1886
THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW ENGAGES ME TO EDIT SEVERAL CHAPTERS OF
THE SHERMAN CORRESPONDENCE--SHERMAN WRITES AS TO MAGAZINES
AND HIS BOOK--THE GENERAL INVITES ME TO COME AND STAY AT HIS
HOME IN ST. LOUIS--HE OFFERS ME THE USE OF ALL HIS PAPERS--
I PUBLISH ALSO IN THE REVIEW A PROSE NARRATIVE OF THE MARCH
TO THE SEA--MRS. SHERMAN READS IT TO THE GENERAL--BUFFALO
BILL--GENERAL GIVES ME HIS ARMY BADGE--NIGHTS IN SHERMAN’S
OFFICE--CONVERSATIONS WITH HIM--LIFE IN THE SHERMAN
HOME--THE GENERAL’S COMPLETE RECONCILIATION WITH HIS SON
“TOM”--INTERESTING LETTERS FROM SHERMAN AS TO MAGAZINES--HIS
FORTHCOMING BOOK--FARMS AND TAXES--WAR HISTORIES--GRANT’S
BOOK--NEWSPAPERS--CHRISTMAS LETTER.
The interval between my resignation at Rome and my reappointment as
Consul General for Switzerland was spent in my home in Iowa.
Early in 1886, the North American Review asked me to prepare and edit a
series of General Sherman’s letters for the magazine.
I received an interesting letter from the General about the tempting
offers made to him by the magazines. They make offers of that kind to
one man in a million, and only one man in a million could decline them.
He mentions his forthcoming book.
“WASHINGTON, D. C., Feb. 3, 1886.
“DEAR BYERS:--I was glad to receive your letter of the 1st inst.
It indicates a purpose to join in the throng now publishing
articles about the war. Last year Rice, of the N. A. Review,
offered me $1,000 for an article on Grant, which I declined
and he obtained that of March for nothing. I hate controversy,
but could not escape this with F----, who is an army officer,
retired, and usually very accurate, but his denial to furnish
me the source of his extract from one of my private letters
led up to my reply in the March number. If you have read from
the magazine itself, all right, but if you have only seen the
newspaper extracts, I would like to have you get the Review
itself and read the whole. The Century Magazine is also a very
respectable vehicle for war stories and has tempted me with
high offers in money, but I have resolved to keep out of the
newspapers and magazines as far as they will let me, confining
myself to the memoirs revised, which will be issued by the
Appletons by May next. I have gone over all the proof and will
now stand by it. The first and last chapters are new--as well as
the index, maps and illustrations.
“We are all very well here and I shall regret to give up my own
home here for a hotel in New York, but I shall never consent to
housekeeping in New York.
“My best love to Mrs. Byers and the children.
“Truly your friend,
W. T. SHERMAN.”
At the General’s invitation I went to St. Louis, and for a time was a
guest in his home as I had been before in Washington.
A few notes of the great commander’s life at this time may not be amiss
here.
General Sherman was now a retired officer. After a great life on the
military stage, he had himself rung down the curtain. He was living in
a comfortable, brown, two-story brick house, at 912 Garrison Avenue.
His simple little office, where he spent most of his time, was down in
the basement, just as it had been in Washington. The same little sign
bearing the simple words:
“_Office of General Sherman_”
was on one of the basement windows. In this room, on shelves and in
cases, were all the records of his life--his memoranda of the war,
military maps, correspondence. There were letters on file in that
little room from eminent men all over the country. A magazine editor
once offered $40,000 for permission to go down into that basement and
pick out the letters he would like to print in his magazine. The editor
even offered a thousand dollars for one certain, single letter there.
It was never printed till its importance was gone.
One evening he came down into the basement where I was sitting, and
taking his keys out of his pocket threw them on the table beside me,
saying: “There, I trust you with everything; unlock everything; use
what you want.” The complete confidence thus placed in me, I recall
with pride and affection. I recall, too, the responsibility I felt.
Night after night, day after day, I read among the letters, picking out
only those that seemed of interest to the public, and to be perfectly
proper to print.
At that time I edited for the North American Review six chapters of
them. Nothing went without General Sherman’s approval. He allowed his
clerk, Mr. Barrett, to copy for me. Hundreds of the most entertaining
letters I regarded it indiscreet to print at that time, and they have
never been printed yet.
The General and myself sat there in the basement by the little open
fire many a time till twelve or one o’clock at night; I looking through
the almost thousands of letters and papers, he smoking a cigar and
reading. The poems of Burns lay there on his desk all the time, because
Burns was his favorite poet. Dickens and Scott, he read time and again;
some of the stories once a year, he said.
When I would find something of especial interest among the letters, I
would speak of it. He would stop reading and, for an hour, tell me all
about it, and add interesting things concerning the writer. What would
I not now give could my memory recall faithfully his talks to me in
the silence of those nights. He suffered some with asthma, and it was
always easier for him to sit up far into the night and talk, than to
go to bed. Sometimes a wee drop from a black bottle in the back room
refreshed us both, without harming either.
About this time, a few over-zealous friends of Grant, not satisfied
with the world’s recognition of his genius, were claiming for him the
impossible merit of everything that happened in the war, even the
origin of the March to the Sea. The claim was ridiculous, and I do not
believe that General Grant personally had anything to do with it. But
I am sure that Sherman felt that Grant ought to have spoken at this
juncture.
One evening I came across an autograph letter from Grant to Sherman,
congratulating him on the achievement of the March to the Sea, “a
campaign,” in Grant’s words, “the like of which has not been read of in
past history.” There was not a thought of claiming any of the glory for
himself. Right beside it lay a letter from Robert E. Lee, telling how
this movement of Sherman’s resulted eventually in the fall of Richmond.
Reading these, determined me, while with General Sherman in his home,
to write, myself, an account of the March to the Sea, for the North
American Review. My article was printed in the Review, September, 1887.
When it was finished I asked the General to listen to it. He sent
upstairs one morning for Mrs. Sherman to come down and hear it also.
“Let me read it aloud,” said Mrs. Sherman. It was one of the delightful
hours of my life, to sit there and hear the wife of the great soldier
read to him my story of his March to the Sea. I watched his face while
she read, and could see that his mind was again afire with the thought
of the campaign. He made no important changes, and a note to the editor
of the Review showed that he approved my paper fully.
Life went on in the General’s family very much as at Washington. It
was a happy, hospitable home. “Tom,” the father now being reconciled
to the idea of his being a priest, came up often from the college down
town, and many were the interesting conversations I heard between
the great soldier and his intellectual son. It seemed to me the same
fire of intellect was in each, only it was all different in flame and
purpose. Mrs. Sherman had a little office of her own upstairs, just
as at her Washington home, where she devoted her energy to planning
for the poor. She was a noble, unselfish woman, and her charities,
unheralded to the world, did much to soften the hard lines of the
unfortunate.
The General’s health was not the very best. He was often taking such
severe colds as even threatened his life. The doctors were uneasy, and
Mrs. Sherman was on one or two occasions much alarmed. “Should such
a misfortune occur,” she said to me one morning after the breakfast,
“should I survive him, I want you to undertake the publication of all
my husband’s papers and correspondence. He has told me of his affection
for you many times, and you know my own.” I was greatly touched by this
new proof of confidence in me, but I could not but think that General
Sherman had many years to live.
The General, simple in public life, was still simpler in his home.
He came to breakfast mornings in his comfortable old slippers and
wearing a shiny little morning coat that was more comfortable than
decorative. After lunch at noon, he usually took an hour’s nap and
then went down in the basement to his work of answering letters. He
answered everybody, and gave himself as much labor in this imposed
letter writing as if he were well paid for it. Hundreds and hundreds
of people asked him to help them get office, and hundreds asked him
for money. He gave a great deal, and the giving helped to keep him a
comparatively poor man. Mrs. Sherman told me how he kept accounts at
certain Washington stores, and sent needy men there almost daily with
orders for hats, coats, etc. His daughter Lizzie was one of the kindest
and sweetest spirits I ever knew. She was almost a constant companion
of her father in his many travels.
We had pleasant chats every morning at the breakfast table, though it
was nearly impossible to get the General away from the basement and
his newspaper, till Mrs. S. had the papers put on the table with the
coffee. Then the General would read and comment. He regarded the press
almost as a necessary evil. Few of his comments were complimentary to
it. He had a horror of reporters.
A great railroad strike was going on. Some sensational newspapers in
St. Louis were helping to keep it up by encouraging the strikers. A
month before, the same journals had been obsequious to the railroads.
“Some day,” said the General one morning, throwing down the newspaper,
“these pusillanimous scoundrels of editors will be for calling on
me and on the country to save them from the very ruin they are now
encouraging. They are pulling the house down on their own heads. If it
could fall on them, only! But little newspapers care for the sorrow
they carry to human breasts, if they can only start a sensation.”
He hated professional politicians even as much as such editors, but he
discriminated between a man going to Congress for bread and butter,
and a man who tried to labor for his country. Even Blaine, whom he
so cordially honored, he thought a spoilsman at times, not always a
statesman.
In the home here, Mrs. Sherman called him “Cump,” and that was the
title he liked to hear. The name conveyed something dearer and better
to him than titles and rank. He had no love for any of these empty
sounding baubles, anyway, and never sought a promotion in his life.
One evening he was to address the Ransom Grand Army Post at St. Louis,
and in the name of some patriotic man present a flag. He asked me to go
along. After supper I came down and found him dressed and waiting for
me in the drawing-room. “Where is your Grand Army badge?” he asked,
observing I had none. I explained that mine was at home in Iowa. “You
must have one,” he said, “I’ll give you this,” and taking the emblem
from his breast he fastened it on my coat. I treasure it still. It is
an heirloom for my son.
He took me to see Buffalo Bill, the Indian fighter, one day. It was at
the Fair Ground. The scout came to the General’s box with all the fair
manner of a high-born gentleman, saluted, bowed, advanced, took the
extended hand and met a genuine soldier’s greeting. Sherman had known
him on the plains, and respected him as a man of worth. “That man’s a
genius,” he said, when Cody went down to the ring, “and he believes in
himself. That’s half the battle of life.” Sherman, like Buffalo Bill,
believed in himself. He knew what he could do, and did it, and asked
neither praise nor pay.
That evening, one of Sherman’s daughters and a girl friend visiting
in the family, danced with Buffalo Bill at a great ball. “He was the
best dancer of them all,” said one of the girls on coming home. “_Just
too lovely for anything_,” added the other. And this was the man of
the prairies, the hunter, the scout. Environment doesn’t count for
anything, after all.
One day while at the Shermans, a friend, Mr. Haydock, asked me to go
with him to see Grant’s log house. It is on the old Dent farm in the
woods, seven miles southwest of the city. This now neglected land
was given to Mrs. Grant by her father, at her marriage. When Grant
was thirty-two, he saw no prospects ahead of him in the army; so he
resigned and went out here in the woods to live. “I had no means to
stock the farm,” he wrote later, “and a house had to be built. I worked
very hard, never losing a day because of bad weather. If nothing else
could be done, I would put a load of wood on the wagon and take it to
the city for sale.” For four years, Grant and his family lived this
obscure life here in a little log cabin he built with his own hands.
The cabin is now hard to find. The road is deserted, the yard is
overgrown with tall grass, straggling rose bushes bloom in what was
once a garden; the windows of the cabin are gone, the doors stand open.
Grant cut the trees, prepared and hauled the logs for the cabin
himself, and a hired hand helped him to put them up. It is a typical
Southern log house, one and a half stories high, two rooms below,
separated by an open hall, two rooms above. There is no history of
Grant’s life, during the years he struggled to make a living on this
lonesome backwoods farm. Grant seldom alluded to it himself.
While walking over the deserted cabin and yard, I saw in my mind its
whilom owner, the guest of peoples and potentates.
Sherman had an extravagant opinion of General Grant’s abilities. “Grant
was the one level-headed man among us all,” he said to me one night,
down in the basement of his home. Sherman went to the opera because he
was fond of music, though he could not sing a note. If he kissed the
pretty women behind the scenes sometimes, or more likely in front of
the scenes, it was because the pretty women kissed him. I never saw
a man so run after by womankind in my life. It was a great honor to
have him touch their hands, their lips. Once in Switzerland, when he
was leaving Bern on a train, the whole crowd of American women at the
depot, old and young, pretty and ugly, children and all, kissed him.
When I was leaving his home at St. Louis, Miss Lizzie said I should
have something to remember my visit by. “Then I want something from
the little basement,” I said, “there is where I have spent most of my
time.” “Papa, why not give him your paper weight.” It was a little
bronze bust of General Grant that he had used on his desk for many
years. It has been mine since that evening, though I needed nothing
to remind me forever of the hours spent far into the night down in the
basement of the Sherman home.
In April, I received an interesting letter from him on taxation:
“ST. LOUIS, MO., April 25, 1886.
“DEAR BYERS:--I have your letter of the 18th, and though I have
nothing to tell you, will answer. I understand that your article
on the March to the Sea will be in the North American Review
for May, and I will look for it. It might have been better had
you applied to the Century Magazine, which seems to invite
contributions illustrative of the war, though it seems partial
to our adversaries. The absence of Mr. Rice in Europe, too, may
be one cause of a relaxed interest in such articles as you could
supply. J. R. is rather the workman than the editor, and is
governed chiefly by the notoriety of the contribution rather than
by the merit of the article.
“Hold on to your farm. This removal to the cheaper land of
Dakota will not last long, as that is devoid of wood, and cold
in the extreme. As soon as the few inviting places west are
filled up, the tide will set back to Iowa. But I really do fear
now an internal cause of the diminished value of land. Instead
of supporting one government as in Europe, we have to support
five--National, State, County, Township and Municipal--each of
which expects for its support enough taxes for the whole. We are
merely the nominal owners. The aggregate taxes here and with you,
I infer, are equal to rent, and the question is: Who owns the
farm? I infer the State does, and the nominal owner is merely
the tenant at will. This fact, with the labor organizations, may
bring about conflicts such as desolated Asia, hundreds, if not
thousands of years ago.
“I will be in Chicago Decoration Day, Indianapolis June 2d, San
Francisco Aug. 3-6, in Washington Territory and British Columbia
till September, when I must come to Rock Island for the annual
meeting of the Army of the Tennessee, Sept. 15-16, then for New
York.
“Mrs. Sherman will go East about July 1st, and we will all meet
in New York about Sept. 20th. I shall expect to see you at Rock
Island.
“With best compliments to Mrs. Byers, and best wishes for your
health and success.
“Truly your friend,
W. T. SHERMAN.”
Later, he wrote me his views on newspapers and war books:
“ST. LOUIS, MO., June 11, 1886.
“DEAR BYERS:--I have your letter of the 8th, and note that you
are now in correspondence with two of the best monthlies of the
country. I feel assured that you will get along, though the
speculation of buying young cattle and feeding them on your own
land is a better business. The newspapers of our country have
been as the morning mist, absolutely lost or dissipated by the
noonday sun. The monthlies may hang on a little longer. And only
printed volumes with indexes, collected in libraries, will be
accepted as approximate truth.
“Grant’s book will of course survive all time. Mine, Sheridan’s
and a few others will be auxiliary, but the great mass of books
purporting to give the history of especial corps, regiments and
even individuals, will be swept aside, because the world now
demands condensation, and probably in fifty years, one hundred
pages will be all that the world will allow for the history of
the Civil War. Meantime, you can interest and entertain your
readers, for which the journals can pay you what you need, money.
“But I would not advise you to attempt any material change of
the public judgment, as recorded by Grant. I prefer, when you
use any letter of mine, or any of Grant’s to me, that you insist
on their being used with your text, not theirs. If you consent
to their expurgating any special letter, the editor will use it
with his own introduction, to justify himself in some conclusion
heretofore published. I have experienced this and could not find
fault, as it was explained by the usual motives for human action.
I would insist on the publication of your articles as you made
them, with literal or immaterial corrections, when convinced of
their necessity.
“We are now pretty well packed up, and no doubt we will be ready
for breaking up here July 1st, after which my address will be
Palace Hotel, San Francisco. Present us all kindly to Mrs. Byers
and the boy, and believe me that I shall always feel a personal
interest in your welfare.
“Your friend,
W. T. SHERMAN.”
On Christmas, he sent me this kindly note:
“NEW YORK, Dec. 24, 1886.
“DEAR BYERS:--I was very glad to receive your kind letter of the
20th, and assure you of my continued interest and affection,
wishing you and yours all earthly happiness.
“The task on which you have entered, ‘Iowa in War Times,’ will
afford you full employment for a year and more, and I trust with
reasonable profit. Remember that ‘brevity is the soul of wit,’
and condensation is now the true aim of history. Each regiment
will expect you to include a diary of its life, but I know you
have industry and patience enough to generalize.
“I shall look out for your article in the North American. I
was tempted only yesterday by the Century Magazine to furnish
an article on that very subject, which I declined in a letter
at some length, claiming that my Memoirs were as full as I can
reproduce, and preferring that others like yourself should
present the facts in a more agreeable form. To ward off other
applicants I have consented to the publication of that letter.
“Truly your friend,
W. T. SHERMAN.”
The General had now given up his beautiful home in St. Louis, and was
about to move to New York. It turned out to be, as he hoped it would,
his last change of residence. Again he wrote me. It was his last letter
to me from St. Louis, and again he touched on the troubles he had
had with American newspapers. In fact his experiences with newspaper
correspondents during the war had been such as to make him hate the
entire fraternity. There were times when he had unceremoniously driven
them away from his army, as mischief makers and traitors.
“ST. LOUIS, MO., June 29, 1886.
“DEAR BYERS:--I have your letter of the 22d, with copy of yours
to R. * * *
“I am willing to risk B.’s preface to any of your articles. He
has been always most friendly to me, and I should always fear his
_over_ praise, rather than his adverse criticisms. Nevertheless,
you are right in claiming that your ‘articles’ should be
published as written by you. The editor has the privilege
of calling attention to the subject-matter of his special
‘articles,’ but the article itself should not be ‘coupled’ with
matter written by any outsider before publication and after
preparation.
“The chief trouble of my life has been in dealing with newspapers
and periodicals. They want something ‘sensational,’ which will
sell as an article of commerce, and their self-interest blinds
them to the personal consequences of the publications. To sell
50, 500 or 5,000 of this paper or magazine, is their business.
If they make sad a hundred or a million of hearts, it is to them
of no consequence. Lizzie and I will be off for California July
1st. Mrs. Sherman and Cump for Marietta, Lancaster Co., Pa., July
2d. You may not hear of or from me till I reach Rock Island,
Sept. 15-16. On my arrival at San Francisco, I can buy the North
American Review, so you need not send me a copy. We are all now
at the Lindell Hotel, and will scatter as I have indicated, in
two more days. An excellent family has taken our home for three
years, with the privilege of three more--in fact beyond our
lives, at $1,500 a year, enough to pay taxes and repairs. I think
we have made a fatal mistake, but if our youngest son can thereby
be made a real lawyer and man, I will be content. My career is
ended.
“Wishing you and yours all the happiness possible,
“I am sincerely your friend,
W. T. SHERMAN.”