Chapter XI: Part 11

Before sunset of July 4, Sherman, with fifty thousand men, was in pursuit of Johnston, who had been trying to aid Pemberton. Johnston marched rapidly, driving all cattle, hogs, and sheep into the ponds, and shooting them, so that they should not furnish food for the Federals, and also to spoil the water. Johnston made a stand at Jackson, but soon evacuated the place.

For bravery and success in this campaign, Grant was made major-general in the regular army, the highest grade then allowed by law, and Sherman and McPherson brigadier-generals in the regular army.

After the fall of Vicksburg, Sherman's family, Mrs. Sherman, Minnie, Lizzie, Willie, and Tom, came from Ohio to visit him. Willie was nine years old, fond of the parade of war, and was made a "sergeant" in the regular battalion. He became ill in the low marshy country, and died of typhoid fever, just after the family reached the Gayoso Hotel in Memphis.

This death was a great blow to Sherman, as he showed in a letter which he wrote to Captain C. C. Smith, commanding Battalion Thirteenth United States Regulars: "I cannot sleep to-night till I record an expression of the deep feelings of my heart to you, and to the officers and soldiers of the battalion, for their kind behavior to my poor child.... The child that bore my name, and in whose future I reposed with more confidence than I did in my own plan of life, now being carried by steamer a mere corpse, seeking a grave in a distant land, with a weeping mother, brother, and sisters clustered about him. For myself I ask no sympathy. On, on I must go, to meet a soldier's fate, or live to see our country rise superior to all factions, till its flag is adored and respected by ourselves and by all the powers of the earth....

"Child as he was, he had the enthusiasm, the pure love of truth, honor, and love of country, which should animate all soldiers.... Assure each and all, if in after years they call on me or mine, and mention that they were of the Thirteenth Regulars when Willie was a sergeant, they will have a key to the affections of my family that will open all it has; that we will share with them our last blanket, our last crust!"

In the spring of 1867, Willie's body was removed from Lancaster, Ohio, to St. Louis, and buried by the side of another child, Charles, born in 1864. Sherman's officers and men erected a beautiful monument to Willie, and had inscribed on it, "Our little Sergeant Willie, from the First Battalion Thirteenth United States Infantry."

After the dreadful battle of Chickamauga, Ga., Sept. 20, 1863, in which we lost 15,851 men, and the Confederates 17,804, Grant went to Chattanooga to retrieve that disaster. In this battle Thomas, "who," says General Fullerton, "never retreated and had never been defeated," so wonderfully held his ground that he was ever afterwards called the "Rock of Chickamauga."

"With but twenty-five thousand men," said General Garfield, "formed in a semicircle, of which he himself was the centre and soul, he successfully resisted for more than five hours the repeated assaults of an army of sixty-five thousand men, flushed with victory and bent on his annihilation.

"Towards the close of the day his ammunition began to fail. One by one of his division commanders reported but ten rounds, five rounds, and two rounds left. The calm, quiet answer was returned, 'Save your fire for close quarters, and when your last shot is fired give them the bayonet.

"On a portion of this line the last assault was repelled by the bayonet, and several hundred rebels were captured. When night had closed over the combatants, the last sound of battle was the booming of Thomas's shells bursting among his baffled and retreating assailants."

Grant telegraphed to Thomas to hold Chattanooga at all hazards; and Thomas, with his troops on less than half rations for the past month, replied, "We will hold the town till we starve." He urged Sherman to come at once. Then followed those memorable battles of Lookout Mountain, when Hooker fought his "Battle above the clouds," and Missionary Ridge, when Wood's and Sheridan's divisions under Thomas lost in one hour's storming 2,287 men.

"Sherman was fighting the heavy column of the enemy on our left," said General Henry M. Cist, "and the main part of the battle had been his share." He lost about two thousand men.

At three o'clock the first rifle-pits on the ridge were to be carried, and there they were to halt to await orders. There was some delay, so that the order was not given till half-past three, when the guns sounded, one, two, up to six, for the charge.

The enemy had four lines of breastworks, but one had been captured by Thomas the day before. Three rifle-pits remained. As our men approached, cheering, and breaking into a double-quick, the enemy poured upon them shot and shell from their batteries, changing it soon to grape and canister, with a terrific fire of musketry.

"Dashing through this over the open plain," says General Cist, "the soldiers of the army of the Cumberland swept on, driving the enemy's skirmishers, charging down on the line of works at the foot of the ridge, capturing it at the point of the bayonet, and routing the rebels, sending them at full speed up the ridge, killing and capturing them in large numbers. These rifle-pits were reached simultaneously by the several commands, when the troops, in compliance with their instructions, lay down at the foot of the ridge awaiting further orders."

Here they waited under a hot fire. The orders did not come; and then without orders, first one regiment and then another, with their colors raised, pushed up the mountain covered with rocks and fallen timber.

The centre of Sheridan's division reached the crest first, and almost at the same time the ridge was carried in six places. Almost entire regiments were taken from the enemy, and batteries, the Confederates often bayoneted at their guns. In an hour the work had been accomplished, and the storming of Missionary Ridge had passed into history as a memorable instance of bravery. "After it was over," says General Fullerton, "some madly shouted, some wept from very excess of joy, some grotesquely danced out their delight,--even our wounded forgot their pain to join in the general hurrah."

Grant and Thomas were watching the battle through their glasses. Grant asked, "By whose orders are those troops going up the hill?"

"I don't know," said Thomas, "I did not."

"I didn't order them up," said Sheridan, "but we are going to take the ridge."

Grant remarked that "it was all right if it turned out all right, but, if not, some one would suffer."

By the capture of the ridge, Sherman was enabled to take the tunnel as he had been ordered. Captain S. H. M. Byers, who was captured at the tunnel with sixty of his regiment and put in Libby prison for seven months--the sixty were soon reduced to sixteen by death--thus describes the scene. "As the column came out upon the ground, and in sight of the rebel batteries, their renewed and concentrated fire knocked the limbs from the trees above our heads.... In front of us was a rail-fence. 'Jump the fence, boys,' was the order, and never was a fence scaled more quickly. It was nearly half a mile to the rebel position, and we started on the charge, running across the open fields. I had heard the roaring of heavy battle before, but never such shrieking of cannon balls and bursting of shells as met us on that run."

Sherman, in his official report, gave his officers and men due credit for their "patience, cheerfulness, and courage." "For long periods," he said, "without regular rations or supplies of any kind, they have marched through mud and over rocks, sometimes barefooted, without a murmur. Without a moment's rest after a march of over four hundred miles, without sleep for three successive nights, we crossed the Tennessee, fought our part of the battle of Chattanooga, pursued the enemy out of Tennessee, and then turned more than a hundred and twenty miles north, and compelled Longstreet to raise the siege of Knoxville."

Congress soon passed a resolution of thanks to Sherman and his army for their "gallant and arduous services in marching to the relief of the Army of the Cumberland, and for their gallantry and heroism in the battle of Chattanooga, which contributed in a great degree to the success of our arms in that glorious victory."

The grade of lieutenant-general was now revived in the army, and bestowed upon Grant. He wrote Sherman at once to "express my thanks to you and McPherson, as _the men_ to whom, above all others, I feel indebted for whatever I have had of success. How far your advice and suggestions have been of assistance, you know. How far your execution of whatever has been given you to do entitles you to the reward I am receiving, you cannot know as well as I do."

And Sherman wrote back: "I believe you as brave, patriotic, and just as the great prototype Washington; as unselfish, kind-hearted, and honest as a man should be; but the chief characteristic in your nature is the simple faith in success you have always manifested, which I can liken to nothing else than the faith a Christian has in his Saviour.

"This faith gave you victory at Shiloh and Vicksburg. Also, when you have completed your best preparations, you go into battle without hesitation, as at Chattanooga--no doubts, no reserve; and I tell you that it was this that made us act with confidence. I knew, wherever I was, that you thought of me, and if I got in a tight place you would come--if alive."

Sherman at this time was put in command of the military division of the Mississippi, with Schofield, Thomas, McPherson, and Steele under him. Grant was to conquer Robert E. Lee and his large army at the East; and Sherman, Joseph E. Johnston's army at the West and South.

Supplies were at once gathered by Sherman at Chattanooga for one hundred thousand men, which would necessitate one hundred and thirty cars, of ten tons each, to reach that city daily. Confederate raids under Forrest and others were frequent; but, as in the case of Grant, nothing could deter Sherman.

On May 5, 1864, the great army started for Atlanta, Ga., prepared to fight its way. The men fought bravely at Resaca, at Allatoona Pass, and elsewhere.

During the month of May, Sherman had advanced his army, as he says, "nearly a hundred miles of as difficult a country as was ever fought over by civilized armies. The fighting was continuous, almost daily, among trees and bushes, on ground where we could rarely see a hundred yards ahead." Sherman had lost 9,299 men; nearly two thousand in killed and missing, and over seven thousand wounded. The enemy's loss was a little over half that number.

From June 10 to July 3 an almost constant battle was waged about Kenesaw Mountain, with a loss on our side of nearly eight thousand, and the Confederate loss considerably less.

An amusing remark came to Sherman's ear at Kenesaw. One of the Confederate soldiers said to another, "Well, the Yanks will have to git up and git now, for I heard General Johnston himself say that General Wheeler had blown up the _tunnel_ near Dalton, and that the Yanks would have to retreat, because they could get no more rations."

"Oh," said the listener, "don't you know that old Sherman carries a _duplicate_ tunnel along?"

The enemy were constantly driven back towards Atlanta. On July 22 a bloody battle was fought near Atlanta, usually called the Battle of Atlanta, in which the brave General McPherson was killed in the hottest of the fight when passing from one column to another. He rode into a wood, and soon his horse returned, wounded, bleeding, and riderless. His body was recovered, with his gauntlets on and boots outside his pantaloons, but his pocket-book with his papers was gone. The spot where he fell was soon retaken by our men, and the pocket-book and its contents were found in the haversack of a prisoner of war, captured at the time.

McPherson was only thirty-four years old, over six feet high, universally beloved, and apparently destined for a great future. Sherman could not look long upon the body. "Better start at once, and drive carefully," said the bluff but tender-hearted general to McPherson's staff, as he covered the body with the flag. It was taken home to Clyde, Ohio, where it was received with great honor, and buried near his mother's house in a small cemetery, part of which is the family orchard where he played when a boy.

General John A. Logan took the command after the death of McPherson, and fought bravely. The attack was made upon his line seven times, and seven times repulsed.

Sherman was often in extreme danger. Once, when he, Logan, and a few others were talking together, a minie-ball passed through Logan's coat-sleeve, scratching the skin, and struck Colonel Taylor in the breast. A memorandum-book saved his life. At another time a cannon-ball passed over Sherman's shoulder and killed the horse of an orderly behind. Another ball took off the head of a negro close by Sherman.

The month of July was an extremely hot one, but the soldiers had been in almost constant conflict. Our loss in that month was about ten thousand men, and that of the enemy perhaps greater by a few hundreds.

Sherman's men tore up railroad-tracks, made bonfires of the ties, wrapped the heated rails round trees and telegraph poles, and left them to cool,--such rails could not be used again,--and filled up deep cuts with trees, brush, and earth, commingled with loaded shells, so arranged that they would explode if disturbed. Thus the devastation of war went on.

Atlanta was full of foundries, arsenals, and machine-shops, and was called the "Gate City of the South." "I knew that its capture," says Sherman, "would be the death-knell of the Southern Confederacy."

Sept. 2 Atlanta could bear the Federal guns no longer, was evacuated by the enemy, and our troops marched into the city with great rejoicing. The losses during these four months had been over thirty thousand on each side.

President Lincoln wrote to Sherman: "The marches, battles, sieges, and other military operations, that have signalized the campaign, must render it famous in the annals of the war, and have entitled those who have participated therein to the applause and thanks of the nation."

Grant wrote from City Point, Va., "In honor of your great victory, I have ordered a salute to be fired with _shotted_ guns from every battery bearing on the enemy.... I feel that you have accomplished the most gigantic undertaking given to any general in this war."

Sherman at once required all the citizens and families resident in Atlanta to leave the city and go North or South as they chose, with a reasonable amount of furniture and bedding. This order was denounced by Hood, who had relieved Johnston, as unprecedented and cruel. A bitter correspondence took place, in which Sherman said, "War is cruelty, and you cannot refine it.... You might as well appeal against the thunder-storms as against these terrible hardships of war. They are inevitable; and the only way the people of Atlanta can hope once more to live in peace and quiet at home, is to stop the war, which can only be done by admitting that it began in error and is perpetuated in pride....

"I want peace, and believe it can only be reached through union and war, and I will ever conduct war with a view to perfect and early success. When peace does come, you may call on me for anything. Then will I share with you the last cracker, and watch with you to shield your homes and families against danger from every quarter."

Hood then took his army into Tennessee, and much of the old battle ground was fought over. Allatoona Pass was wonderfully defended by General John M. Corse, who lost a cheek-bone and an ear by a ball cutting across his face, but still led his men, holding the pass and killing the enemy three to one. Mr. John C. Ropes regards this fight "as one of the most memorable occurrences of the war."

At Resaca, when General Hood demanded its surrender, Colonel Clark R. Weaver said, "In my opinion, I can hold this post. If you want it, come and take it." But Hood did not attempt it after his losses at Allatoona.

Sherman saw the impossibility of holding the country and defending the railroads without constant losses. He telegraphed Grant, "With twenty-five thousand infantry and the bold cavalry he has, Hood can constantly break my road. I would infinitely prefer to make a wreck of the road and of the country from Chattanooga to Atlanta ... and with my effective army move through Georgia, smashing things to the sea."

On the morning of Nov. 15, 1864, this great army of about 65,000 men began its march from Atlanta to the sea. The depot, round-house, and machine-shops of the Georgia railroad had been burned. The fire destroyed the heart of the city, but did not reach the mass of the dwelling-houses. The army carried sixty-five guns, or one to each thousand men. Each gun, caisson, and forge was drawn by four teams of horses. There were twenty-five hundred wagons, with six mules each, and six hundred ambulances with two horses each. Every soldier carried on his person forty rounds of ammunition, and in the wagons were enough cartridges to make up two hundred rounds to a man. The procession occupied five miles or more of road.

Corps commanders alone were intrusted with the power of destroying mills, cotton-gins, etc. "Where the army is unmolested," said Sherman, "no destruction of such property should be permitted."

The cavalry and artillery were allowed to take horses, mules, and wagons, especially from the rich, who were not usually as friendly as the poor. Soldiers were not to enter the dwellings of the inhabitants, but might gather vegetables and stock. Regular foraging parties might gather provisions at any distance from the road travelled.

As the great company moved out of Atlanta, the black smoke of her buildings rising high in air, the men sang "John Brown's body lies a-mouldering in his grave." "Never before or since," says Sherman, "have I heard the chorus of 'Glory, glory, hallelujah!' done with more spirit, or in better harmony of time and place."

As Sherman moved past his men, some of them called out, "Uncle Billy,"--they usually called him this,--"I guess Grant is waiting for us at Richmond!"

The first night they camped by the roadside near Lithonia. All night long groups of men were tearing up railroads and bending the heated rails around trees or telegraph poles.

At the towns the white people came out to look upon the hated intruders, and the colored people were frantic with joy. Each day foraging parties, "Sherman's bummers" as they were called, usually about fifty men from a brigade, would go out to the plantations for food.

"The foragers," says Major-General Jacob D. Cox in his "March to the Sea," "turned into beasts of burden oxen and cows, as well as horses and mules. Here would be a silver-mounted family carriage drawn by a jackass and a cow, loaded inside and out with everything the country produced, vegetable and animal, dead and alive. There would be an ox-cart, similarly loaded, and drawn by a nondescript tandem team, equally incongruous. Perched upon the top would be a ragged forager, rigged out in a fur hat of a fashion worn by darkies of a century ago, or a dress-coat which had done service at stylish balls of a former generation." Many of the horses and mules collected were shot, as it produced a bad effect on the infantry when too many idlers were mounted.

The usual march for the army was about fifteen miles per day. The Southern press urged that the invading army be destroyed, starved, obstructed by gun, spade, and axe. But the great host swept on.

At Milledgeville the arsenal and such public buildings as could be used easily for hostile purposes were burned, while several mills and thousands of bales of cotton were spared. Other places shared the same fate.

As the army neared Savannah, they were assured by some prisoners whom they took, that it would be found strongly fortified. On one of the roads torpedoes had been planted, one of which exploded when touched by a horse's hoof, killing the animal and literally blowing off the flesh from the legs of the rider. This so angered General Sherman, that he made some rebel prisoners, much against their will, pass over the road to explode their own torpedoes, or to discover and dig them up.

Sherman demanded of General Hardee the surrender of Savannah. This Hardee declined to do; but he evacuated the city about the time the assault was to have been made, leaving behind his heavy guns, cotton, railway-cars, steamboats, and other property, but destroying his iron clads and navy-yards. The ground outside the forts was filled with torpedoes, as was also the Savannah River. Log piers were stretched across the channel below the city, and filled with the cobble-stones that formerly paved the streets. A heavy force at once set to work to remove the torpedoes and other obstructions from the river, and Savannah became the great depot of supply for the troops. Very many destitute Southern families were fed by Sherman.

Sherman telegraphed the President, Dec. 22, 1864: "I beg to present you, as a Christmas gift, the city of Savannah, with over one hundred and fifty heavy guns and plenty of ammunition, also about twenty-five thousand bales of cotton."

There was great rejoicing at the capture of the city, as now Sherman could march into the Carolinas and lay them waste, and then join his army to that of Grant, who was besieging Lee in Richmond. Thomas had conquered Hood at Nashville. The end of the war could be plainly seen.

Grant congratulated Sherman on his brilliant campaign. "I never had a doubt," he said, "of the result. When apprehensions for your safety were expressed by the President, I assured him, with the army you had, and you in command of it, there was no danger but you would _strike_ bottom on salt water some place; that I would not feel the same security, in fact, would not have intrusted the expedition to any other living commander."

Lincoln wrote, "The undertaking being a success, the honor is all yours; for I believe none of us went further than to acquiesce.... But what next? I suppose it will be safer if I leave General Grant and yourself to decide."

Congress passed a vote of thanks to Sherman and his men for the great March to the Sea, of three hundred miles in twenty-four days. This march greatly interested Europe, though Sherman never considered it so important as the passage of the army afterwards through the Carolinas.

The _London Times_ said: "Since the great Duke of Marlborough turned his back upon the Dutch, and plunged hurriedly into Germany to fight the famous battle of Blenheim, military history has recorded no stranger marvel than this mysterious expedition of General Sherman, on an unknown route, against an undiscovered enemy." Noted army men regard it as having "scarcely a parallel in the history of war."

In January the whole army left Savannah, Ga., for Columbia, S.C. Sometimes, in pouring rains, they waded up to their shoulders through swamps previously considered impassable, or made roads for miles through the mud by corduroying them with rails and split trees.

The Confederate General Johnston said later, in the hearing of General Cox, concerning this part of the march, "he had made up his mind that there had been no such army since the days of Julius Cæsar."

"Whoever will consider," says General Cox, "the effect of dragging the artillery and hundreds of loaded army wagons over mud roads, in such a country, and of the infinite labor required to pave these roads with logs, levelling the surface with smaller poles in the hollows between, adding to the structure as the mass sinks in the ooze, and continuing this till the miles of train have pulled through, will get a constantly increasing idea of the work, and a steadily increasing wonder that it was done at all."

On Feb. 16 Sherman camped near an old prison bivouac opposite Columbia, called Camp Sorghum, "where remained," he says, "the mud-hovels and holes in the ground which our prisoners had made to shelter themselves from the winter's cold and the summer's heat."

When the army entered Columbia, they found a long pile of burning cotton-bales, which Sherman was told had been fired by General Wade Hampton's men before their departure. At night a high wind fanned these flames; and though Sherman's men assisted in trying to put out the fire, the heart of the city was burned--several churches, the old State House, hotels, and dwellings. About half the city was in ashes. Sherman gave the mayor five hundred cattle to feed the people, and one hundred muskets to preserve order after the departure of his army.

One lady saved her home from pillage by showing to the troops a book which Sherman had given her years before. The boys knew Uncle Billy's writing. They guarded her house, and a young man from Iowa tended her baby while she was receiving a social call from Sherman.

While in Columbia, a poem was presented to Sherman by Adjutant S. H. M. Byers of the Fifth Iowa Infantry, written while a prisoner in that city, where it was arranged and sung by the prisoners. It was entitled "Sherman's March to the Sea," beginning,--

"Our camp-fires shone bright on the mountains
That frowned on the river below,
As we stood by our guns in the morning,
And eagerly watched for the foe;
When a rider came out of the darkness
That hung over mountain and tree,
And shouted, 'Boys, up and be ready!
For Sherman will march to the sea!'"

Sherman at once attached Byers to his staff.

Several foundries, the factory of Confederate money, and the state arsenal at Columbia, were destroyed by Sherman before leaving. Charleston was evacuated Feb. 18, for fear of its falling into Federal hands; and Wilmington was captured by General Terry Feb. 22. At Cheraw a large number of guns and thirty-six hundred barrels of powder were taken; at Fayetteville a magnificent United States arsenal was destroyed by our men.

Two battles were fought at Averysboro and at Bentonville, Johnston now commanding the Confederates, our loss being over two thousand men in both battles. March 23 Sherman's army entered Goldsborough, N.C., after a march from Savannah of four hundred and twenty-five miles, across five large rivers, and innumerable swamps, in fifty days, the army being almost as fresh as when they started from Atlanta.

General Sherman then left his army under Schofield, and started for City Point, Va., to meet Lincoln and Grant on March 28. "When I left Lincoln," says Sherman,--this proved to be their last meeting,--"I was more than ever impressed with his kindly nature, his deep and earnest sympathy with the afflictions of the whole people, resulting from the war, and by the march of hostile armies through the South." He wanted no more blood shed, and was anxious for the men on both sides to return to their homes.

"Of all the men I ever met," said Sherman, "he seemed to possess more of the elements of greatness, combined with goodness, than any other."

Sherman returned to his army, and made ready for one more march, to meet Grant. He was to start April 10. However, April 6 Richmond fell, and Lee and his whole army surrendered to Grant at Appomattox Court House, Va., April 9, 1865.

Sherman's army were resting, April 11, at the end of the hour's march, when a staff-officer galloped along the lines, shouting, "Lee has surrendered!" The soldiers were wild with delight, and flung their caps at him, as they shouted, "You're the man we've been looking for these three years!"

A Southern woman came to the gate with her children as the columns passed, and, learning the reason of the commotion, looked at her little ones, while the tears fell down her cheeks, and said tenderly, "Now father will come home."

April 13 Johnston asked for a suspension of hostilities; on the evening of April 14 Lincoln was assassinated, to the great grief of the nation; April 18 a basis of agreement was effected between Sherman and Johnston, which was modified at Washington, so as to correspond with the terms made between Grant and Lee. On April 26 Johnston surrendered to Sherman his whole force, 36,817 men, and the troops in Georgia and Florida, 52,453, making 89,270 men. The march to the sea and through the Carolinas had helped, as Sherman believed it would, to end the Civil War.

There remained only for the closing scene the grand review of the Army of the West for six hours and a half along Pennsylvania Avenue, Washington, May 24, the day following the review of the Army of the Potomac. Some of the division commanders, by way of variety, had added goats, cows, and mules, loaded with poultry, hams, etc. There were also families of freed slaves in the procession, the women leading the children. Each division was preceded by its corps of black helpers, with picks and spades.

In Sherman's farewell to his army he urged those who remained in the service to continue the same hard work and discipline which they had had in the past, and those who went to their homes "not to yield to the natural impatience sure to result from our past life of excitement and adventure," but to make a home and occupation in our grand, extensive, diversified country.

"Your general," he said, "now bids you farewell, with the full belief that, as in war you have been good soldiers, so in peace you will make good citizens; and if, unfortunately, new war should arise in our country, 'Sherman's Army' will be the first to buckle on its old armor, and come forth to defend and maintain the Government of our inheritance."

After the war Sherman was in command of the military division of the Mississippi, with headquarters at St. Louis. He took especial interest in the development of the Northern and Southern Pacific railroads. When Grant was made General, July 25, 1866, Sherman was made Lieutenant-General. In 1869 when Grant became President, Sherman was made General, with the provision that the office should go to no other person. Sheridan was made Lieutenant-General with the same provision.

From Nov. 10, 1871, to Sept. 17, 1872, General Sherman travelled abroad in Turkey, Russia, Austria, and Western Europe, and received distinguished honors. He kept full notes. After his return he published his memoirs in two volumes, which the _Nation_ characterises as "one of the most noteworthy examples of self-revealing in the whole range of autobiography."

He received degrees from Harvard, Yale, Dartmouth, and Princeton colleges. To Harvard college he sent a large picture of himself, which now hangs in the library. He was much sought after in social circles, and was an interesting speaker and writer. Once when speaking on the American flag to the pupils of the Packer and Polytechnic Institutes in Brooklyn, he said of the "Stars and Bars," the Confederate flag, "They cut out the blue. They left heaven out of their flag, and so were destined to defeat."

To the cadets at West Point he said: "When war comes you can have but one purpose--your country--and by your country I mean the whole country, not part of it." Everywhere he was outspoken, of simple manners, humorous, brave, unselfish, and comprehensive in mind and actions.

"The two or three great captains in any age," says the _Nation_, "are alike in the supreme qualities which make a general. They have the unruffled presence of mind which makes their intellectual operations most sure and true in the greatest and most sudden peril, and the true greatness which makes the most momentous decision and unhesitating action under vast responsibility, as if these were the every day work of their lives. The present generation has in our army seen two such, Grant and Sherman. It is doubtful if it has seen a third."

General Oliver O. Howard, who lost an arm under Sherman, writes, "Take him all in all, General Sherman was not only one of the greatest military geniuses in history, but a model of a kindly, generous, and faithful man in every position in life."

Sherman's soldiers idolized him. To them he was always "Old Tecums" or "Uncle Billy." He believed in fighting at the front. He said in his Memoirs: "No man can properly command an army from the rear. He must be at its front.... Some men think that modern armies may be so regulated that a general can sit in an office and play on his several columns as on the keys of a piano. This is a fearful mistake. The directing mind must be at the very head of the army--must be seen there, and the effect of his mind and personal energy must be felt by every officer and man present with it, to secure the best results."

General Sherman was strongly urged to become a candidate for the Presidency. He declined absolutely, as he did not wish its cares and duties; knowing also that the religion of his wife and children, Roman Catholicism, though he was not a Romanist, would cause opposition. His son, Thomas Ewing Sherman, though educated for the law, became a Catholic priest.

After retiring from the army, as the law requires at sixty-four years of age, though allowed full pay, thirteen thousand five hundred dollars yearly to the end of his life, Sherman removed to New York, living at 75 West Seventy-first Street. Here, in the midst of his children and grandchildren, he passed his last days happily. Of his four sons, Willie, Charles, Thomas, and Philemon Tecumseh, the first two died. Of his four daughters, Minnie, Lizzie, Ella, and Rachel, Minnie was married to Lieutenant Fitch, Ella to Lieutenant Thackara, and Rachel to Dr. Thorndike.

General Sherman was always partial to the West, and believed in its great future.

Mrs. Sherman died Nov. 27, 1888, and was buried in Calvary Cemetery, St. Louis, in a plot selected by herself and husband over twenty years before. Here their two sons and three grandchildren were also buried.

Early in February, 1891, General Sherman took cold, which resulted in his death from bronchial trouble and asthma, Saturday afternoon at 1.50, Feb. 14. He died without apparent pain, all his family about him, except the Rev. Thomas E. Sherman, his son, who was on his way home from Europe.

Though requesting that his body should not lie in state, the family were finally persuaded to allow the thousands of the General's friends to pass by the coffin in his own parlors from ten to four o'clock. There was deep and unfeigned sorrow. The funeral was one never to be forgotten. New York City was draped with mourning. All the shipping bore the emblems of grief, with flags at half-mast. Business was practically suspended and the streets crowded.

For two hours and a half, while bells were tolling, the great procession moved past, with inverted muskets, muffled drums, torn battle-flags, cavalry and artillery, all following the caisson with its heroic dead wrapped in the flag. The caisson in its funereal trappings was drawn by five black horses, three of these abreast. Two of the horses were ridden by artillerymen in blue uniforms, with black helmets and red plumes. Behind the caisson was a soldier leading a handsome black riderless horse, covered with black velvet, on whose back were Sherman's saddle and his riding boots reversed.

The great of the nation were present to do Sherman honor. Among the distinguished generals was Joseph E. Johnston from the South, who was also at the funeral of Grant, and for whom both the Northern generals had great respect and admiration.

As the funeral _cortège_ passed along, appropriate selections were played by the bands. Gilmore's band electrified all hearts by the song turned into a dirge, composed for Sherman by Henry C. Work.

"Bring the good old bugle, boys, we'll have another song,
Sing it with a spirit that will start the world along,
Sing it as we used to sing it, fifty thousand strong,
While we were marching through Georgia.

CHORUS.

'Hurrah! Hurrah! we bring the jubilee!
Hurrah! Hurrah! the flag that makes you free!'
So we sang the chorus from Atlanta to the sea,
While we were marching through Georgia.

* * * * * * *

"So we made a thoroughfare for Freedom and her train,
Sixty miles in latitude--three hundred to the main;
Treason fled before us, for resistance was in vain,
While we were marching through Georgia."

As the body was taken on board the ferry-boat, for the west, the Marine Band played the hymn:--

"Here bring your bleeding hearts,
Here tell your anguish;
Earth has no sorrow
That Heaven cannot heal."

All along the route to St. Louis great crowds gathered at the stations, the old soldiers weeping like children. At Coshocton, Ohio, five hundred school-children stood near the train, and sang "Nearer, my God, to Thee." At Columbus, Ohio, at the depot, was a large picture of Sherman surmounted by an eagle, and underneath the words, "Ohio's son, the nation's hero."

At St. Louis in the midst of thousands, after a brief service by his son, General Sherman was laid to rest in Calvary Cemetery by the side of his wife, who had died a little more than two years previously. Richard Watson Gilder voiced the sentiment of the nation:

"But better than martial awe, and the pageant of civic sorrow;
Better than praise of to-day, or the statue we build to-morrow;
Better than honor and glory, and history's iron pen,
Is the thought of duty done, and the love of his fellowmen."

CHARLES HADDON SPURGEON.

No one who has sat in the great London Tabernacle, with its six thousand or more eager listeners, and heard Spurgeon preach, natural, brotherly, earnest, and eloquent, can ever forget it. I have seen a whole congregation moved to tears, as he talked of the relationship between God and His children, from the words, "Abba, Father." To hear a man like this, is always to ask the secret of his power. What was the childhood and youth that ushered in this rare manhood? Did he have more talent, more grace, more learning, than other men? He had no wealth, no superior education, no fortuitous circumstances, yet his career has been a remarkable one.

"He is a wonderful man," said Lord Shaftesbury, "full of zeal, affection, faith; abounding in reputation and authority, and, yet--perfectly humble, with the openness and simplicity of a child."

The _London Speaker_ calls him "one of those born orators of whom this generation has seen only two,--himself and John Bright. Gifted with splendid common-sense, with a genuine humor, with a large-hearted love for his fellow-creatures." ...

Charles Haddon Spurgeon was born at Kelvedon, Essex, England, June 19, 1834, the eldest of seventeen children. His father, the Rev. John Spurgeon, was a pastor of the Independent or Congregational Church, a genial, warm-hearted man, and of fine presence. His mother, a Miss Jarvis, was a devoted Christian woman, esteemed for her good works wherever she resided. The Rev. John Spurgeon tells this story of his wife: "I had been from home a great deal, trying to build up weak congregations, and felt that I was neglecting the religious training of my own children while I toiled for the good of others. I returned home with these feelings.

"I opened the door, and was surprised to find none of the children about the hall. Going quietly up the stairs, I heard my wife's voice. She was engaged in prayer with the children. I heard her pray for them, one by one, by name. She came to Charles, and specially prayed for him, for he was of high spirit and daring temper. I listened till she had ended her prayer, and I felt and said, 'Lord, I will go on with Thy work. The children will be cared for.'"

It is related of her, after her brilliant son Charles had become a Baptist; that she said to him, "I have often prayed that you might be saved, but never that you should become a Baptist;" to which he answered, with his accustomed humor, "The Lord has answered your prayer with His usual bounty, and given you more than you asked."

Mrs. Spurgeon died May 18, 1888, having lived to see the wonderful success of her son, and be thankful for it. Mr. Spurgeon was much devoted to his mother, and her death brought on a severe attack of illness.

When Charles was quite young he was carried to the house of his grandfather, the Rev. James Spurgeon, who preached for fifty-four years in the Independent Church in Stambourne. When more than eighty years old he said, "I have not had one hour's unhappiness with my church since I have been over it.... I will never give up so long as God inclines people to come, and souls are saved."

He possessed the not unusual combination, a large family and a small income, and therefore cultivated a few acres of ground, and kept a cow. The latter died suddenly, and Mrs. Spurgeon was much worried over the matter.

"James," she said, "how will God provide for the dear children now? What shall we do for milk?"

"Mother, God has said that He will provide, and I believe that He could send us fifty cows if He pleased," was the reply.

That very day in London, a committee were distributing funds to poor ministers. The Rev. James Spurgeon had never asked aid, but all must have known how meagre was the salary of a village pastor.

One of the committee remarked, "There is a Mr. Spurgeon down at Stambourne, in Essex, who needs some help."

One person said he would give five pounds. Another said, "I will put five pounds to it; I know him: he is a worthy man." Others added, till there were twenty pounds subscribed and sent by letter.

When the letter reached the preacher's house, Mrs. Spurgeon hated to pay the postage, ninepence. When it was opened she was greatly astonished to find twenty pounds, about one hundred dollars. Her husband said, "Now can't you trust God about a cow?"

The Rev. Mr. Spurgeon, dressed in his knee-breeches, buckled shoes, silk stockings, and frilled shirts, must have been an interesting figure. He died when he was eighty-eight years old.

At the home of this grandfather in his early years, Charles found especial delight in reading Bunyan's "Pilgrim's Progress," Foxe's "Book of Martyrs," and De Foe's "Robinson Crusoe."

He read the Scriptures at family prayer, and on one occasion persisted in knowing what the "bottomless pit" in the Book of Revelation meant. If it had no bottom, where did the people go to who dropped into it? These were inconvenient questions to answer.

The Rev. Richard Knill visited the family, and was shown about the garden by the young Charles. In the great yew-tree arbor the good man knelt with the lad, and, with his arm about his neck, prayed for his conversion. In the house, taking him on his knee, Mr. Knill said, "I do not know how it is, but I feel a solemn presentiment that this child will preach the gospel to thousands, and God will bless him to many souls.

"So sure am I of this, that when my little man preaches in Rowland Hill's chapel, as he will do one day, I should like him to promise me that he will give out the hymn commencing,--

"God moves in a mysterious way
His wonders to perform!"

Years later the famous Charles Spurgeon preached in the pulpit of Rowland Hill, in the largest Non-conformist Church in London, before the Metropolitan Tabernacle was built, and read the hymn desired by Mr. Knill.

Charles attended school in Colchester, to which town his family had moved, and became well versed in Latin and mathematics. At an Agricultural College at Maidstone he spent a year, and then went to Newmarket, as an assistant in the school. After a year at the latter place, he removed to Cambridge, to assist a former teacher, Mr. Henry Leeding, in a school for young men. Here he taught, and carried on his own studies as well.

In January, 1850, at the age of sixteen, young Spurgeon was converted in Colchester. He had been for some time troubled at heart, and determined to visit every place of worship in the town, to see if he could not find help. "What I wanted to know," he says, "was, 'How can I get my sins forgiven?' and they never told me that. I wanted to hear how a poor sinner, under a sense of sin, might find peace with God; and when I went I heard a sermon on, 'Be not deceived; God is not mocked,' which cut me up worse, but did not say how I might escape. I went again another day, and the text was something about the glories of the righteous; nothing for poor me!...

"At last one snowy day--it snowed so much I could not go to the place I had determined to go to, and I was obliged to stop on the road; and it was a blessed stop to me--I found rather an obscure street, and turned down a court, and there was a little chapel. I wanted to go somewhere, but I did not know this place. It was the Primitive Methodist Chapel."

Spurgeon went in and sat down, waiting for the service to begin. "At last," he says, "a very thin-looking man came into the pulpit, and opened his Bible, and read these words, 'Look unto Me, and be ye saved, all the ends of the earth.' Just setting his eyes upon me, as if he knew all my heart, he said, 'Young man, you are in trouble.' Well, I was, sure enough. Says he, 'You will never get out of it unless you look to Christ.' And then, lifting up his hands, he cried out, as only a Primitive Methodist could do, 'Look, look, look! It is only look,' said he. I saw at once the way to salvation. Oh, how I did leap for joy at that moment! I know not what else he said. I did not take much notice of it; I was so possessed with that one thought."

While at Newmarket, young Spurgeon was immersed in the River Lark, at Isleham Ferry, May 3, 1850, on his mother's birthday. He had read the Scriptures for himself, and believed that they favored this method of Baptism, rather than sprinkling. At first the youth of sixteen, in his round jacket and broad white turn-down collar, felt timid at seeing the crowds on either side of the river; but once in the water, his fears left him, and he enjoyed great peace at heart.

Some years later, Spurgeon related a most suggestive incident. "I was a member of the church at Newmarket," he said, "when I first joined the church, and was afterwards transferred to the church at Cambridge, one of the best in England. I attended for three Lord's Days at the communion, and nobody spoke to me. I sat in a pew with a gentleman, and when I got outside I said, 'My dear friend, how are you?'

"He said, 'You have the advantage of me; I don't know you.'

"I said, 'I don't think I have, for I don't know you. But when I came to the Lord's table, and partook of the memories of His death, I thought you were my brother, and I thought I would speak to you.'

"I was only sixteen years of age, and he said, 'Sweet simplicity!'

"Oh, is it true, sir?' I said. 'Is it true?'

"He said, 'It is; but I am glad you did not say this to any of the deacons.'"

The stranger asked the lad home to supper, and they become good friends.

At once young Spurgeon began the Christian work for which he has ever been renowned. He revived a society for tract distribution. He talked in the Sunday-school, and in the vestry of the Independent Chapel, where many gathered to hear him.

Removing to the school in Cambridge, he joined the "Lay Preachers' Association." He was asked to go to the village of Teversham, four miles from Cambridge, to accompany a friend, for an evening service. On the way, Spurgeon said, "I trust God will bless your labors to-night."

"My labors?" said the friend; "I never preached in my life; I never thought of doing such a thing. I was asked to walk with _you_, and I sincerely hope God will bless _you_ in _your_ preaching."

Spurgeon was astonished; as he says, "My inmost soul being all in a tremble, as to what would happen." The youth of sixteen preached his first sermon from the words, "Unto you, therefore, which believe he is precious," and spoke to the edification of all present.

He was soon asked to go to Waterbeach, a small village, to supply the pulpit. The chapel was a rude one, made out of a barn. In a few months the membership rose from forty to nearly one hundred. The Rev. Mr. Peters had been their pastor for twenty-two years, receiving five pounds for each quarter of the year.

At this time, says one of the deacons, speaking of the young teacher. "He looked so white, and I thought to myself, _he'll_ never be able to preach. What a boy he is!... I could not make him out: and one day I asked him wherever he got all the knowledge from that he put into his sermons."

"'Oh,' said Spurgeon, 'I take a book, and I pull the good things out of it by the hair of their heads.'"

The mayor of Cambridge one day asked Spurgeon if he had really told the people at Waterbeach "that if a thief got into heaven, he would pick the angels' pockets."

"Yes," replied Spurgeon, "I told them that if it were possible for an ungodly man to go to heaven without having his nature changed, he would be none the better for being there; and then, by way of illustration, I said that were a thief to get in he would remain a thief still, and go round the place picking the angels' pockets."

"But, my dear young friend, don't you know that the angels have no pockets?"

"No, sir," answered the youthful preacher; but added, with ready wit, "but I am glad to be assured of the fact from a gentleman who does know. I will set it all right."

Being urged by his father and some others to take a college course, he agreed to meet Dr. Angus, the tutor of Stepney College, now Regents Park, at the house of Macmillan, the publisher, at Cambridge. Spurgeon went at the time appointed, and was shown into a room, where he waited for two hours for the tutor. Meantime, Dr. Angus had waited in another room, each not having been informed of the presence of the other by the servant; and, unable to wait longer, had taken the train for London. The result was that Spurgeon never went to College. At Cambridge, on the anniversary of the Sunday-school Union in 1853, Spurgeon, then nineteen, was asked to make an address. Mr. Gould, a Baptist deacon, liked the address so much, that he spoke of it to Mr. Thomas Olney, one of the deacons in New Park Street Chapel, Southwark, which had been one of the largest and richest of the Baptist churches in London. Mr. Gould thought the Waterbeach youth might put new life into the deteriorating church.

Spurgeon was invited to London to preach a sermon in December, 1853. Scarcely two hundred were in the chapel, which would seat twelve hundred. He preached earnestly from the words, "Every good gift, and every perfect gift, is from above." He was invited to come again for three Sundays in January, and soon asked to preach six months on probation.

He would not promise for more than three months. At the end of that time the church had filled so rapidly, that he was called to the pastorate; and before he was twenty, in 1854, was installed over the Baptist Church, with a salary of £150 a year. He came, as he says, to the great city of London, "a country lad," "wondering, praying, fearing, hoping, believing, ... all alone, and yet not alone; expectant of Divine help, and inwardly borne down by our sense of the need of it."