Chapter Twenty-Seven Late in the morning of Wednesday, August 11, 1880, Sherman arrived in central Ohio. He traveled by rail with President Rutherford B. Hayes, a native Ohioan, and several other dignitaries, among them Major General William Hazen, Colonel Emory Upton and Lieutenant Johnny Clem, the celebrated “Drummer Boy of Shiloh.” The occasion was a “grand reunion” of Federal Civil War veterans, and the President’s train, anxiously anticipated by all, was hailed by a huge crowd as it steamed into the Columbus depot.1
Never in the state capital’s history had there been a larger or more notable gathering. “The people are here and bent on having a reunion,” exulted the Ohio State Journal. Estimates of the number of visitors thronging the streets of Columbus ranged between fifty and sixty thousand. “The streets were almost impassable,” reported the paper, declaring also that “many of the veterans have grown old,” and that thousands of the men were broken in health and disabled. Nevertheless, all seemed in good spirit and prepped for the celebration.2
The railcar in which President Hayes, Sherman and the others were traveling was uncoupled from the train, and transferred out to High Street, where the men stepped into carriages. There began a procession to the old Ohio State Fair Grounds (later Franklin Park), as people lined the streets, watching and applauding the President and his entourage. At the focal point of the festivities, a twenty-one-gun salute was fired, and a military band struck up a wartime medley, before President Hayes addressed the veterans.3
Unfortunately, although the weather was warm, the overcast day turned darker, and rain was falling by the time the President began speaking. The inclement weather discouraged many visitors, and also residents of the city, who stayed away from the midafternoon, open-air program. Regardless of the rain, perhaps ten thousand veterans were in attendance, according to the newspaper reports. President Hayes decided to cut his speech short, and allow the audience to find shelter from the bad weather. As Hayes concluded his brief remarks, the crowd applauded him warmly, but most of them were not inclined to leave, not just yet.
As the applause for the President died away, shouts of “Sherman!” “Sherman!” and “Speech!” “Speech!” sounded from the mass of veterans. “Let’s hear from Uncle Billy!” some were yelling, recalling the name by which soldiers fondly acclaimed him during the war. More and more men took up the cry for Sherman to speak, and the crowd was soon clapping, as well as continuing to call out “Sherman!” “Sherman!” The General was not on the schedule to speak. But soon it became evident that the sea of Union veterans was not going to be satisfied until Sherman responded.
At last the General arose from his chair, strode to the speaker’s lectern and was greeted by a roar of applause that the newspaper described as “tremendous and deafening.” For a moment he gazed upon the crowd, waiting for the applause to subside. “Fellow soldiers,” he began. “My speech is not written, nor has been even thought of by me. It delights my soul to see so many of the good old boys left yet. They are not afraid of rain; we have stood it many a time.” Sherman noted that he had come to Columbus, not with the intention of speaking, but as a part of President Hayes’s escort, planning “simply to look on and let the boys look at old Billy again.” Declaring that “Uncle Billy loves . . . as his own flesh and blood . . . every soldier here today,” the General proclaimed that “could I command the language, I would like to speak to you an hour.”
It was at this point of his extemporaneous remarks that Sherman spoke the words for which he has been longest remembered. “The war now is away back in the past and you can tell what books can not,” he stated. “When you talk you come down to the practical realities just as they happened. You all know this is not soldiering here. There is many a boy here today who looks on war as all glory, but boys it is all hell. You can bear this warning voice to generations yet to come. I look upon war with horror, but if it has to come, I am here.” That remark was received with long applause, and vigorous hurrahs. Then the General concluded: “I wish to again congratulate you. Those who were at the rear in the war would have been gone from here covered with umbrellas before now. The country is now peaceful and long may it remain so. To you soldiers they owe the debt of gratitude.”4
In a small group, or one on one, Sherman could be a fascinating conversationalist. Speaking before a crowd, the General could be electrifying. No American of his era, except for Abraham Lincoln, has been more widely quoted. But none of his often cited remarks—not “Atlanta is ours and fairly won,” not “I beg to present you [the President], as a Christmas gift, the city of Savannah,” not “War is cruelty and you can not refine it,” not “I will not accept if nominated [for the Presidency], and will not serve if elected,” nor any other—has equaled the pronouncement “War is all hell.” Sherman had proclaimed the same sentiment before the Columbus remarks, and he would say it again in the future, but it was the Columbus declaration that came to be widely remembered.
SOME THREE WEEKS into August of 1880, Tom Sherman came back to the United States from England. The General and his son were reconciled, in the sense that they spent time together and engaged in polite conversation. “He seems in good health and condition,” thought Sherman, and “looks as little like a Priest as any young gentleman.” Tom was on his way “to some college near Baltimore,” Sherman told Henry Turner, with plans to continue studying. He also wrote Turner that he had discussed “nothing” with Tom, “treated him kindly, and took him with me everywhere.” Of course he continued to regret deeply Tom’s decision to become a priest, and he always would. Another major family event had occurred a little earlier in the year, when Eleanor Sherman got married. Like Minnie, Elly too married a U.S. Navy man. In Sherman’s approving assessment, her husband, Lieutenant Alexander M. Thackara, “is universally held as a first class officer.”5
By late August, the General was preparing to depart, in company with President Hayes and others, on an extended trip to California. “I expect this trip to be my best and last,” he told Turner. Possibly it may have been the best, but it would not be the last. Departing from Chicago by train in early September, the group headed west via the northern route, and quoting the General, traveled “in Palace Cars living like Princes.” The President and his family had a car to themselves; so too did Secretary of War Alexander Ramsey and his guests; and of course Sherman and his party occupied still another, “all generously tendered,” according to Sherman. Among those in the General’s party were his daughter Rachel, who was now nineteen, and Mary Audenried. From Seattle, Washington, they journeyed south through Oregon and California, notably visiting San Francisco and Los Angeles. “I still believe in the Valley of the Mississippi,” Sherman declared, “but this Coast has chances which can not be ignored.” How right he was. One wonders what he might think today about California, with its almost forty million inhabitants. Continuing across the Southwest to Tucson, they next headed to Denver, and on through Kansas City, and St. Louis. Sherman arrived back in the nation’s capital in November, in time to see the Potomac River frozen, for “the first time within the memory of the oldest inhabitant.”6
November also saw the election of Republican James A. Garfield, another son of Ohio, as president of the United States, defeating the Democrat Winfield Scott Hancock, a West Point graduate who rose to the rank of major general in the Civil War and had been severely wounded at Gettysburg. Garfield, however, was the candidate Sherman preferred. A person of outstanding ability, Garfield had been born in a log cabin, grown up in a poverty-stricken family and worked hard to gain a college education. Admitted to the Ohio bar, he became president of Hiram College. He also took an active role in Republican politics and, developing a flair for oratory, was elected to the Ohio state senate shortly before the Civil War. During the war, although lacking any military experience, he learned quickly and proved to be a highly capable officer, distinguishing himself at Shiloh.
Promoted to major general of volunteers after the Battle of Chickamauga, Garfield was elected to Congress, eventually serving as Speaker of the House, and becoming one of the strongest supporters of the army, which obviously commended him to Sherman. Only a few months before the 1880 election, Sherman had presided at a banquet “given to General Garfield, not as a Politician, but as an army comrade.” The discussion of politics was forbidden at the military affair, but Sherman afterward said that he considered Garfield “one of the strongest men of his age, in this or any country,” and declared that the nation would be lucky to have such a man as its President.7
He visited with the president-elect soon after his triumph, and found Garfield “as cool and self possessed as ever.” Sherman felt sure that he was going to make an outstanding chief executive. Buoyed with nationalistic optimism, Sherman declared to Turner, “I have no doubt we are destined to have a prolonged period of prosperity throughout the whole country, and I honestly believe all good men want the South to have a full share of this.” In his closing sentence to Turner, he stated, “I think there is a better feeling toward the Army, than at any time since the War.”8
Just as Sherman looked forward to working with President-elect Garfield, he was also pleased that the Hayes presidency was nearing its end. Declaring that he had been one of the outgoing president’s “most steadfast friends,” Sherman had recently become disappointed and irritated by “his behavior to Ord, to Schofield and many of our oldest, most faithful and approved officers—treating them as they should not have been treated, [which] has convinced me that he must be very weak . . . or that he is somewhat of a hypocrite, and it will take a good deal to convince me otherwise.” Having supported the findings of the Schofield investigation into the alleged attack on the black cadet at West Point, Sherman resented the President’s intervention and removal of Schofield from the superintendency of the military academy. He was equally incensed in the case of his friend Ord, whom Hayes forcibly retired in order to promote Nelson A. Miles to brigadier general before leaving the presidency.
“There is such a thing as justice,” Sherman wrote, “and we constantly flaunt it in the face of the world.” Arguing that General Irvin McDowell should have been the one retired if anyone was going to be, Sherman noted that McDowell was older than Ord, “and as a soldier has been a failure, whereas Ord has been a success.” Also McDowell was financially comfortable to retire, for he had “married a rich wife and Ord a poor one.” Forcing out Ord and leaving McDowell was, in Sherman’s opinion, “an act of palpable injustice.” Cump was also angry that Stewart Van Vliet, another of his old friends, had been forced by Hayes to retire before he wanted to do so. Shortly before the inauguration of Garfield, Hayes paid a call on Sherman, which Sherman viewed as some sort of feeble effort to apologize. The general-in-chief was not impressed.9
The inauguration of James A. Garfield as the twentieth president of the United States went smoothly. Sherman thought the cabinet Garfield selected was a good one, and after visiting with the new president, he concluded that Garfield was “as much at home at the White House as if born there.” Sherman was also pleased that his brother John had been returned to the U.S. Senate. Unfortunately the nation would never know how effective Garfield might have been as president, for tragically, a disgruntled, deranged office seeker named Charles Guiteau shot Garfield in the back on July 2. Guiteau proclaimed to the officers who immediately arrested him, that “Arthur is now President of the United States.” Actually Vice President Chester Alan Arthur was not yet president, for a suffering Garfield would linger near death for more than two months.10
On July 4, Sherman wrote Turner from the capital, “All things sink into insignificance in the face of the terrible events here in the past two days, the attempt at the assassination of the President.” Informing Turner that Garfield “has a terrible wound in the back,” he said that “the Doctors know as little as the rest of us. . . . I have seen him, spoken with him, and believe, because I want to believe, that he will survive—though I would not be surprised at any moment, to learn that his death is near.” The General was encouraged some days later, by news which seemed to indicate that despite his awful wound, the President’s mind was still sound. Sherman reported that Garfield had taken a pen, written his name and a short sentence in Latin, “Well damaged, but upper works all sound,” and handed it to a doctor. In the latter part of August, however, the President’s condition grew much worse. On Sunday, August 28, Sherman wrote that “All last week the President’s life hung on a thread—on Friday all hope ceased.” Everyone, including the doctors and the family, thought he was dying. Then he rallied, claimed to feel much better, and wanted to eat “some real food,” to quote Sherman.11
But Sherman now feared, more than ever, that Garfield was not going to survive, and he was plagued by bad memories of California events in the 1850s. “It looks like a repetition of life to find myself again situated as in California at the time of the King-Casey affair,” he confided to Turner. He was deeply worried about a lynch mob. “I know,” he proclaimed, “that hundreds and thousands of good people in Church at this minute, think . . . Hanging is too good for Guiteau.” He said that if “the flag on the White House [were] to appear this bright Sunday, at half mast, I would expect to see thousands defile to the jail to demand the life of the murderer.” Sherman depicted Guiteau as “a good-for-nothing fool,” who thought he “had a hand in electing Garfield,” and thus believed himself justified in killing the President when he did not get the “spoils of victory” which he sought. The general-in-chief declared that “a [lynch] mob in Washington would disgrace us all as a people,” even if Guiteau’s life “is not as valuable as that of a chicken.” Sherman was determined to prevent a lynching.12
He considered the jail where Guiteau was being held to be “very strong,” and after conferring with Secretary of State James G. Blaine and Secretary of War Robert T. Lincoln, he brought in additional forces to ensure order if Garfield died. “So we have 400 Regulars—100 Marines—and about 150 of the city’s uniformed militia,” he told Turner, “Enough for all possible contingencies.” Should the President die and the lynch mob develop, Sherman intended to confront the irate mass, and make an appeal that the issue “is not Guiteau . . . but ourselves, our honor, our name, our claim to a place among civilized people.” Guiteau must be legally tried, which is the only course that “is right, [and] the other is wrong.” The law must triumph “over the clamor of the mob or individual violence.” On September 16, Sherman said of Garfield, “I still hope and believe that he will ‘pull through,’ as he himself said to me the night of the day in which he was shot.”13
Fate decreed otherwise. Garfield had intended, before Guiteau shot him, to attend the eighteenth-anniversary commemoration of the great Battle of Chickamauga, September 19 and 20; and Sherman planned to be there with the President. Instead, Garfield died on the anniversary of that battle. The lynch mob Sherman feared did not develop—“I doubt if any other form of Government could have gone along so smoothly through such a crisis,” wrote the General—and Guiteau was duly tried and convicted. An obviously demented man, Guiteau demanded that those who had benefited politically from his assassination of the President must contribute to his defense fund or he would “name names” (which he never did). He seemed to enjoy his trial, and all the publicity that the newspapers gave him, right up to the day he was hanged.14
ON THE NIGHT of November 14, 1881, Sherman arrived in Atlanta, Georgia, accompanied by, among others, his aide General Orlando Poe. Seventeen years earlier, on November 15, 1864, Sherman had ordered the destruction of Atlanta’s railroad depot, machine shops and foundries as he set forth on the march to the sea. And it was Poe, then serving as the General’s chief engineer, who carried out his order. An Atlanta evening paper, aware of the anniversary, claimed that Sherman had arrived at a time so sensitive for Atlanta’s citizens, in order to “crow” over his destructive triumph. That was not the case at all, but it is a good example of how some Southerners viewed Sherman.15
Actually he was in Atlanta at the invitation of leading Southerners, and the occasion was an international cotton exposition that the city was hosting. Sherman, of course, had nothing to do with setting the date of the affair. Atlanta had recovered rapidly after the Civil War, succeeding in becoming the state capital in 1877, enticing various manufacturing enterprises to locate there, while claiming to be the center of a so-called New South and billing itself as the “New York of the South.” By the time of the exposition, the South was producing more cotton than before the war, and cotton had become the principal export of the nation. Furthermore, the original idea of a cotton fair had been expanded to include a survey of all Southern industry.16
Sherman was invited to attend the exposition by Georgia’s two U.S. senators, Joseph Brown, who had been governor during the war, and ex-Confederate general Benjamin H. Hill, who had called on the General at his Washington headquarters to issue a personal invitation. Sherman was pleased to be invited to such an important Southern event. Always keen to show that he held no grudge against former Confederates who now demonstrated their loyalty to and support of the United States, he promised to be present for the exhibition. Only those Southerners, in Sherman’s opinion, who persisted in arguing that the Confederacy had been fully justified in warring against the United States—and he considered Jefferson Davis the foremost exponent of that point of view—were unworthy of resuming a respectable position in American society. Sherman’s generally nonvindictive attitude toward Southerners had been strikingly illustrated during the Virginius affair of 1873, which saw several Americans charged with piracy and executed by Spanish authorities; war with Spain seemed a possibility. When Nathan Bedford Forrest, the famous Confederate cavalry commander whom Sherman had zealously tried to kill during the Civil War, applied to serve for the United States if the nation went to war against Spain, General Sherman heartily endorsed his application.17
While in Atlanta, Sherman stayed at the Kimball Hotel, which had been established by Hannibal I. Kimball, who migrated from Maine following the war, one of that infamous group regarded by Southerners as carpetbaggers. In some circles Kimball was “notorious for his adroit public thievery.” Whatever his shortcomings, Kimball was a major supporter of the exposition, served as its president and accompanied Sherman to the fair on November 15, as did Senator Brown. The number in attendance that day was impressive, and the General thought—perhaps tongue in cheek?—that part of the attraction was “Sherman the Vandal.” A meeting of Mexican War veterans was being held in one of the exhibition halls and Sherman was invited to attend, which he did. However, he declined to sit on the platform, instead taking his seat toward the front with the veterans. He judged the major oration, given by a former Confederate officer, to be “a little flowery,” but overall “very good.” When the program ended, the audience started calling “Sherman! Sherman!” The General insisted that he was only visiting, with no intention of speaking, but the crowd held firmly to their places, and a veteran appealed to him “as a Mexican War veteran to say a few words to my old comrades.”18
Sherman considered this “a call no man could resist—so on the stage I went, and spoke for 15 minutes, earnestly and nationally,” insisting that “we are and must continue to be a United People, with a Common Government.” Whatever defects the nation might have, he thought them attributable to “a common human nature,” and compared with other people, “there was reason to be . . . hopeful of the future.” He spent two days in Atlanta, and wrote Turner that he felt “as much at home as in St. Louis, and concluded that as reasonable men we ought to be content.” The nation had met “a terrible crisis” successfully, and whatever complications the future might hold, Sherman believed that they were likely to be “trifling in comparison to what we had to face in 1861.”
On the return trip to Washington, he visited with friends in Chattanooga and Cincinnati. Altogether, the journey to Atlanta turned out satisfactorily and proved to be an enjoyable experience. His trip was too brief, and probably came too early, for the General to have fully sensed the growing “lost cause” mentality. In time this attitude would spread across most of the old Confederacy; it alleged that the South, rather than fighting for slavery, had heroically struggled against overwhelming numbers and resources, to defend hallowed principles of states’ rights, constitutional government and an honorable agrarian way of life more virtuous than a Northern capitalistic society that, even though victorious, was essentially inferior.19
After twelve and a half years as general-in-chief, Sherman was now giving serious thought to retirement; in fact he had been contemplating it for quite some time. Not surprisingly, he planned to return to St. Louis, that city in which he had long felt comfortable. “Somehow, I always turn to St. Louis . . . when in distress . . . as a place of refuge,” he wrote in August 1880, “and have always supposed that there I should end my career.” Back in March 1873, the General had spoken to Henry Turner, who of course had long resided in St. Louis, about “the time of which we must dream occasionally, when you are a rich old fellow, and I a retired half pay officer living in St. Louis, waiting for the time for Bellefontaine [the cemetery] to reap another harvest.” Convinced that he must return army headquarters to Washington in 1876, following two years that he had spent in St. Louis, Sherman told Turner, “I feel yet that some happy chance will enable me at some future time to settle finally in St. Louis.” He promised in another letter to Turner: “If I live long enough, I will come back and spend my old days with you.”20
Because of his longtime esteem for St. Louis, Sherman was troubled that the city was not, in his judgment, achieving its inherent potential; nor, for that matter, was the state of Missouri. “St. Louis, common to the Missouri, Mississippi, and Ohio Rivers,” proclaimed the General in 1880, “is the natural center of population, when all of our territory is occupied . . . [and] Missouri ought to be the best and most prosperous State in the Union.” He declared that she should “have four millions of people before Kansas gets one million,” but Kansas “has so advertised” that her population likely would surpass Missouri. Sherman chided Turner that “you all should brag more.” St. Louis and Missouri ought to be trumpeted as “the Greatest City and the Greatest State in the world.” And Missouri needed to put forth “her strongest efforts to utilize her iron, coal, lead, copper and zinc, and should advertise the land as it deserves.” Sherman also believed that Missouri’s national stature had been harmed by her classification as a Southern state, which, he persuasively argued, was inaccurate. “It is a wheat and corn State,” he asserted, “with mines and metals inviting manufacturers. It is in no sense Southern for it has no cotton, sugar or tropical characters, and ought never to have been a slave state.”21
Sherman’s fears for St. Louis were confirmed by the 1880 census. The news was worse than he expected. “I am astonished that St. Louis should have lost population . . . in the past ten years.” The publication of that fact, he predicted, would damage the city and the state. Sherman felt forced to admit that his earlier analysis of population growth, which seemed quite reasonable only a few years back, had been wrong. There was no denying the reality of Chicago’s increasing predominance in comparison with St. Louis. With a swelling population and motivated by a public spirit, Chicago had proved “wide awake” to her opportunities. Strongly building on the railroads, “which . . . played the deuce with Rivers,” acknowledged the General, “and robbed them of their importance,” Chicago was forging impressively ahead. Nevertheless, despite his disappointment, Sherman still prized and felt “bound to St. Louis for better or worse.” He proclaimed: “I must cling to it to the end.”22
In anticipation of a St. Louis retirement, Sherman expected to spend considerable time with Henry Turner, his “old and most dear friend.” He warned Turner that he might be seeking his advice on financial matters. “Mrs. Sherman has absolute confidence in your business judgment,” he wrote, “and a corresponding doubt of mine.” He confessed that he had “failed to avail myself of opportunities . . . which if taken advantage of would have made us rich.” On the other hand, he quickly added: “I consider any man rich who owes nothing, and has income enough for necessary wants.” That, he declared, “is our situation now.”23
Henry Turner, however, was approximately a decade older than Sherman, and he was no longer in good health. In most of the letters that Sherman wrote to Turner in 1881, he attempted to play down his friend’s age and physical issues. By the fall, though, if not before, Sherman knew that Turner’s situation was serious. “I hope and pray, in my rough way,” he wrote, “that you will regain much of your old vigor and be spared to us many a year. I was in hopes you would survive me and yet think you will.” In late November, Turner’s daughter served as an amanuensis, because of her father’s “weakness and infirmity,” and Sherman knew that the outlook was dire. On December 12, 1881, Sherman recalled “when . . . [he and Turner] were first acquainted, [and] our limbs were strong and supple, and all our joys and sorrows lay ahead.” Looking back over forty years, he concluded: “I think you and I have done a reasonable share of work, and can afford gracefully to go down the hill together, hand in hand, trusting to Him, who made the sunshine and storm, to deal by us mercifully and justly.” Four days later Turner died. His death left a major void in Sherman’s life, one that no one else could possibly fill.24
IN JUNE 1882, Congress passed a law providing for the compulsory retirement of all army officers, regardless of rank, at the age of sixty-four. At the time the proposed law was being debated in Congress, several senators and congressmen consulted Sherman, offering to make an exception in his case, if he wanted to serve longer. Declaring that he neither expected nor desired to be treated any differently than other officers, Sherman explained his view that “no man could know or realize when his own mental and physical powers began to decline.” The General thought it was a good law. He was to be retired at full salary, along with allowances, and he was quite pleased—“This is liberal and . . . all I or any one should ask,” he told Ellen—for he had long believed his retirement pay would be less than, perhaps only half, of what he earned as general-in-chief. He did request, and would receive, the assistance of an army clerk to help him with his enormous correspondence, which was expected to continue (and it did) after he retired. Now he could retire with satisfactory financial provisions, rather than feeling compelled to stay on merely for the sake of enough money, and thereby holding back the advancement of lower-ranking officers. Phil Sheridan could advance to general-in-chief, which in turn would move up John Schofield, both of whom he considered friends whose well-being concerned him. Certainly Sherman was ready to retire, put behind him the Washington political scene, with its inevitable frustrations for the commanding general, and escape back to St. Louis.25
He would be sixty-four years old on February 8, 1884, a date that he considered “inconvenient to move, and not suited to other incidents.” He suggested to Secretary of War Lincoln that he would prefer to turn over command of the army to General Sheridan on November 1, 1883, take his staff to St. Louis and there await the formal retirement on his sixty-fourth birthday. Lincoln presented the request to President Arthur, who readily agreed. With this arrangement, Sherman seemed well satisfied. “On the whole the time is most opportune,” he told his brother John, “and I think I can leave my post with the general respect of my fellows.” Declaring that “the country is now generally prosperous,” he observed that the army was “in reasonably good condition, considering the fact that peace and politics are always more damaging than war.”26
But before leaving the army, Sherman decided to make one more tour of the continent, arranging to do so during the summer of 1883. Beginning at Buffalo on June 21, he went out to the Pacific by a northern route, traveled through the Pacific coastal states and returned through the Southwest, finally concluding the journey at St. Louis on the last day of September. It was a fine trip, which came off without any serious incident, although he did not have the luxury of a palace car, as when he had traveled with President Hayes three years earlier. No doubt Sherman looked forward to being relieved of dealing with Native Americans. When Apaches, riding out of Mexico, had raided New Mexico and Arizona in March 1883, Sherman ordered Brigadier General George Crook to pursue and destroy them regardless of departmental lines or international boundaries. General Crook did obtain Mexican permission to move across the border and he succeeded, with the help of Apache scouts, in locating Geronimo’s mountain sanctuary. Demonstrating courage, patience and understanding, Crook negotiated with Geronimo and other Indian leaders, arranging at last for the Apaches to return to their Arizona reservation. This did not end Apache troubles—neither for the Apaches nor the Americans—but when Apache warfare broke out again in 1885–1886, the problem was no longer Sherman’s concern. In fact, for several years before Sherman’s retirement, he had largely left Indian affairs to Phil Sheridan, who continued to command the vast Military Division of the Missouri until he succeeded Sherman as the army’s general-in-chief.27
Retiring to St. Louis appealed to Sherman in various ways, not the least of which was that he again would be near Minnie, whose husband had left the navy and taken a position with the Harrison Wire Company in St. Louis. Minnie and Tom Fitch were living in a house that the General owned in the St. Louis suburb Cote Brilliante. Minnie had been overwhelmed in the summer of 1882, when two of her children, one not yet a year old, died within days of each other. Sympathizing deeply with her loss, and perhaps feeling closer to Minnie than any of his children since the death of Willie, Sherman welcomed the chance to see more of his eldest child.
Three of his children would be living with him in the Garrison Avenue house: Lizzie, who was in her early thirties; Rachel, who was twenty-three; and the youngest, Philemon Tecumseh, who was nearing college age, and whom all the family had come to call Cumpy. Sherman’s daughters would continue to be a great help in taking Ellen’s place at the many social functions that his wife preferred to avoid. As for Cumpy, the General could not help worrying that Ellen would somehow entice him into following his older brother’s example, and “run off into the Church”—that church which, in the General’s judgement, “committed a crime of such magnitude,” by seducing Tom into the priesthood, “that the blood of a hundred martyrs can not wash it out.”28
As soon as word spread that Sherman was retiring, a host of Republicans launched a campaign attempting to persuade the General to become their party’s presidential candidate in the 1884 election. This was not the first time that Sherman’s name had been prominently proposed for the presidency. Back in 1876, when the scandals of Grant’s outgoing administration plagued the Republicans, and the Democrats put forth reformer Samuel J. Tilden as their candidate, some Republicans thought that Sherman—with his reputation as a scrupulously honest war hero—was the political savior who could carry the party to victory. Sherman was not at all interested, and he also knew that Ellen was adamantly opposed to his being a candidate. She argued that the newspaper abuse the family would have to endure “would be intolerable,” and she firmly believed that her husband could not be elected anyway, because of his Catholic family.29
But once Sherman retired, the pressure on him to run for the presidency was greater than ever before. Several of the most prominent men in the Republican Party urged him to enter the race. Even James G. Blaine, who dearly wanted to be president, and did eventually receive the Republican nomination, wrote the General a letter marked “Strictly, Absolutely Confidential,” in which he addressed the possibility of a convention deadlock between himself and President Arthur. In such a scenario, Blaine said it was inevitable that Sherman would be the man to whom the party would turn. In that case, declared Blaine, Sherman must accept the nomination, having no more right to decline than if he had “received an order as a lieutenant of the army.” Former Missouri senator J. B. Henderson, who was Sherman’s neighbor, contended that if a draft Sherman movement developed, as he believed very likely, then the General would have to accept, for no American citizen could disobey “the call of his country.” Sherman responded that the Republican Convention in Chicago was not the country. When others, among them General Schofield and John Sherman, expressed the same sentiment as Henderson, Sherman simply reiterated his response.30
The major reason many Republican leaders wanted Sherman, in spite of the fact that Blaine had become the front-runner for the nomination, was that they doubted Blaine could be elected, and they believed Sherman would probably be a winner. “It is certain that if Blaine is not nominated in the early ballots,” predicted John Sherman in a letter to the General dated May 4, 1884, “a movement will be made for your nomination, and if entered upon will go like wild fire.” If such a thing happened, John advised his brother, “you ought to acquiesce. I believe it would be best for the country, honorable to you and your children, and far less irksome than you have thought.”
But Sherman, difficult as it was for a lot of people to believe, really did not want to be the president. When letters and telegrams kept pouring in from Chicago to Sherman’s home in St. Louis, urging him to accept the nomination if tendered, he wrote in pencil, cigar clamped between his teeth, and sent Henderson the famous statement: “I will not accept if nominated and will not serve if elected.” The General was pleased, and doubtless quite relieved, when news came that the Republican Convention had finally nominated Blaine for president and John Logan as his running mate. Sherman had held firmly to his belief that politics was beneath a soldier.31
The thought of Sherman as president of the United States is intriguing. He would have had a good chance of receiving the Republican nomination if he had made a serious bid for it. Whether he could have been elected is more questionable. The 1884 race is often cited, with good reason, as the dirtiest presidential campaign in the nation’s history. After bachelor Democrat Stephen Grover Cleveland was charged, at the instigation of Republicans, with fathering a child out of wedlock, the Democrats would surely have explored Sherman’s relationships with women other than his wife—especially those who were much younger than he. Although the General was a war hero and a man of immense national popularity, when the presidency was the prize, the opposing party could be expected, at the very least, to engage in a strong campaign of innuendo. The Democrats did discover apparent evidence, and it was widely publicized, that Blaine and his wife had engaged in premarital sexual relations.
The Catholic factor would have hurt Sherman too, maybe even more than his relationships with the fair sex. Many Americans were bitterly anti-Catholic. That Sherman himself was not a Catholic, and in fact considered Catholicism utterly indefensible, probably would have been of little consequence, being trumped by his Catholic family, especially Ellen’s widely known and pronounced (some would say fanatical) devotion to her faith. Sherman clearly would not have been a sure winner.
If elected, would the General have been a good chief executive? Unlike Grant, Sherman was not overly impressed or easily influenced by wealthy men, and given his abhorrence of ill-gotten gain, plus his keen awareness of what was occurring around him, a corrupt Sherman administration seems improbable. On the other hand, while general-in-chief, he had found working with Congress difficult and largely unrewarding. As a general, he was accustomed to making military decisions and having his orders obeyed at once. Also, because of a notable, long ingrained contempt for politicians, Sherman had little tact and patience when dealing with Congress. Unless his brother John, who was an astute politician, could have exerted a positive and powerful influence upon him, which certainly is questionable, there is little reason to think the General would have been a good president. That said, if Sherman had become the nation’s chief executive, despite his temper and presumable dictatorial tendencies, he probably would have been no worse, and well might have been better, than a large number of the men who have occupied the Oval Office. Honesty, intelligence, popularity and a genuine concern for the best interests of the nation, as opposed to party loyalty, personal monetary gain and fame (which he already possessed), would all have been in his favor.
IF THE PAST is prologue to the future—and with lives that have spanned several decades it usually is—then Sherman’s active retirement years should come as no surprise. As St. Louis’s most prominent citizen, and one of the nation’s most distinguished and widely respected personalities, Sherman was constantly in demand as a speaker and guest of honor at a host of events. The General possessed, as one historian wrote, “a charisma about him that the public . . . found irresistible.” The invitations he received were so numerous that, except for the distances involved, he literally could have been on a program nearly every night. Graciously declining an invitation to a celebration in Cincinnati soon after he retired, Sherman wrote: “I have work cut out for every day of September, indeed for every remaining day of the year 1884, and begin to realize that my old army comrades are not willing to concede that I am played out.” He then asserted that they expected him “to dance and sing and be merry from New York to San Francisco all the time without a single day to have the privilege of enjoying the home which I have been . . . years in building up at St. Louis.”32
Always when attending reunions of veterans, even if not giving the main address, which he often did, it was assumed that Sherman would make some kind of a presentation, even if a brief one. West Point commencements and reunions were also high on the list of the General’s preferred appearances. Banquet celebrations planned in his honor could hardly be turned down, at least not in most cases, although he did often request, notably, that “Marching Through Georgia” be omitted from the musical selections on such occasions. Sherman’s favored piece was “The Battle Hymn of the Republic.” Dedications of Civil War statues, which became frequent in the 1880s, meant still more invitations and speeches. He also supported several historical societies. There were funeral services too for a number of generals, and other officers. Of all Sherman’s associations with veterans, none was as important to him as the Society of the Army of the Tennessee, for which he served as president from 1869 until his death.33
The General loved public speaking and he was extremely good at it. The lawyer and politician Chauncey M. Depew, who himself was a highly polished toastmaster, heard and analyzed Sherman’s presentations upon many occasions and concluded that he was “the readiest and most original talker in the United States.” Commenting at some length, Depew declared, “I don’t believe that he ever made the slightest preparation.” He thought that the General, while carrying on a conversation with those around him, somehow absorbed “the spirit of the occasion,” and when he arose to speak, his sentiments, words and style always fit the occasion magnificently. Interestingly, Sherman did comment once to Henry Turner that when speaking to military people, from officers to academy cadets, he “rarely prepared.” For some formal occasions, Sherman would write a speech, but once in front of his audience, he often did not stick to the manuscript. While the General relished speaking, he detested shaking hands. The story was told that at a reunion of the Grand Army of the Republic in Milwaukee, Sherman shoved his hands into his pockets when he saw the crowd approaching. “This is no place to shake hands,” he declared, and telling them to come to his hotel, he then blurted, “I’ll hire a man to shake hands for me.”34
Both before he retired, and for some months afterward, Sherman engaged in preparing a revised edition of his memoirs, which had been published in May 1875. Presented by D. Appleton and Company, in two volumes, approximately 25,000 sets were sold at $7 per set, for which Sherman received a total of $25,000. The work was an instant best-seller, and well received by the general public. Just prior to the set’s release, the General assured his brother John: “I have carefully eliminated everything calculated to raise controversy, except where sustained by documents embraced in the work itself, and then only with minor parties.”35
Actually, the Memoirs triggered a great deal of controversy, especially among Civil War generals and newspapermen. While many praised both the substance and engaging style of the publication, others charged that Sherman’s depiction of himself was extremely self-centered—a St. Louis reviewer sarcastically remarked that apparently “the suppression of the rebellion was the product of one man’s supernatural genius”—as well as unjust to a number of generals whose contributions Sherman either downplayed or inordinately criticized. Such men as John McClernand, John Logan, Sooy Smith and George Morgan were quite angry about the way Sherman treated them, and many veterans of the Army of the Cumberland were offended by his comments about the fighting at Chattanooga. Some Ohio residents were upset that the General began the narrative in 1846, thus omitting anything about his early years in the Buckeye State.36
Of all the critics who spoke out when the first edition was published, the most severe was newspaper correspondent Henry Van Ness Boynton, who first published a series of scathing articles about the Memoirs, and then gathered them in book form under the title Sherman’s Historical Raid: The Memoirs in Light of the Record. Boynton had commanded an Iowa regiment during the war, and thus was viewed in some circles as having a measure of military credibility. Carefully choosing his facts, and craftily shaping his narrative, Boynton presented Sherman in the worst possible light. If Sherman considered himself a great general, and he did, which his memoirs clearly indicate, Boynton described him as little more than an egotistical blunderer.
Sherman was enraged. He was sure that his enemies in the Grant administration, Secretary of War William Belknap and Orville E. Babcock, Grant’s private secretary, had persuaded Boynton, whom they “paid partly out of Government money, to write me down.” Boynton somehow had access to official military reports when preparing his articles, reports not yet published, and Sherman had no doubt Belknap was the man responsible for making those available to him. When Babcock was disgraced in 1875 by the Whiskey Ring tax frauds, and Belknap resigned the next year because of the Indian trading posts scandal, Sherman thought Boynton then “sung gently for a while.” Several of Sherman’s friends had also come to his defense, and launched counterattacks against Boynton. Nothing, however, was as satisfying to Sherman as when Grant, in 1876, told him that while “he would have omitted calling Logan and Blair politicians,” he had read the memoirs with satisfaction, and essentially had no criticisms. Grant complimented Sherman on a task well performed.37
The Sherman-Boynton controversy heated up again in 1879–1880. Apparently Boynton was incensed when Sherman claimed, in a conversation that got back to Boynton, that “for a thousand dollars, he would slander his own mother.” When Boynton questioned Sherman about the alleged statement in a letter, Sherman readily admitted that he had said just that. Boynton then wanted Sherman charged with “conduct unbecoming an officer and a gentleman.” He requested President Hayes to have the General brought to trial. Nothing ever came of this, except for prolonging the bad blood between the two men. Perhaps Sherman may have been all the more motivated to publish the new edition of the Memoirs, which came out in 1885.38
Sherman added two chapters in the new edition, one at the beginning, entitled “From 1820 to the Mexican War,” and the other at the end, in which he covered the period following the Civil War. He concluded the narrative at his retirement. The General also added an appendix, consisting mainly of documents supporting his arguments, as well as some maps and an index. In the preface to the new edition, Sherman said that he had made corrections wherever he had “found material error.” The substance of the work remained basically unchanged from the first edition, with Sherman seeing no reason to modify his original analyses and conclusions. The minimal changes he did make were of a touching-up and moderating nature, as he toned down some of the more harsh adjectives that he had originally employed. The new edition, probably to his relief, did not generate anything like the heat that arose when the memoirs first appeared.39
On his retirement Sherman fully intended to spend the rest of his days in St. Louis, but his life did not work out that way. After the Harrison Wire Company failed, Tom Fitch and Minnie, along with their children, moved to Pennsylvania, where steel for wire was less expensive, and Fitch hoped to right his financial situation. The departure of Minnie and her family was a blow to Sherman. Elly and her husband were already living in Bryn Mawr. Then, when Cumpy went off to school at Yale, Ellen insisted on remaining close to her youngest child, in order, the General was convinced, to be sure that no one weaned him away from the Catholic Church. Ellen would “rather have him dead than a Protestant,” Sherman declared. Despite his love for St. Louis, Sherman was aggravated by the city’s raising the taxes on his house and assessing him for paving the street. In June 1886, although reluctant to the end to leave St. Louis, he moved to New York City, where Ellen could more readily spend time with her married daughters, and more easily keep an eye on Cumpy.40