William Tecumseh Sherman

In the fall of 1856, Sherman voted for James Buchanan, Democrat from Pennsylvania, for president of the United States. It was the only time that he ever cast a ballot in a presidential election. The choice of Buchanan, at a glance, might seem puzzling. Sherman had generally sympathized with the national economic stance of the Whigs, and their legendary leader, Henry Clay of Kentucky. Since Clay’s death and the virtual demise of the Whigs following the Kansas-Nebraska Act, the newly organized Republican Party, despite its totally Northern makeup, was closer to traditional Whig economic values than were the Democrats. Also, Sherman’s younger brother sat in the U.S. House of Representatives as a Republican.

But Sherman knew John C. Frémont, the Republican candidate for the presidency. He had met Fremont, the Pathfinder of the West, while serving with the army in California. “I have seen Frémont several times since 1847,” he wrote John, “and regard him as a small man out of whom to make a president. If he is qualified, anybody may aspire to that office.” Some of Frémont’s actions in California were “simply ridiculous . . . [and] selfish in the highest degree.” Addressing John days later, and assuming his brother would “lend [his] influence to elect Frémont,” Sherman reiterated his negative view. Gloomily he concluded, with a tone of resignation, that if Frémont wins, “I will not make myself miserable, as it does seem politicians . . . no longer are able to manage the affairs of our government.”1

Quite possibly Sherman turned away from the Republicans too because he considered them extremists; their adamant, sectional opposition to the expansion of slavery was highly provocative to the slave states. In Sherman’s view, free-state aggressiveness was both unnecessary and unwise. “Time and facts,” he wrote John, “are accomplishing all you aim at, viz: the preponderance of the free over the slave states.” That very reason, which he termed “so manifest,” explained why the people of the South “are tetchy and nervous.” Sherman cautioned John not to imitate the inflammatory rhetoric of New York’s William H. Seward or Ohio’s Joshua Giddings. John should avoid the subject of slavery “as a dirty black one.” He believed “no provoking speeches are necessary, but on the contrary defeat the object in view.”²

Sherman thought Buchanan would probably carry California, which he did. He also carried the slave states and enough free states to win the presidency in a very close contest. A slight change of votes in Pennsylvania and Illinois would have elected Frémont. By the time of Buchanan’s election, San Francisco was at last free from the rule of the Vigilance Committee. Through summary hangings, banishments and imprisonments, the Vigilantes claimed to have successfully purged the city of rowdies and roughs. Laying down their arms, they declared victory for law and order, staged a triumphal parade—“a grand jubilee,” Sherman told John—and proceeded to write a “history” of the movement, of course extolling the supposed virtues of their cause.³

However, the traumatic episode, as Sherman fully realized, bode potential ill for the future. The experience and memory of the Vigilance Committee, he wrote, had been “fixed on this country” like a part of the government. A powerful precedent had been set, and he believed that any grievance, “real or fancied,” held the possibility of a vigilante revival. Years later, when penning his memoirs, Sherman again deplored the threat to law posed by such an unconstitutional organization. The Vigilantes gave “great stimulus,” he wrote, “to a dangerous principle, that would at any time justify the mob in seizing all the power of government.”4

While vigilante rule had ended by the fall of 1856, California’s economy continued to decline. “All kinds of businesses became unsettled,” according to Sherman. Joint-stock companies organized to bring water down from the head of the mountain streams went bankrupt. Foreign capital was withdrawn, or invested in property that could not be sold. A large number of merchants went bankrupt. Agriculture languished. California and San Francisco repudiated part of their public debt, costing Lucas, Turner & Company about $30,000; meanwhile real estate, which Sherman had considered “first-class security” only a year earlier, “became utterly unsalable.” Loaning money proved “risky in the extreme,” he said. “I labored hard to collect old debts, and strove, in making new loans, to be on the safe side.” The general California business climate was unsettling, and the San Francisco community particularly was badly shaken.⁵

Sherman’s personal finances showed no improvement either. Ellen sent her mother a revealing letter during the summer of 1856. Noting that “we do not live within our salary,” she wrote that Cump was “unwilling to draw more, although they offered in St. Louis to double it. He says it is not honest for a man to accept a salary so large when the profits do not justify it.” Ellen declared that she and her husband differed “upon that point.” She believed that he “ought to draw salary sufficient to support his family here, as we are obliged to live.” Sherman was paying “a large interest on the money with which he built [their] house,” and Ellen said that to reduce expenses they were “letting the horse and cow go, and dispensing with the services of the [hired] man.” For Sherman, all of this culminated “in rather a gloomy view of things.”⁶

The bright hopes of 1853 had never been realized. San Francisco’s economy unexpectedly had begun turning sour rather early in Sherman’s banking tenure. His frequent, detailed reports to the St. Louis partners indicated that no upswing could yet be expected. The big-time profits originally envisioned seemed unlikely ever to materialize. Thus James Lucas and Henry Turner made the decision to close the San Francisco firm. Sherman received the news from Turner early in 1857, and it took him by surprise. Certainly he recognized that 1856 had been a bad year, but he never expected that the partners would take such a final step without first making an on-site appraisal of the situation.7

Nevertheless, the deed was done. Sherman must close the bank in an orderly manner. The task required careful management, so as not to incite a run on the firm. There was some good news—of a kind. The St. Louis partners wanted to open a branch in New York City, with Sherman in charge of the operation. He accepted, because he had to support his family, and he surely considered New York preferable to Ohio. For a time, though, he was haunted by a suspicion that his powerful father-in-law, with important connections in St. Louis, might somehow have exerted influence on the partners to bring Ellen and him back to the eastern part of the country. Apparently that did not happen. Sherman was troubled, too, by the thought that his chronic asthma might have weighed heavily in the decision of Lucas and Turner. Perhaps above all, he just did not want to leave California and his San Francisco firm.

“I think Cump feels great regret at leaving here,” Ellen informed her mother, “as he had fully made up his mind to spend his life here, and would rather do that than relinquish his undertaking.” Sherman was not ready to give up the banking venture. He still believed, as he wrote Turner, that “in time we could do well out here.” Furthermore, in San Francisco he was a person of influence, a leading citizen of the community. And he had come to like California. He memorably asserted that he wished he could remain “all of [his] life, even with asthma, which is worse here,” he revealed to Turner, “than in any other spot I have thus far found.”⁸

Such a striking statement about asthma, which often made his nights in San Francisco miserable, and sometimes the days as well, demands reflection. Not only does it speak convincingly of his fondness for California; it reminds us as well of the few asthmatic problems during his earlier years. The cold climate at West Point, the service in the often steaming heat of Florida, the continuing, high-humidity years in Charleston and the first tour in California with the army in and around Monterey—all presented relatively few problems for him.

This is not to deny, as Sherman himself often mentioned, that the Bay City’s climate was conducive to asthma. But an additional factor well may have been stress. Although stress is not a cause of asthma, it is capable of triggering it. From the time that Sherman and Ellen married, even while they lived in St. Louis, his asthma attacks came with greater frequency and severity than ever before. Sherman’s life in the 1850s grew increasingly and sometimes highly stressful, all the more after he left the army and plunged into banking in San Francisco. Financial problems, of course, can create tremendous stress. That the mounting level and nature of his stress related to the frequency of the asthma attacks appears quite likely.

As Sherman reluctantly contemplated leaving the Golden State, he also experienced apprehensiveness about the demands upon a New York banker. He wasn’t sure that he was up to dealing with New York’s hardened capitalists and their manipulative, unscrupulous shenanigans. Having been brought up, as he said, believing that it was wrong to lie, cheat and steal, he feared he was “not fit to cope with modern bankers, brokers and land agents.” In California “I am somebody,” he told Turner, but in New York City he worried that he would be “swallowed up in that vast gulf of mankind.” Still, he knew Turner and Lucas had confidence in his abilities. He left California determined to succeed at the new job in the nation’s largest city.9

For her part, Ellen was near ecstatic to be leaving California, and apparently for all time. “Things wear a glorious aspect,” she wrote her mother. Having “always said,” Ellen reminded Maria, that she would as soon have “title to lots in the moon as in California,” she could feel no sympathy for Cump’s disappointment. To have remained in San Francisco “would have been at too great a sacrifice on my part.” She happily anticipated staying in Lancaster with the children while her husband proceeded with the business in New York.¹⁰

Sherman left California harboring a great deal of resentment toward Ellen. He was convinced that she deserved considerable blame for the closing of Lucas, Turner & Company. He certainly blamed himself, too. Ellen’s determined refusal to accept California as home; her extravagant spending; the constant, manifest longing for her parents, and their reciprocal desire for her to return “home” to Ohio—all generated a strong sense that his wife had not supported him as a wife should. Sherman would never forget how Ellen despised San Francisco and dragged him down financially, as he interpreted their West Coast experience. While his great military achievements in the Civil War softened the memories of those years, he never put the resentment totally behind him.11

THE TIMING of the California banking venture had proven less than ideal. The timing of the New York City project was worse. The bank opened under the same name as in California—Lucas, Turner & Company—at 12 Wall Street on July 21, 1857. Within weeks, a major financial storm descended upon the nation: the Panic of 1857. “Everything went along swimmingly” until some days into August, remembered Sherman, “when all of Wall Street was thrown into a spasm.” Triggering the convulsion was the failure of the New York branch of the Ohio Life Insurance and Trust Company, headquartered in Cincinnati. Ohio Life had become one of New York’s most respected financial institutions. The New York branch developed into a powerful player on Wall Street, and many New York banks were heavily involved with it. But bad management, poor judgment and fraud brought the company down.

When its president announced that the bank “has suspended payment,” he simultaneously assured the public that Ohio Life’s capital was “sound and reliable.” Actually much of the capital was invested in speculative railroad bonds, the firm’s cashier had embezzled a large sum of money and total liabilities numbered between $5 and $7 million, a very large amount for that time. The lie was soon exposed. The New York branch collapsed, and its failure quickly brought ruin to the Ohio parent firm, as well as a number of other New York banks.¹²

“In the very midst of this panic,” wrote Sherman, came startling news of disaster to the steamer Central America, the same ship Ellen and he had recently sailed on from the Isthmus of Panama to New York. The ship had gone down in a gale near Savannah, carrying several hundred passengers to their death. The sinking also was an economic catastrophe. The Central America was transporting a fortune. Many New York bankers counted on its safe arrival in order to survive. Now the treasure lay at the bottom of the Atlantic, while more confusion, fear, and dread plagued Wall Street.13

On October 13, Sherman wrote Turner that “all hell has broken loose. . . . There is a run on every bank of the city, many of which have gone in.” He saw “no reason why all must not succumb.” The money crisis was extending all over the country. The Bank of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia, the state’s leading financial institution, with major ties to New York banks, had closed its doors. “The wildest excitement” prevailed in the second largest U.S. city, with serious repercussions in New York, New England and elsewhere. Another round of bank failures followed. The nation’s economy was suffering from a variety of ills. Too much gold from California tended to inflate the currency. The end of the Crimean War, which had stimulated agricultural production for export to Europe, left Northern farmers with surplus grain and no market. Manufacturing overproduction also played a part, as did rampant speculation in railroads and land, plus the weaknesses of an unregulated state bank-note system. More than five thousand businesses failed within a year, accompanied by extensive unemployment and food riots in several Northern cities. Historians Thomas Bailey and David Kennedy concluded that “psychologically [the Panic] was probably the worst of the nineteenth century.”¹⁴

Because everything in the 1850s seemed to be sucked into an ever expanding whirlpool of sectionalism and slavery, Northern businessmen, in an oversimplified analysis, generally blamed the panic on the South, particularly the Democratic-sponsored tariff of 1857, which reduced rates to the lowest point in forty-one years. Northern manufacturers began strenuously demanding higher rates, claiming the necessity of protection from foreign competition. A Northern call for free farms of 160 acres to be carved from the federal public domain also gained strength, and it constituted another flash point with the South. Northern economic interests found increasing compatibility with Northern antislavery elements and moved into the Republican Party, attempting to offset the growing power of Southern Democrats.

The rural, agricultural South, for its part, suffered minimal damage from the Panic, as the price of cotton only declined slightly and recovered quickly. The result was an arrogant, and oversimplified notion (like that in the North) among leading Southern politicians that the slave economy had been vindicated and proven superior to the Northern, capitalistic, free-labor system. “King Cotton” was indispensable to the economy of England—indeed, indispensable to the economy of all the Western world. It was “a fatal delusion,” wrote Bailey and Kennedy, “which helped drive the overconfident Southerners closer to a shooting showdown.”15

A potential civil war did not trouble Sherman in the late summer and early fall of 1857. He was working diligently to keep his bank solvent. “We had large cash balances in the Metropolitan Bank and in the Bank of America, all safe,” he remembered, “and we held, for the . . . St. Louis house, at least two hundred thousand dollars, of St. Louis city and county bonds, and of acceptances falling due right along, none extending beyond ninety days.” Sherman was doing a good job, while facing ruinous circumstances in New York, and “did not dream,” he said, of any danger in St. Louis. But in mid-September, James Lucas wrote him that he was very worried. Money matters in St. Louis, he declared, “were extremely tight.” If Lucas, with all his wealth (several million invested in the best real estate), business savvy and prestige, was deeply concerned, then Sherman concluded that he himself had reason to fear the worst.¹⁶

Unfortunately, both were correct. Early one October morning, a New York paper announced the closing of the St. Louis company. Sherman at once hurried down to his office where he was officially notified of the closing by telegraph from St. Louis. He was instructed to make proper disposition of the New York banking affairs as soon as possible, and come to St. Louis with whatever assets might be available. Through no fault of his own, Sherman’s New York banking venture was closing, doomed by the failure of the St. Louis parent house. “Tell Mr. Lucas I sympathize with him deeply,” a disgusted Sherman told Turner. “I hope he will clean out and never again undertake so disreputable a business as banking.”17

To Ellen he wrote: “I seem to fall on bad times in business, for I am not fairly installed before failures have begun.” He was convinced that banking did not “suit” him, and he wished that “I were out of it, at some honest employment, but I am in it and must persevere [through the aftermath of the firm’s failure].” He also claimed, the initial phrase of which likely did not set well with Ellen, “I can lose my own money and property without feeling much, but to lose what is confided to me by others I can’t stand.” Lashing out at his wife, he bitingly charged: “You will no doubt be glad at last to have attained your wish to see me out of the Army and out of employment.” Some days later, he told her, “If I were a rich man—of which there is not the remotest chance—I would as soon try the faro table as risk the chances of banking.”¹⁸

After leaving New York, Sherman spent the rest of 1857 in St. Louis, helping Lucas and Turner sort through the closed firm’s assets. In San Francisco there were bank holdings that certainly could yield money: property to be sold or leased, and debts to be collected, the latter valued at about $200,000. Sherman did not think that Benjamin Nisbet, who had been left in charge when Sherman went to New York, was up to the task. Nisbet “cannot see things as they are,” declared Sherman, and he added that if “big bankers” were headed “right to destruction, he would go along.” Sherman knew that he himself possessed “a more intimate knowledge of the [California] property and interests than anyone else.” He castigated himself as a “fool” for having left California without having first reclaimed more of the bank’s money. When Turner suggested that Sherman might need “to return to California for a while,” he seemed to jump at the chance. “I am perfectly willing,” he said.¹⁹

In late November, as Sherman anticipated returning to the West Coast, he declared to Hugh Boyle Ewing: “If I had no family I would stay in California all my life . . . but though I see mighty slim prospects in the future, I will return [to the east] and try something, God knows what.” He felt “bound in honor to do all I can for [the St. Louis firm] as long as I can be of service.” He had also confided to his brother-in-law, at an earlier date, that “my California adventure was attended with such heavy expenses, and such sacrifice in breaking up at a time of awful depression that it will require . . . absolute economy for a long time, and I must work like the devil.” That sentence was penned before the Panic of 1857 struck.20

Significantly too, shortly after leaving the Golden State, and before the ravages of the panic were upon him, Sherman told Ellen, “Our fate has been cast in a wrong time, and I regret that I ever left the Army.” References to the army, often accompanied by nostalgic remarks, would grow more frequent in the months to come, especially after the general collapse of the New York banks and his St. Louis parent firm. Probably he hoped to prepare Ellen for a resumption of his army career, if he should get the opportunity. After leaving New York, he told her, “I ought to have had sense enough to know that I was fit for the Army but nothing else.” With a strong rejoinder she implored, “Please do not mention the army to me again unless you have made up your mind that we [she and the children] are not worth working for.”²¹

In December 1857, when some officers were speculating about a possible increase in the size of the army, Sherman wrote his congressman brother at least twice, saying that he would like to return “to my old business (the Army), for which I am better qualified than any other.” If such an increase did occur, there would be a “great press for the higher appointments of Colonel, Lieutenant-Colonel, and Major.” Nevertheless, he told John, “I have many friends among the higher officers, and think . . . I might get one of them.” Clearly he hoped for John’s assistance in the quest. Sherman also applied to the adjutant general of the army, asking for any field officer commission that might be available. Just before returning to California, he informed Turner of what he had done. Regardless of Ellen’s wishes, Sherman was spreading the word among all his friends who might have any influence that he wanted back in the army. But the size of the army was not increased, and the possibility of reinstatement afterward seemed quite remote.²²

Right after the new year, Sherman was aboard a steamer, sailing back to the Golden State. Ellen and the children remained in Lancaster. He arrived in San Francisco on January 28, transported from Panama by the Golden Gate. Benjamin Nisbet and his new wife—a young lady from an “extravagant” family, said Sherman, who disapproved of Nisbet’s choice—had already embarked for St. Louis. Nisbet’s departure probably facilitated Sherman’s work, enabling him to proceed without any encumbrance. Reducing expenses to a minimum, he pursued debtors “with all possible dispatch,” although forced “in some instances” to make sacrifices and compromises. “Property continued almost unsalable,” he recalled, “and prices were less than a half of what they had been in 1853–54.”

In trying to collect debts and rents he received “innumerable promises,” but relatively little hard cash. He added that “suicides are very common.” Speaking of the downfall of one prominent citizen, who had been feigning insanity, Sherman claimed, in a sarcastically obvious allusion to his own experience, that the fellow “is no more insane than any other man who was fool enough to attempt to live in California with a family.” He also put his own house on the market, hoping to get $7,000, but soon decided to ask $6,000 for the place in which he had invested $10,000. Finding no buyer, he leased it, as he did with some of the bank properties.23

Sherman was particularly worried about the money he had invested for his army friends, a total of about $130,000. Legally, Lucas, Turner & Company was not obligated to cover their losses, but Sherman felt that he himself was honor-bound to make them good, “to stand some of their loss.” It was an attitude reminiscent of his father, Charles, who had strapped himself financially, over a long term, to pay back money that the law did not require, but which he considered ethically binding. Sherman sold a large portion of his own land, acquired in California, Missouri and Illinois in earlier and less encumbered years. Eventually he was able to return the full amount with which his army friends had entrusted him, but his own investments were virtually depleted. His actions were evidence of both an extraordinarily high personal ethical standard and, more, a deep sense of military camaraderie. Even if no longer in the army, he still valued his army connections above all others. Of course he now hoped to return to the military, and he knew that his generous actions would not be forgotten among the officer corps.24

By July 1858, Sherman felt that he had done all that was possible in San Francisco, “having collected and remitted every cent that I could raise, and got all the property in the best shape possible.” Good news came from St. Louis that business was reviving. Perhaps he might find employment there. He also was growing concerned that Ellen, worried about his health (asthma having afflicted him every night since he returned to San Francisco), would impulsively sail to join him. If she did, he would be out a thousand dollars “useless expense,” he told Turner, which would constitute “the last stroke to my financial existence.” Sherman said he “put all the papers, with a full letter of instructions, and power of attorney, in the hands of William Blanding, Esq.,” and headed back east. There the obvious and unavoidable question at once demanded an answer: How to support his wife and family, “all accustomed,” in Sherman’s words, “to more than the average comforts of life”?²⁵

While Sherman was still cleaning up the banking mess in San Francisco, Thomas Ewing offered him employment at the Hocking Valley salt wells and coal mines in Chauncey, Ohio. Sherman reluctantly responded that he would accept the job. But when he was back in Lancaster, he could not bring himself to face what he had always said he would never do. In his desperation to make a living, and in yet another manifestation of irony, Sherman turned to the law, despite the disparaging remarks he had often uttered about the legal profession. Of his fitness for the law, he told Ellen, “If I turn lawyer, it will be bungle, bungle, from Monday to Sunday, but if it must be, so be it.”²⁶

The choice did seem to make sense. Two of Thomas Ewing’s sons, Hugh Boyle and Thomas Jr., both of whom were lawyers, had opened a practice with their father’s help in Leavenworth, Kansas, where they and their father had purchased a great deal of land, some near the town and some out in the country. Mr. Ewing simply turned over his share of the legal firm to Sherman, and the new business of Sherman & Ewing was established. Hugh and Tom Jr. were to manage all business in court, while Sherman would oversee the financial side. Nevertheless, Sherman understandably felt that he ought to have a license to practice law, particularly since “Sherman” headed the name of their firm. Anticipating that copious legal reading would be required, followed by an examination, he was somewhat amazed when a United States judge at once admitted him to the bar “on the ground of general intelligence.” His “general intelligence,” however, did not prove sufficient the one time that he was forced to handle a case in court when both Tom and Hugh were out of town. Lacking any court experience whatsoever, it is hardly surprising that he lost.27

Not long after Sherman first arrived in Kansas, in September 1858, he rode a few miles up the Missouri River to Fort Leavenworth. Stewart Van Vliet, his friend and classmate from West Point, served as the fort’s quartermaster. The two were glad to see each other again. Sherman said Van Vliet at once gave him “the most lucrative single case” that he received for some time. He was contracted to superintend repairs to the military road from Fort Leavenworth to Fort Riley, a distance of nearly 140 miles to the west. Van Vliet provided him with a four-mule ambulance and a driver for the work. Upon arrival at Fort Riley, he wasted little time in getting off a letter to Ellen, telling her how he felt “perfectly at home with the sound of bugle and drum, with officers and soldiers, whom I know not of former acquaintance save of one, but because I know their feelings and prejudices.” The experience “makes me regret my being out of service thus to meet my old comrades, in the open field, just where I most like to be. But I must banish soldiering from my mind, and look to the bridges and gullies and round holes of the road.” Sherman was continuing a campaign to make sure Ellen would have no doubt about his intentions if he should somehow find an opportunity to get back in the service.²⁸

Shortly after receiving his account of the sojourn at Fort Riley, Ellen announced that she was no longer willing to live separately from her spouse. Perhaps her motivation sprang solely from a pure and genuine desire to be at the side of her husband. On the other hand, Ellen was a smart woman who would certainly have realized that if she hoped to stop Cump from possibly returning to the military, her chances of success would be greater if she were with him, rather than residing with her parents in Lancaster.29

She promised that she would “be more amiable than you have ever known me.” She was willing even “to live far from the church” if necessary. Cump “must not leave [her in Lancaster] this winter,” for she could not “lead this unnatural life any longer, suffering anxiety on your account as I do.” She told him that she was “in bad health and . . . unhappy, and I beg you to take me with you somewhere.” Ellen’s timing proved fortuitous, for already Sherman had decided that she should join him. He also ordered her to “bring all the children.” Sherman thought Minnie had spent far too much of her life apart from him. Nor did he want one of his other children left at the Ewing home as a substitute for Minnie’s leaving.³⁰

When Ellen arrived in Leavenworth, however, Minnie was not with her. The young child had lived with her grandparents for so long that she did not want to leave. One strongly suspects that Thomas and Maria encouraged her, at least subtly, to remain in Lancaster. Nevertheless, Sherman was happy to have Ellen and three of the children with him once more. They moved in with Tom Jr., who had a large house. Ellen seemed in a remarkably optimistic mood. She soon wrote her mother, “I have never before felt like calling any place home but Father’s house, but fortunately I am favorably impressed with everything here and feel that we shall build up a home and I trust attract our dear friends to it.”³¹

Unfortunately, Ellen’s “feel” for building a home in Leavenworth lacked a sound financial basis. The firm of Sherman & Ewing was not finding sufficient work to support three families. This fact Ellen soon realized, when she again wrote to Maria, acknowledging a check for one hundred dollars from “dear Father.” She intended to hold the money in reserve until “I really need it.” Money had been “running pretty low,” she admitted, with nothing coming in. She “might even be obliged to go home again for want of means to live here.” Tom and Boyle (as she usually referred to Hugh Boyle) were away, and with Cump “ignorant of the details of the law business, we can get nothing to do all winter.” As to property that her father had recently given her in the Leavenworth area, “and which he thinks will support me if everything else fails, a part of it is quite far out of town and part of it in a most disreputable neighborhood and will not sell.”32

At the beginning of 1859 the firm added another partner, young Daniel McCook, who would later serve as a colonel under Sherman in the Civil War. The addition of McCook, however talented he may have been, seems rather strange when the Sherman & Ewing partnership was struggling financially. Perhaps Tom Jr., being frequently away from Leavenworth, had simply felt it necessary to bring in another lawyer. Sherman, however, was obviously skeptical, telling Hugh Boyle that their business “must swell considerably before we have work for us four.”³³

Such an increase in the business was not about to happen, and by late March, with Ellen again pregnant and longing for Lancaster, Sherman sadly watched his wife and children depart. When Maria Ewing learned that Ellen was about to return to Ohio, she penned an ever so slightly veiled “I told you so” message: “We all think you were a little premature in going out, the place being so new, and comfortable houses so scarce, and that you had better stay here until Cumpy builds a comfortable house for you.” Within about two weeks after Ellen left Kansas, Sherman wrote, clearly in a depressed frame of mind, telling her that the weather “is so cold that I can hardly hold my pen. San Francisco can’t hold a candle to the prairies of Kansas for wind.” Then framing a gloomy, often quoted assessment of his future, Sherman said, “I look upon myself as a dead cock in the pit, not worthy of further notice.”³⁴

During the spring, Sherman’s fortunes likely reached an all-time low, in his own estimation anyway, as he constructed a small frame house and a barn, and put up fencing on a tract of land near Leavenworth owned by his father-in-law. “This helped to pass away time,” he remembered in his memoirs, but admitted that the work “afforded little profit.” He was happy for his brother John, who sailed in April, aboard the steamer Vanderbilt, for a tour of Europe. Sherman’s eclectic interests, wide-ranging knowledge and keen intellect naturally made him envious of his brother’s opportunity—although not in a mean-spirited manner. “I would very much like to be with you and make the trip,” he told John, “although my tastes might lead me to traverse fields and places which have no interest to you; but Europe . . . the concentrated history and civilization of our time, has in every part interest enough for all men.” He urged John to write him about where he went and what he observed.35

At the very time of John’s tour, war broke out in northern Italy. Emperor Louis Napoleon III of France, having formed an alliance with the forces of Piedmont, fought a short but bloody war against Austria. Defeating the Austrians at the Battle of Magenta, and again at the Battle of Solferino three weeks later, the French and their Piedmont ally appeared poised to drive Austria completely out of Italy. But Napoleon III, fearful of rising clerical opposition and other problems, suddenly, and without consulting his Italian ally, concluded the armistice of Villafranca with the Austrian Emperor Francis Joseph. By the terms of the Treaty of Zurich, Lombardy was annexed to Piedmont, but Venetia remained under Austrian rule. Progress had been made toward a free and unified Italy, but Italian nationalists were bitterly disappointed that France had pulled back when it seemed all of Italy might be freed of foreign powers.³⁶

Sherman was excited about the war and tried to learn all he could about the conflict. He wrote to John, relative to the war, “I should like of all things to be in your stead.” John’s interests, however, were elsewhere. He had become enamored with Paris, “the capital of gaiety.” The city was “a striking contrast to any I have ever seen,” he enthused. “The streets are alive with people, and bands are playing in the gardens and palaces.” He marveled at the groups of singers, the cafés, restaurants and broad promenades filled with delightful men and women. He knew “very well” from his knowledge of history that some of “the gayest spots have been the scenes of frightful cruelties,” but no signs of such bloody times were any longer to be seen, and the Parisians, he assured Cump, “surely seem happy now.” After seven weeks in Great Britain, John wrote that he was “constantly contrasting the people of Paris with the English: the conclusion is all in favor of the Parisians.” He thought the French government was “much more tolerable” than the British. The latter was “a government of the aristocracy . . . exclusive, repelling, and narrow.” His travels were providing him with a great fund of information and, possibly referring to the expense of the excursion, he said that he would “never regret the trip.” Next was Italy, “and the seat of war,” where he expected to visit the battlefield of Magenta.37

Perhaps thoughts of the war in Italy, and his brother’s journey to the scenes of fighting quickened Sherman’s efforts to return to the army. Besides, his prospects of success in Leavenworth had reached a dead end. In June 1859 he wrote Major Don Carlos Buell, a friend he had known since West Point. Buell was serving in Washington, D.C., as assistant adjutant general of the army. Sherman inquired whether there was a vacancy among the army paymasters, or any military opening that Buell might know about. The major told him of a new military school being organized in Louisiana, suggesting that Sherman apply for the post of superintendent.³⁸

The position would pay $3,500 annually, and Buell thought that Sherman might have a good chance of being selected. The president of the new academy’s board of supervisors was George Mason Graham, the half brother of the late Richard B. Mason, who had been Sherman’s commanding officer and close friend in California. Incidentally, Buell had married Mason’s widow. Such connections were promising, and Sherman certainly possessed good qualifications for the position. He applied at once, for the filing deadline was near at hand.³⁹

Initially the board offered the superintendency to a Louisiana native, Pierre Gustave Toutant Beauregard, a man soon to become famous as a Confederate general. However, Beauregard turned down the appointment, and Sherman was then selected, with the title of “superintendent and professor of engineering, architecture, and drawing” at the Louisiana State Seminary of Learning in Alexandria (the forerunner of the Louisiana State University). In the letter of appointment, Sherman was addressed as “Major Sherman,” and thus he was known at the school from that time forward. Unquestionably, the influence of George Mason Graham was a prime factor in Sherman’s securing the position. Plans were formulated to open the institution on January 1, 1860, for approximately one hundred students.40

Remarkably, another business possibility opened up soon after Sherman accepted the superintendency of the military school. It was, of all things, yet another banking job, and would entail managing a firm in London. Hugh Boyle Ewing and Thomas Ewing Jr. were among the entrepreneurs associated with the venture, which was spearheaded by a wealthy citizen of Cincinnati. Sherman was offered a two-year contract, paying more than twice his wages at the Louisiana military academy. He felt compelled to consider the offer seriously because, as he told Graham, Ellen “is . . . strongly in favor of the London project,” preferring England to “coming south with our children,” and her father “writes me urgently to go.”⁴¹

But Sherman also told Graham, “I mistrust all financial schemes.” He recalled that “just seven years ago I was similarly situated in New Orleans, commissary U.S. Army,” when he had been persuaded “to go to California as a banker with prospects more brilliant than those now offered me.” There, he continued, “without any fault, negligence, or want of ability” on his part, “the losses of others” had dragged him down. Sherman was skeptical, too, about the promised remuneration for the London assignment. Perhaps it would never materialize. He had to know as well, based upon the history of his marriage, that Ellen and the children were in the end not likely to accompany him to England, whereas he hoped to prevail upon her to unite his family in Louisiana. Even if he was not back in the army, he had a job that involved a military way of life, and that fact pleased him. Despite the pressure from Ellen and her parents, he decided that he had spent enough time as a banker.⁴²