Personal Recollections of Distinguished Generals

During the campaign of Atlanta communication with the rear was very much obstructed, the news correspondents found many difficulties in forwarding information, and telegrams to the press seldom reached New York. During the movement around Atlanta Sherman was applied to directly by the news agent at Louisville for the details of the movement. In reply the general telegraphed, "Atlanta is ours, and fairly won;" following up the expression, which has already passed into song, with a brief and graphic report of the flank movement around Atlanta and the battle of Jonesborough. This report is one of the most admirable narratives I remember to have ever read, and at the time of its publication I wrote for the Herald, of which I was then a correspondent, a long criticism of it. The letter never appeared, however, for the reason that I endeavored to show that, successful as he had been, Sherman had mistaken his vocation as a general, and ought to have been a war correspondent. I suppose Sherman would have been mortally offended at such language, particularly as he affected to hold correspondents and editors in contempt; but undoubtedly he would have been invaluable to the New York Herald or London Times in such a capacity, and could have made more money, if not more reputation, in that capacity than as a major general. He has lately declared that he does not believe he will ever have occasion to lead men again, and I advise him by all means to go into the newspaper business. Any of the principal papers of New York will be glad to give him double the pay of a major general to act in the capacity of war correspondent.

Until Sherman had developed his practicability, this peculiarity of expression and manner were accepted as evidences of a badly-balanced mind. It will be remembered that in his early career a report was widely circulated to the effect that he was a lunatic; but the origin of this story, if properly stated, will redound to his credit, as evincing admirable foresight and sagacity. The true origin of this report is as follows: Sherman succeeded General Robert Anderson in command of the Department of the Ohio on October 13, 1861. Up to that time about ten thousand United States troops had been pushed into Kentucky. The Western governors were under a promise to send as many more, but were slow in doing so. General A. Sidney Johnston, the rebel commander at Bowling Green, was endeavoring to create the impression that he had about seventy-five thousand men, when he really had only about twenty-eight thousand. In this he succeeded so far as to cause it to be supposed that his force largely exceeded Sherman's. Sherman urged upon the government the rapid re-enforcement of his army, but with little effect. The troops did not come, for the reason that the government did not credit the statements of the perilous condition of Sherman's army. So repeated and urgent were Sherman's demands for re-enforcements, that at last the Secretary of War, Mr. Cameron, visited Louisville in order to look into the situation of affairs. An interview took place at the Galt House at Louisville, Sherman, Cameron, and Adjutant General Thomas being present. Sherman briefly explained the situation of affairs, stated his own force and that of the enemy, and argued that re-enforcements were necessary to hold Kentucky, to say nothing of an advance. "My forces are too small for an advance," he said – "too small to hold the important positions in the state against an advance of the enemy, and altogether too large to be sacrificed in detail." On being asked how many men were required to drive the enemy out of the state, he answered, without hesitation, "Two hundred thousand." The answer was a surprise to the two officers, which they did not attempt to conceal. They even ridiculed the idea, and laughed at the calculation. It was declared impossible to furnish the number of men named. Sherman then argued that the positions in Kentucky ought to be abandoned, and the army no longer endangered by being scattered. This was treated more seriously, and vigorously opposed by Cameron and Thomas. They declared the abandonment of Kentucky was a step to which they could not consent. Subsequently they broached a plan which had been devised for dividing the Department and Army of the Ohio into two; one column to operate under Mitchell from Cincinnati as a base against Knoxville, and the other from Louisville against Nashville. To this Sherman was strongly opposed. Satisfied by the persistence of Cameron on this point that the government was not disposed to second his views of conducting the affairs of the Department, Sherman asked to be relieved and ordered to duty in the field. Cameron gladly acquiesced in his wishes, and he was relieved by Buell, November 30, 1861.

On the same evening of the famous interview between Cameron and Sherman, the latter paid his customary visit to the Associated Press-rooms at Louisville. Here, while still in a bad humor over the result of the interview, he was approached by a man who introduced himself as an attache of a New York paper, and asked permission to pass through the lines to the South in the capacity of a correspondent. Sherman replied that he could not pass. The correspondent, with unwarrantable impertinence, replied that Secretary Cameron was in the city, and he would get a pass from him. Sherman at once ordered him out of his department, telling him that he would give him two hours to make his escape; if found in his lines after that hour he "would hang him as a spy." The fellow left the city immediately, and on reaching Cincinnati very freely expressed his opinion that the general was crazy. A paper published in that city, on learning the story of the interview between Cameron and Sherman, which soon became public, employed the fellow to write up the report which was thus first circulated of Sherman's lunacy. His opinion that two hundred thousand men were required to clear Kentucky of rebels was quoted as proof of it by this man, and thus the story came into existence.

Subsequent events revealed the fact that Sherman did not much exaggerate the force necessary to carry on the war in the central zone of the field of military operations. Although we have never had a single army numbering two hundred thousand men in the West, much larger armies have been necessary to the accomplishment of the campaign of the Mississippi and Tennessee Rivers than any person other than Sherman thus early in the war imagined. The army of Grant at Fort Donelson and Shiloh, combined with that of Buell, was not over eighty thousand men. That of Halleck before Corinth numbered exactly one hundred and two thousand. Sherman left Chattanooga in May, 1864, with one hundred and twenty thousand men, the largest army ever gathered in one body in the West. At the same time, he had under his command at different points on the Mississippi River and in Kentucky an additional force of about fifty thousand, while the forces operating under other commanders in the West would, if added to his, make a grand total of two hundred and fifty thousand men operating on the Mississippi River, every one of whom was necessary to the conquest and retention of the Mississippi Valley.

Sherman may have been at one time crazy, but his madness, like Hamlet's, certainly had marvelous method in it. Such lunatics as he have existed in all ages, and have, when as successful as himself, been designated by the distinctive title of "genius," in contradistinction to men of medium abilities. Not only Shakspeare, but Dryden, seems to have encountered such madness as Sherman's, and to have appreciated the truth that

"Great wits are sure to madness near allied,And thin partitions do their bounds divide."

Doubtless the same author had such a genius or madman as Sherman in his mind when he described one of his characters as

"A fiery soul, which, working out its way,Fretted the pigmy body to decay."

The peculiar formation of Sherman's head shows his great development of brain. His forehead is broad, high, and full, while the lower half of his face and head are of very diminutive proportions. In a person of less physical strength and vitality, this great preponderance of the mental over the physical powers would have produced perhaps actual lunacy. The head of Sherman is of the shape peculiar to lunatics predisposed to fanciful conceptions. There is too much brain, and in Sherman it is balanced and regulated only by his great physical development. Sherman's brain, combined with bad health, would have produced lunacy; his brain and sinewy strength combined produced his peculiar mental and physical nervousness. Had he been a sedentary student instead of an active soldier, the last line of Dryden's poem might also have applied to him, and we should know of him only as an "o'er informed tenement of clay." 1

When this report of his lunacy was first circulated, Sherman was much chagrined at it, and often referred to it in bitter terms. Time and success have enabled him to frown it down, and justified him in laughing at it. He once laughingly referred to this report about himself, and the rumor which simultaneously prevailed regarding Grant's drunkenness during the battle of Shiloh as illustrative of the friendship existing between them. "You see," he said to a gentleman, "Grant stood by me when I was crazy, and I stood by him when he was drunk."

During the siege of Corinth he commanded the right wing of Thomas's corps, while T. W. Sherman, of Port Royal memory, commanded the left. The latter was very unpopular with his division on account of a painfully nervous manner and fretful disposition, and the officers of the command discussed him critically with great freedom, many condemning his manner as offensive. One day General W. T. Sherman was visiting General Steedman – then a brigade commander in T. W. Sherman's division – and the latter's name was brought up, Steedman giving a very ludicrous account of Sherman's conduct.

"Oh!" said William Tecumseh, "this is the crazy Sherman, is it?"

Great difficulty was found during the operations before Corinth in distinguishing the two Shermans. The soldiers solved the problem by giving each Sherman a nickname. T. W. Sherman was called "Port Royal Sherman," in allusion to his services in South Carolina, while W. T. Sherman was known by the somewhat inappropriate title of "Steady-old-nerves," in contradistinction to the other, who, as before stated, was more timidly nervous. Mr. Lincoln, with some recollection of this coincidence of names on his mind, asked General Grant, on being introduced to General Sherman, if he was W. T. or T. W., and laughed with boyish glee at the "joke on Sherman."

As another natural result of Sherman's nervous energy, he has acquired the habit of decision in the most perfect degree, and his peculiar organization has tended to make him practical as well as petulant. He never seems to reason, but decides by intuition, and, in this respect, has something of the mental as well as bodily peculiarities of the gentler sex, who are said to decide intuitively. But Sherman is by no means a woman – he would have been a shrew had he been – and possesses not one particle of the sex's beauty or gentleness. Sherman jumps at conclusions with tremendous logical springs; and, though his decisions are not always final, they are in effect so, for, if he is forced to retire an inch, his next jump will probably carry him forward an ell. Facts are the only argument which prevail with him, and the best arguments of wise men are wasted in endeavoring to convince him without undeniable facts at hand. Obstinate, and vain, and opinionated as he is, and indisposed as he may be to listen to or heed the arguments of equals or inferiors, he never hesitates to sink all opposition before the orders of his superiors, and pay the strictest deference to their views when expressed authoritatively.

I have before said this nervousness of mental and bodily organization was the main-spring of Sherman's character. From it result not only his virtues, but his faults, and as man and commander he has many. He is as petulant as a dyspeptic; excessively gruff, and unreasonably passionate. His petulance does not, however, prevent his being pleasant when he is disposed; his gruffness does not destroy all his generosity, and his passionate moods are usually followed by penitence. His fits of passion are frequent but not persistent, and, though violent, are soon appeased.

His gruffness often amounts to positive rudeness. While in command at Louisville in 1861, the wife of the rebel commander Ingraham passed through the city en route to the South. The lady, who was rebelliously inclined, pleaded consumption as her excuse for wishing to inhale the Southern air. Sherman gruffly advised her to "shut herself up in a room and keep up a good fire – it would do her just as much good." He often replies in this petulant tone to both sexes, particularly if the person addressed has no business of importance.

He once took great offense at having his manners, and particularly this habit of gruffness, compared to the manners of a Pawnee Indian, and expressed his contempt for the author of the slur in a public manner. He was much chagrined shortly after to find that the correspondent who had been guilty of the offensive comparison had heard of his contemptuous criticism, and had amended it by publicly apologizing to the whole race of Pawnees!

During the battle of Bull Run, where General Sherman commanded a brigade, he was approached by a civilian, who, seeing him make some observations without the aid of a field-glass, proffered him the use of his own. Sherman turned to the gentleman and gruffly demanded,

"Who are you, sir?"

"My name is Owen Lovejoy, and I am a member of Congress."

"What are you doing here? Get out of my lines, sir – get out of my lines."

Nothing satisfied Sherman but the immediate retreat of the member of Congress to the rear.

I have heard that Sherman's bad temper was the cause of his leaving his chosen profession of the law. After resigning his commission in the army in 1853, he became, after several changes, a consulting lawyer in the firm of his brothers-in-law, the Ewings, at Leavenworth, Kansas. He had entered into the copartnership with the distinct understanding that he was not to be called upon to plead in the courts; for, though possessing a thorough knowledge of legal principles, a clear, logical perception of the equity involved in all cases, and though perfectly au fait in the authorities, he had no confidence in his oratorical powers. He was not then the orator he has latterly become, and utterly refused to take any part in legal debate or pleadings. One day a case came up in the Probate Court of Kansas requiring immediate attention. Tom and Hugh Ewing were busy; McCook was absent, and Sherman was forced, nolens volens, to go into court. He carefully mapped out his course until it looked like plain sailing; laid down his plan of procedure, as he used subsequently to do his plans of marches; but he was destined to be driven from his chosen route, not by a Joe Johnston or "foeman worthy of his steel," but by a contemptible, pettifogging lawyer, with more shrewdness than honesty, and more respect for the end to be attained than the means to be used. In the debate which the trial involved, Sherman lost his temper, and, consequently, his case. He returned to his office in a towering rage, dissolved the partnership with his brothers-in-law, and, without farther hesitation, accepted the presidency of the Louisiana Military Academy, the proffer of which he had received a day or two before.

General Sherman's violent temper greatly endangered his reputation toward the close of the war, and he came near sacrificing, in an evil hour of passion, all that he had won before. His passion was to him as the unarmored heel was to Achilles, and the vulnerable point of his character came near costing him even more dearly than did the vulnerable part of the Grecian warrior's body. His diplomatic feat with Joe Johnston was generally denounced as a blunder, but it was not the blunder which came near costing him so dearly. That piece of diplomacy took the shape of a blunder in consequence of the unfortunate and unforeseen circumstances and disasters which occurred simultaneously with it. Had Mr. Lincoln lived, General Sherman would to-day have borne a brilliant reputation as a diplomatist, and his agreement with Johnston would have been at once, as it was eventually, accepted as the basis for the political reconstruction of the country. That agreement was repudiated by the people and President Johnson in an hour of frenzied passion, though the latter has since modeled his plan upon it; and Sherman lost his chance for becoming a great diplomatist. But he, and he only, was to blame for the grave blunder which immediately afterward nearly cost him his fame and position as a soldier. Sullen at the repudiation of his agreement with Johnston, angry at the interference of General Halleck with the co-operative movements of himself and Sheridan, and furious at the countermanding of his orders to his subordinates by the Secretary of War, Sherman forgot himself, and marched to Washington with his army, breathing vengeance upon Halleck, and hate and contempt for Stanton. Fortunately for Sherman, history will not record the scene. History never yet recorded – no nation ever before safely witnessed such a spectacle as that of a victorious general, at the head of eighty thousand men devoted to him and jealous of his fame as a part of their own, marching to the capital of the country with threats against his military superiors breathing from his lips and flowing from his pen. For days Sherman raved around Washington, expressing his contempt for Halleck and Stanton in his strongest terms, and denouncing them as "mere non-combatants" whom he despised. More than this, he wrote to his friends, and through them to the public, comparing Stanton and Halleck to "cowardly Falstaffs," seeking to win applause and honor for the deeds he had done; accusing the Secretary of War of suppressing his reports, and endeavoring to slander him before the American public in official bulletins. For days his army roamed the streets of the capital with the same freedom with which they had roamed through the fields of Georgia and the swamps of the Carolinas, and no man dared to raise his voice in condemnation of their leader, or approval of the superiors who had opposed him. No republic ever before survived such a condition of affairs; this republic never was in such danger before, and yet the danger was hardly suspected. The spectacle is one which Sherman will ever regret, but every true American, and every lover of republican liberty, can point to it with pride as a remarkable illustration of the stability of republican institutions. Powerful as Sherman was against Stanton and Halleck (and a word from him would have destroyed them), he was powerless against the nation, and not one man of his mighty host would have followed him in an attempt upon its existence. It is, perhaps, a still greater proof of the power of republican principles that, in the midst of his furious rage, such a thought as the injury of the government never for a passing second entered the brain of the leader of these men. He has reason to be thankful that the nation was as generous as he was honest; and that the people made no record against him for the offense against discipline which in any other country would have cost him not merely his position, but his reputation, and in any other army his head. At the same time, the nation must and will cherish the honest man who, thus tried and tempted, never for a single second forgot his allegiance to the principles for which he had fought and the country which he had served.

General Sherman's reputation as a soldier must rest entirely on his strategic abilities. His successes were those of strategy only – not of tactics. His faults as a commander are glaring as his faults of character. As an organizer of armies for the field, and as a tactician in battle, he was an utter failure. He never commanded a well-organized army whose discipline did not become relax under his administration, and he was never commander-in-chief in any battle which was not a failure. Instead of being an organizer, Sherman was a disorganizer; he was always chief among the "Bummers" which he made his soldiers, and by which name they were eventually designated. His whole career shows him to have been solely a strategist, absolutely incapacitated by mental organization for disciplining and fighting an army. His attempt to organize the army in Kentucky in 1861 was a most egregious failure. He gave it up in despair to General Buell, who, on assuming command, found it a mob without head or front, or appropriate parts. Buell, in contradistinction to Sherman, was great as an organizer and disciplinarian, and he soon made a fine army out of Sherman's unorganized mob. General Sherman shortly afterward went into the battle of Shiloh with a division of troops who were also unorganized, and only escaped annihilation by the timely appearance of Buell and the now thoroughly disciplined troops which Sherman had originally commanded. When Buell's troops on this occasion made their appearance on the small plateau which is called Pittsburg Landing, the great numbers of Sherman's demoralized new recruits who were there huddled together welcomed them as veterans. "Buell! Buell!" was their cry; "here come Buell's veterans." One can not but smile when he remembers that the men thus hailed as veterans had never been engaged in even so much as a skirmish. Their conduct in the desperate battle which followed on the day after their arrival proved them to be worthy of the name. One year's thorough discipline had made them veterans without having fought a battle.

Throughout Sherman's career his troops were noted for their lack of discipline. When he assumed command of the Army of Tennessee on the promotion of General Grant in 1863, he found it one of the best disciplined armies in the country, though not the best provided. I doubt if there was ever a division, brigade, or even regimental drill in that army after Sherman took command. He subsequently became indirectly in command of the Army of the Cumberland, which, though directly commanded by that strict disciplinarian, General George H. Thomas, soon felt the effect of Sherman's presence and control, and became very relaxed in discipline. Subsequently, on the march to the sea and through the Carolinas under Sherman, the discipline of the formerly model armies became still more relaxed, and gradually the whole army became regular "Bummers," a term which is not generally understood in its proper sense of reproach. The people to this day only half know what a "bummer" is, from having a general idea of the character of Sherman as the chief of bummers. The veil of romance which surrounded Sherman's army has never been entirely torn away. Its pilgrimages are still romances. It has always been viewed in that dim and distant perspective which adds a charm to beauty, and hides internal troubles and blemishes, and the evils it did and the outrages it committed have never been made public. But the friends of Sherman might reasonably claim even the want of this special tact for organizing and disciplining troops as a virtue. It can not really be said to have detracted from Sherman's ability as a soldier. What was lost thereby to the army in discipline was made up in mobility. If its morale was bad, the marching was good, and that satisfied Sherman. If he did not teach his soldiers how to fight, he gave them the mobility which the execution of his strategic designs required of them, and thus the end aimed at was gained, and the country was satisfied. He merely changed his men from heavy to light infantry. Success justifies all means, and thus Sherman became – and justly became – a great general without ever having won a battle.

It is very strong language, I admit, to say that Sherman never won a battle, but considerately so, for if the purely tactical operations of General Sherman be critically examined, it will be found that they were almost invariably failures. He was the chief in command, the central and controlling power, in the battles of Chickasaw Bayou, Resaca, Kenesaw Mountain, and Jonesboro, all of which, with the bare exception of the latter, where his overpowering force and strategic march of the night before insured victory, were tactically great failures. The failure of the co-operative movements of Grant at Chickasaw Bayou doubtless caused Sherman's defeat at that point – at least it has served to explain it away, and stands as the excuse for it; but all will remember how signal a failure it was. The battle of Resaca was a still greater failure. Doubt, delay, and inaction lost Sherman the great advantage which his strategic march through Snake Creek Gap had given him in placing him in the rear of the enemy's position, and he ought to have captured every gun and wagon of the enemy, and dispersed the army which subsequently retarded his advance in Atlanta; but the battle was begun too late and pushed too feebly. Sherman's strategy had at one time rendered a battle unnecessary, and it was forced on him through another's indecision (I believe that General McPherson admitted before his death that that fault was his), but certainly it was the fault of Sherman that the battle, when fought, was indecisive. Every body will remember the Kenesaw Mountain battle and its useless sacrifices, and every body will remember, too, the candor with which Sherman wrote that it was a failure, and that the fault was his. All the minor engagements of his great campaign against Atlanta were either positive defeats or negative advantages, and yet that wonderful campaign was won, and all the advantages which could have under any circumstances accrued from it were gained to us without the losses which a great battle would have caused. The strategic marches executed during that campaign are now chapters in the theory and history of war, and the close student of the art will see more to admire in the passage of the Chattahoochee River, the march through the gorge of Snake Creek Gap, and across the Allatoona Mountains, and the flank movements around Kenesaw and Atlanta, than in the more dashing but less skillful marches through Georgia and the Carolinas. The campaign of Atlanta was made in the face of the enemy commanded by their most skillful general, while during the other and more famous marches no enemy was met. The campaign through Georgia was merely extensive; that against Atlanta was both grand in conception and difficult in execution. One was accomplished at a stride, the other step by step. The campaign of Atlanta gave rise not only to a new system of warfare, but even to a new system of tactics. Never before in the history of war had an army been known to be constantly under fire for one hundred consecutive days. Men whom three years of service had made veterans learned during that campaign a system of fighting they had never heard of before. The whole army became at once from necessity pioneers and sharp-shooters. The opposing armies lay so close to each other that not only pickets, but whole corps were within musket range of each other, and every camp had to be intrenched. As a singular fact, showing the impression made on the minds of the men by the changed tactics which this campaign rendered necessary, I may mention that the soldiers called each other "gophers" and "beavers;" and "gopher holes" were more common in the armies' track than were camp-fires. It used to be laughingly said of the men that, instead of "souring onto," i.e. taking without leave each other's rations, they were in the habit, during the Atlanta campaign, of purloining each other's pick-axes and spades with which to dig their "gopher holes" or trenches for their protection from the enemy's sharp-shooters. I imagine it is on this campaign and its results, rather than on that from Atlanta to the sea, and from thence to Goldsboro', that General Sherman would prefer to rest his reputation in the future. 2 We of to-day study the holiday marches from a very different stand-point from that which the generations which follow us will view them. When all things come to be critically examined and carefully summed up, it will be decided and adjudged that the battles which made the campaign to the sea and through the Carolinas successes were fought on the hills around Nashville by General Thomas, not by General Sherman. Yet they are not without their great merit. Undertaken with deliberation and after elaborate preparation, they were not wanting in boldness and originality of design, but they do not serve to illustrate strategy: it is only the logistics which are so admirable.