season, and you were especially fortunate in having so smooth a
passage of the straits at Dover. Minnie is beginning to figure on
her trip to Italy, and is already in communication with General
and Mrs. Graham at Florence. I suppose she will go there in
February, and I hope a month or so there will satisfy her, and
then she will turn toward Switzerland. I think she has secured
the services of a most excellent French maid, who will enable her
to travel with great ease and comfort. At this distance I cannot
well advise her, and think it best to let her shape her own
course.
“All things in Washington remain as you left them. A little more
visiting and more dinners, and this will continue till after the
inauguration of the 4th of March, when we will settle down to our
chronic state again.
“I propose to remain quietly at home till the North Pacific Road
has progressed far enough to justify me in crossing the continent
by that line.
“Give my best love to your wife, and believe me always, your
friend,
W. T. SHERMAN.”
* * * * *
“WASHINGTON, D. C., March 7, 1873.
“DEAR BYERS: I have your letter of Feb. 11, and can see you and
your little family settled down in your quaint home by Zurich’s
fair waters.
“We have letters from Minnie at Florence, and she is now with
our old friends, General and Mrs. Graham, and we feel absolute
confidence. She says they go to Rome about the 1st of March,
and she proposes to spend March and April there and at Naples,
and their project is to go to Vienna via Venice and Trieste. It
certainly will be a happy incident if you can go along and take
her to Zurich. I am afraid she will find less time to settle
down to her French studies and music at Zurich than she first
proposed. But let time settle that. She is now on the right
track, and will have her whole summer to put in in the Swiss
cantons. There is no good reason why she should come home till
October.
“We have just got through the ceremonies of inauguration, and, as
all the papers are filled with it, I feel certain you will get
some by telegraph, and the whole details by the New York papers.
Thus far no changes have been made in the Consular or Foreign
appointments. The senate is in extra session, and if General
Grant proposes to make any material changes he must do so within
a few days, but of this you will also learn by telegraph. He
surely keeps his council well, as his most intimate friends do
not know his purpose.
“I think the Washington bonds are good, as the debt is limited to
ten per cent of the aggregate value of taxable property.
“Master Cumpy still flourishes, and asks innumerable questions of
Europe, Asia and America. At present rate he will know geography
before he reads.
“Present my kindest regards to your good wife, and believe me
always anxious to hear from you and to serve you. Sincerely,
W. T. SHERMAN.”