William Tecumseh Sherman

When Sherman graduated from the United States Military Academy in the summer of 1840, the nation was passionately engaged in a shameful presidential campaign—arguably the most asinine election in American history. The Whig Party, meeting at Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, in December 1839, had gotten an early start on their mission of unseating the incumbent president, New Yorker Martin Van Buren. Perennial candidate Henry Clay of Kentucky fully expected to be the party’s standard-bearer and did lead the field of candidates on the first ballot. But the raucous Whigs, taking a cue from the recent success of the Jacksonian Democrats, turned instead to a military hero. William Henry Harrison, who had claimed victory against a force of attacking Indians at the Battle of Tippecanoe, in 1811, gained the nomination.

The Whigs published no platform, content merely to pummel Van Buren and the Democrats, blaming them for the economic depression that had plagued the country during the past four years. When John Tyler of Virginia was nominated for vice president, someone devised the catchy slogan “Tippecanoe and Tyler too.” Silly elaboration quickly followed:

Tippecanoe and Tyler too, Tippecanoe and Tyler too,

And with them we’ll beat little Van, Van, Van,

Oh, Van is a used-up man.

Thus began an increasingly embarrassing contest for the nation’s highest political office. All who valued sensible government surely must have cringed as the level of campaigning went rapidly downhill once the Baltimore Republican, a Democratic newspaper, unwittingly presented the Whigs with a rousing election theme. The paper declared that General Harrison, “upon condition of . . . receiving a pension of $2,000 and a barrel of cider,” would doubtless withdraw “all pretensions” to the presidency “and spend his days in a log cabin on the banks of the Ohio.”

At once seizing the initiative, the Whigs rambunctiously propagandized, deviously extolling their hero-general as a man of the people. It was not the “spin” that the paper’s editor had in mind. Absurdities escalated and lies abounded as the Whigs vigorously rode the “log cabin and hard cider” theme. Never mind that Harrison came from one of the first families of Virginia, resided in a spacious home bearing no resemblance to a log cabin and never showed any preference for hard cider—or that President Van Buren actually rose from humble origins.1

Facts became irrelevant as the gurus of presidential hoopla demonstrated their genius for the ridiculous, perhaps matched only by their disdain for the truth. Little log cabins were placed on wheels and rolled through the streets at rallies where cider flowed freely to quench the thirst of the common man. Even Thomas Ewing, stump speaking for General Harrison, addressed several thousand Whigs in New York City, as his son Phil reported, “at the dedication of a log cabin in the heart of the city.” Oratorical demagoguery smeared Van Buren as a despicable aristocrat living in incredible luxury at the White House “Palace,” while rhymesters continued their unscrupulous, goofy work:

Let Van from his coolers of silver drink wine,

And lounge on his cushioned settee;

Our man on his buckeye bench can recline,

Content with hard cider is he!²

Democratic Vice President Richard Johnson of Kentucky attempted to offset the propagandistic prowess of General Harrison as an Indian fighter. He claimed, as earlier noted, to have killed the legendary Tecumseh at the Battle of the Thames in 1813. Johnson delighted in relating his version of Tecumseh’s fate and proudly exhibited a bloodstained shirt, said to have been stripped from the chieftain’s dead body. This story inspired perhaps the most irrelevant and idiotic ditty of the entire campaign:

Rumpsy dumpsy, Rumpsy dumpsy,

Colonel Johnson killed Tecumseh.3

The bustling, crude election, won by the hero of Tippecanoe, clearly proved that mass political parties were firmly entrenched upon the American scene. Nearly seven times as many voters turned out in 1840 as in 1824. Some observers declared the development a positive good for the country. This was, they proclaimed, electioneering at its best in a vigorous young country.⁴

But such fiery political conflict did not set well with Sherman. While he knew that he could not change what was happening, he did not have to like it—and he didn’t. As Lloyd Lewis pertinently observed, he “shrank from the shambles.” Already disenchanted with politics, the 1840 election served as confirmation of the twenty-year-old’s serious concerns for the future of the nation’s government. The “log cabin and hard cider” campaign, again quoting Lewis’s memorable words, “completed the aristocratic work of West Point.” Sherman’s distrust of the American political landscape hardened in the following months and years.⁵

To Ellen he declared that “the people are fickle in the extreme, varying from one party to the other without rhyme or reason.” The squabbling of the parties themselves reminded him of a struggle “between two greedy pelicans quarreling over a dead fish.” When John Tyler succeeded to the presidency upon the sudden death of Harrison, and twice vetoed congressional bills to reestablish a second Bank of the United States, he became a traitor, in the eyes of many Whigs, to the party’s principles. Four members of the cabinet resigned in protest, including Secretary of the Treasury Thomas Ewing, and some Whig supporters burned the President in effigy. To Sherman such action was reprehensible—“a disgrace to Washington that the President should be insulted in his own house and burned in effigy in the face of the whole city.” Fervently he declared his hope that the perpetrators would be “held up to the contempt of the world.”6

Politics was fundamentally an unsavory business, as Sherman viewed the matter, and he wanted no part of it. Typically he spoke of the political scene only with a pronounced disdain. “What the devil are you doing?” he blurted, demanding an explanation of his younger brother John in 1844, when he learned that John had been speaking on behalf of Henry Clay’s presidential campaign against the Tennessee Democrat James K. Polk. “Stump speaking?” he inquired incredulously. “I really thought you were too decent for that.” He continued that he thought John “at least” possessed “sufficient pride not to humble and cringe to beg for party or popular favor.” John was not to be dissuaded from pursuing a political career, just as Sherman had no intention of turning away from his life in the U.S. Army. Sherman’s negative, scornful attitude toward politics was firmly established by the time that the rambunctious mendacity of the 1840 campaign ground to a conclusion—if not before. He would never change. Not even decades later, when he knew that he probably could be the nation’s president if he so desired.⁷

A CUSTOMARY THREE-MONTH furlough followed Sherman’s graduation from West Point. After calling on fifteen-year-old Ellen, who for the last two years had been a student at the Convent of the Visitation in Washington, he headed to Ohio. There he visited with family and friends while awaiting his assignment in the regular army. Most of the time in Lancaster was spent at his mother’s house. Up the street at the Ewing household, visitors were coming and going that summer, many of them politicians working on William Henry Harrison’s presidential campaign. Harrison himself visited the Ewing home at least once and, as earlier noted, Thomas Ewing would be tapped as the triumphant Harrison’s secretary of the treasury.⁸

Spending the majority of his furlough in either Lancaster or Mansfield, Sherman “in due season,” as he quaintly expressed it, was appointed and commissioned second lieutenant of Third Artillery, Company A. He would be serving in Florida and was ordered to report at Fort Columbus, on Governors Island in New York harbor, at the end of September. Sherman seemed fully ready to get on with his military career. He wrote of having “a natural curiosity to see strange places and peoples, both of which exist in Florida.” The prospect of soon being involved in the U.S. Army’s long, frustrating war against the Seminole Indians did not disturb him. But first, leaving Ohio a little earlier than otherwise necessary, Sherman journeyed to western New York and again took in the spectacular sight of Niagara Falls, before returning to West Point.9

The trip to West Point, from which he had been away less than three months, is significant. He had found the camaraderie of the academy deeply satisfying, and becoming an officer of the U.S. Army proved equally fulfilling. While he never liked the academy’s regimentation, and was happy to be removed from that aspect of the experience, he was proud to be a graduate of West Point. For as long as he lived, he made periodic journeys, almost like pilgrimages, back to the Point. For Sherman, it was as if West Point had become a hallowed place.

Perhaps not surprisingly, and in a sense fittingly, he violated an academy regulation during his brief visit. He spent a half hour or more talking with some of his friends in the barracks during their study time, which constituted a breach of the rules. He thought—or at least he professed—that his new status as a second lieutenant exempted him from the regulation. Upon the academy’s discovery that he had visited cadets during study hours, he was ordered to Fort Columbus under recommendation that he be court-martialed.

He managed to write his way out of the problem, apologizing to Superintendent Delafield. “I can only say that I had no intention of openly setting the regulations at defiance,” he stated. “In fact,” claimed Sherman, “I do not think I thought of rules at all, but acted in accordance with my feelings, which prompted me to do a . . . friendly act, bid my friends a farewell upon parting with them, some perhaps forever.” He had struck the right note with Delafield. (Or possibly Delafield feared Thomas Ewing might intervene on Sherman’s behalf if he pursued the matter.) The superintendent recommended that Sherman be restored to duty and Secretary of War Joel R. Poinsett dropped the charges against the newly commissioned second lieutenant.10

Thus, in early October 1840, Sherman sailed first for Savannah, Georgia, where “we transferred to a small steamer and proceeded by the inland route to St. Augustine, Florida.” The “we” of which he spoke, in addition to a company of army recruits, included a dog, “a most beautiful black pointer” that he had taken along for companionship. Soon he boarded a steamer called the William Gaston, which took him still farther down the east coast of Florida, finally arriving off the bar of the Indian River, where the little vessel anchored.¹¹

Transferring to a whaleboat with a crew of four, “steered by a character of some note, known as the Pilot Ashlock,” Sherman recalled that they were “carried through the surf over the bar, into the mouth of Indian River Inlet.” Darkness was upon them, as they changed to a still smaller boat, which Ashlock guided through a channel in the midst of mangrove islands. It was the roosting place of thousands of pelicans, which “rose in clouds and circled above our heads.” The scene was vividly memorable, for “the water below was alive with fish, whose course through it could be seen by the phosphoric wake.” Emerging into a broad lagoon, the lights of Fort Pierce came into view as Ashlock steered the vessel to a small wharf.¹²

Sherman had arrived at his first army post. The twenty-year-old had never seen anything like Florida. The entire peninsula was “one mass of sand,” he told his brother. “It is cut up by innumerable rivers, streams, and rivulets, which, watering the soil, nourish a rank growth of weeds and grass.” These were continually decomposing, and producing a very rich soil, resulting over time in “a heavy growth of live oak, palmetto, and scrub of every kind.” This widespread, thick growth composed “the dreaded hummocks, the stronghold of the Indians.”

Sherman explained that in the hummocks the Seminole built his hut, and grew his corn and pumpkins, while the numerous streams provided an abundance of fish and alligators, and the palmetto its cabbage. Thus the Indian, he declared, “conceals his little fire and hut, secures his escape, [is enabled] to creep within a few yards of the deer or turkey feeding on the border, and drive his copper-headed, barbed arrow through the vital part. In a word,” he concluded, “the deep streams, bordered by the dense hummock, have enabled the Indians thus far to elude the pursuit of our army.” His succinct summation of the army’s problems with the Florida Indians would be difficult to surpass.13

After several months of service in Florida, Sherman thought that the Seminole warfare was the kind of fight “which every young officer should be thoroughly acquainted with, as the Indian is most likely to be our chief enemy in times to come.” Obviously the young lieutenant could not then foresee the coming of the Civil War, nor even the much nearer at hand clash with Mexico. He was right, however, in concluding that in the future the U.S. Army would experience a long struggle against Native Americans, although he likely had little concept of the major role he himself would play in those engagements.¹⁴

As Sherman observed the stealthy, guerrilla-like Seminole warriors, he realized the tactics required to defeat them. They would never fight in Napoleonic style, and they were difficult to kill or capture. But if the army struck at their spirit and broke down their morale, Sherman believed they eventually would be overcome. The winning strategy—and Sherman was impressed by Colonel William J. Worth’s policy at the time—required raiding Seminole villages, burning their huts and destroying their corn. If the army attacked the Indian ruthlessly, smashing his supplies, undermining his very way of life—and year round, even during the stifling summer—Sherman believed they could not endure. His concept of fighting Native Americans resurfaced with a vengeance, during the Civil War, at the expense of the Confederacy.¹⁵

Much later, less than a decade before his death, Sherman made a very interesting comment about the Indians and Florida. “Indeed Florida was the Indian’s paradise,” he wrote. He observed that the territory “was of little value to us, and it was a great pity to remove the Seminoles at all, for we could have collected there all the Choctaws, Creeks, Cherokees, and Chickasaws, in addition to the Seminoles.” He believed that the Indians “would have thrived in the Peninsula, whereas they now occupy lands that are very valuable, . . . coveted by their white neighbors on all sides.” As for Florida’s worth to the whites, he thought there was little to recommend the place.16

When Sherman arrived at Fort Pierce, the small-scale but awful guerrilla war against the Seminoles had been dragging on for years. Officially lasting six years, the conflict “in ugly incidents” continued even longer. “At that time . . . the war consisted in hunting up and securing the small fragments [of the scattered Indians],” Sherman wrote. The captives were then “sent to join . . . their tribe of Seminoles already established in the Indian Territory west of Arkansas.” Known as the Second Seminole War—the first involved Andrew Jackson’s 1818 foray, when he captured Spanish Pensacola and claimed West Florida for the United States—this struggle had begun before Sherman ever entered West Point. Most of the military victories in the war (and many encounters proved indecisive) were gained by the Seminoles with hit-and-run tactics. When the Indians lost their great leader Osceola, captured through trickery at a supposed peace council in 1837, other chiefs rose to the challenge, continuing a bitter resistance against being shipped westward to the Indian Territory. The U.S. Army sent more and more troops against them, and the Seminoles retreated deeper and deeper into the Florida jungles and swamps. Ultimately about three thousand Indians were forced westward, but the war grew ever more costly. Soldiers died of disease, as well as at the hands of the defiant Indian marauding parties and ambushes.¹⁷

The conflict entailed an intermittent type of struggle that sometimes involved lengthy periods of relative inactivity. During the stifling heat and heavy humidity of the long summer, the army customarily did not campaign. When Sherman began his tour of duty, he encountered a pronounced lull in army activities, providing an opportunity at once to acquaint himself with new and nonmilitary pursuits. Sherman adapted readily to his novel surroundings, particularly becoming friendly with “the Pilot Ashlock,” whom he praised as “the best fisherman I ever saw.” Soon Ashlock initiated him “into the mysteries of shark-spearing, trolling for red fish, and taking the sheep’s-head and mullet.” There were also nets for catching green turtles, of which he said that “an ample supply” was always on hand. Sherman relished seafood and took full advantage of Florida’s offerings. “I do not recall in my whole experience,” he later declared, “a spot on earth where fish, oysters, and green turtles so abound as at Fort Pierce, Florida.”18

He seemed to thrive on living “in a most primitive style,” as he described his Florida existence. The sun was hot, but often there was a breeze. He enjoyed good health, managing to escape malaria and other ailments which often afflicted the men in that tropical climate. Although he tended to dislike most of Florida’s white settlers, as well as the militia, he was fascinated that they “boast of the largest rattlesnakes, alligators, sharks . . . cranes and pelicans on the coast.” He himself decorated his cabin with seashells, feathers and wings of birds, the head and teeth of a shark and the skin of a rattlesnake. He also enjoyed having various animals around. In addition to a fawn that slept in his bedroom, he wrote: “I’ve got more pets now than any bachelor in the country—innumerable chickens, tame pigeons, white rabbits and a full-blood Indian pony—rather small matters for a man to deal with . . . but it is far better to spend time in trifles such as these than drinking and gambling.” A young officer who met Sherman for the first time during those Florida days depicted him as “thin and spare, but . . . cheerful, loquacious, active and communicative to an extraordinary degree.” Sherman was cheered by the early arrival of Stewart Van Vliet, his former classmate and good friend from West Point, who came with a detachment of troops to strengthen the post. Eventually George H. Thomas would also serve with Sherman in Florida, as well as Edward O. C. Ord.¹⁹

Although Sherman actually had little confidence in the strength of Fort Pierce to withstand a major assault by the Seminoles, he professed not to be worried. “If the Indians were to take a notion on a very dark night to pounce upon us we might get the worst of it,” he confided to Phil Ewing, “but we rely upon their cowardice.” Even after the initial charms of his Florida service wore thin, Sherman had no patience with soldiers who failed to adjust as well as he, and wanted to leave. Speaking of those who “have demanded to be relieved from duty in Florida,” he declared that “an absurdity.” Stating that he himself had made up his mind “to stay here until the end of the war,” he also acknowledged that “when that will be God only knows.” In truth, he wondered whether the war with the Seminoles would ever be over, but he believed he could soldier with any man, and he took his duty as an officer quite seriously.20

Sherman could be tough, both on himself and those under his command. Unfortunately, he made a grievous error of judgment soon after arriving in Florida, one that resulted in a soldier’s death. He agreed to shoulder the responsibilities of the post doctor while the doctor took a short leave. At morning sick call, Sherman thought a soldier merely faked illness and ordered the regimental sergeant to run the alleged pretender around the fort. The man collapsed and died. In his memoirs, Sherman made no mention of the man’s death.²¹

He did relate the striking circumstances of another soldier’s murder. The man was a sergeant and a formidable Indian fighter. On an expedition searching for Indians, during which a clash occurred with nearly fifty Seminoles, according to Sherman’s account, the sergeant “was said to have dispatched three warriors.” Taking the scalp of one of his victims, the triumphant soldier brought it back as a trophy. Sherman said the man “was so elated that . . . he had to celebrate his victory by a big drunk.” Perhaps he celebrated in another manner as well.

The wife of one of the post soldiers, who cooked for the garrison, “was somewhat of a flirt,” declared Sherman, “and rather fond of admiration.” The sergeant, unfortunately for his well-being, had become attracted to the woman. As Sherman described the affair, he “hung around the mess-house more than the husband fancied.” The husband, “a poor weakly soldier,” in Sherman’s estimate, reported the circumstances to the post commander, who reprimanded the sergeant for his behavior. Evidently the officer’s words proved of little consequence.

Within a few days the woman’s husband again approached the sergeant’s commanding officer, once more appealing for his assistance. With a flurry of ill-advised words, and demonstrating a deplorable lack of judgment (although in fairness he probably never anticipated what followed), the officer snapped, as Sherman remembered, “Haven’t you got a musket? Can’t you defend your own family?” The man walked out and within a very short interval the report of a gun was heard near the mess-house, the irate husband having wasted no time in seizing a musket and inflicting a mortal wound upon his wife’s admirer.

The law and army regulations specified that the accused murderer be turned over to the nearest civil court, which convened in St. Augustine. Among the witnesses summoned to St. Augustine for the murder trial was Sherman’s fishing tutor, the Pilot Ashlock. Some weeks later, having given his testimony at the trial, Ashlock returned to Indian River in memorable fashion, accompanied by “a very handsome woman,” in Sherman’s judgment. He thought she “was probably eighteen or twenty years old.” Ashlock had “availed himself of the chance to take a wife to share with him the solitude of his desolate hut on the beach at the Indian River.”

Also with Ashlock and his new bride was the woman’s younger sister, “a very pretty little Minorcan girl of about fourteen years of age.” First bringing ashore his wife, her sister, their chests of clothes and possessions, and the mail for the fort, Ashlock then left them on the beach near his hut, while he returned to the steamer that had transported them from St. Augustine. Waiting on board the vessel were several soldiers whom Ashlock needed to carry ashore in his whaleboat. All of this Sherman observed because, as acting quartermaster, and informed by the sentinel on the roof of the fort that the smoke of a steamer could be seen approaching, he had headed to the beach to get the incoming mail—an event always eagerly anticipated. It was the last time he saw Ashlock alive, disaster striking as the pilot and eight or ten soldiers tried to make their way over the bar of the Indian River. Sherman explained that “a heavy breaker upset the boat” while the vessel was crossing the bar, “and all were lost except the boy who pulled the boat-oar.” The lad, assisted by a rope, somehow managed to hold on to the boat, drifting with it outside the breakers, “and was finally beached near a mile down the coast.”

Ashlock’s new bride, having watched in helpless horror as her husband and the others apparently “perished amid the sharks and the waves,” nevertheless clung to a slim hope that somehow Ashlock might have survived. “Strange to say,” recalled Sherman, the pilot “could not swim, although he had been employed on the water all his life.” The distraught young woman sat slumped on her chest of clothes, weeping, while her sister continued crying out, appealing for “a miracle” (Sherman’s words). “All I could do,” he declared, was “take the two disconsolate females up to the fort, and give them the use of my own quarters.”

The next morning Sherman returned to the beach, accompanied by Ord, where they found two bodies washed ashore, “torn all to pieces by the sharks, which literally swarmed the inlet at every new tide.” When at last the weather somewhat moderated, Sherman said he took a crew of soldiers in a whaleboat and ventured over “that terrible bar,” and boarded the steamer, which lay anchored about a mile offshore. There he learned definitively that Ashlock, and all with him excepting the one young boy, had perished. In fact, when the captain of the steamer had dispatched three men in one of his own boats, attempting to rescue Ashlock and the others, the deadly surf had claimed two more lives. Likewise upset in the heavy breakers, only one of the men managed to escape the sharks and successfully battle his way to safety beyond the churning water.

“This sad and fatal catastrophe made us all afraid of that bar”—a statement with which, presumably, no reasonable person would quibble. In returning to the shore after his visit with the steamer’s captain, Sherman decided against recrossing the treacherous barrier, “adopting the more prudent course of beaching the boat below the inlet, which insured us a good ducking,” but clearly entailed less risk to their lives. Afterward he somberly bore to the young widow “the absolute truth, that her husband was lost forever.”

The two women soon journeyed back to St. Augustine, “carrying all of Ashlock’s worldly goods and effects,” which according to Sherman did not amount to much. Also, Mrs. Ashlock received some three hundred dollars owed to the pilot for his services to the U.S. Army. In the final analysis, as Sherman viewed “the calamity,” he thought the sisters had been saved from “a long life of banishment on the beach of Indian River.” Later he saw the two in St. Augustine, and the younger woman again a few years afterward in Charleston. For Sherman, just living in Florida, totally apart from contact with Native Americans, was proving an adventure in itself.22

SHERMAN’S PRIMARY MISSION in Florida—although obviously relegated to the background at times—involved the elusive Seminole. Because the Indians were broadly scattered, the soldiers at Fort Pierce launched several wide-ranging expeditions during the winter of 1841. Sometimes Sherman participated; at other times, seemingly more often, he remained behind with responsibilities at the fort. “Our expeditions were mostly made in boats in the lagoons extending from . . . near two hundred miles above the fort, down to Jupiter Inlet, about fifty miles below,” he wrote, “and in the many streams which emptied therein.” Results were mixed, as occasionally the raiding parties never even sighted an Indian. At other times, he said, “we succeeded in picking up small parties of men, women and children.” His memoirs, except for hints, refrain from mentioning examples of the brutality involved. Reporting to Phil Ewing about one of the raids, in a letter written at the time, Sherman said the soldiers struck at dawn, taking the Indians unaware, and “captured 23 and killed 6 women and a baby and a child.” Afterward the soldiers burned the village. Such killing expeditions are well documented.²³

This certainly is not to say that the Seminoles, for their part, typically treated prisoners kindly. One of Sherman’s most vividly memorable Florida experiences involved the noted Seminole chief Coacoochee, or Wild Cat. Sherman described him as “a very handsome young Indian warrior, not more than twenty-five years old.” Conversing with the chief through a black translator after Coacoochee became a prisoner, Sherman wrote Phil Ewing that the boastful Seminole described the capture of six white men and a black man after their ship had wrecked off the coast. The warrior told how he and his party subsequently beat out the brains of their captives. Sherman seemed fascinated that Wild Cat seized the occasion “to initiate his son,” as Sherman expressed it, urging the Indian boy to kill a white youth, “as a free lesson in manhood.”²⁴

Sherman first encountered Chief Coacoochee in rather dramatic fashion. One day in the spring of 1841, the sentinel stationed on the roof at Fort Pierce loudly sounded the dreadful alarm “Indians! Indians!” Sherman said everyone instantly sprang to his weapon, and the men quickly formed up on the parade ground, as four Indians on horseback approached the post from the rear. Signaling their peaceful intentions, the Seminoles rode straight up to the gateway, dismounted and came in. They communicated through an English-speaking black man named Joe—probably a fugitive slave, as many such made their way to Florida and took up with the Native Americans. When conducted to Fort Pierce’s commanding officer, Major Thomas Childs, Joe explained that the warriors came on behalf of Chief Coacoochee, one of the most noted Seminole chiefs. Joe proceeded to unwrap a piece of paper sent by the Indian chief, which Joe said was intended for the scrutiny of the big chief of the fort.

It was a safe-conduct pass entitling Coacoochee to come into Fort Pierce and receive provisions and assistance while gathering his people to lead them out of Florida and to the Indian Territory. The paper was signed by Colonel William Worth, commanding all U.S. forces in Florida, with headquarters near Tampa Bay—an officer whom Sherman, in a letter to Ellen a few months later, amusingly referred to as “his Mightiness on the Big Cypress.” Joe explained that he had been sent to see if the paper would be honored. Major Childs replied that the paper was “all right” (Sherman’s words) and inquired “Where is Coacoochee?” Told that he was near at hand, Childs replied that the chief ought to come on into the fort. Joe offered to go get him. But Major Childs, no doubt wanting to make sure that Coacoochee did not elude him, ordered Sherman to take eight or ten mounted men and escort the chief into the fort.

Detailing ten men to saddle up, Sherman also took one of the Indians and Joe of course, for guidance and communication. After riding five or six miles, Sherman said that he “began to suspect treachery, of which I had heard so much . . . [from] the older officers.” When Sherman inquired how much farther they had to go, Joe’s responses were not reassuring. Sherman said he “always answered, ‘Only a little way.’” Finally they approached one of the hummocks, “standing like an island in the interminable pine-forest,” where Sherman saw “a few loitering Indians, which Joe pointed out as the place.” Apprehensive of a trap, Sherman halted the guard, ordering the sergeant to watch him closely, and proceeded alone with his guides. Near the hummock, about a dozen warriors arose and surrounded him.

“When in their midst, I inquired for the chief Coacoochee,” said Sherman, whereupon a striking-looking young warrior approached, “slapping his breast” and declaring “Me Coacoochee.” Sherman explained that he had been sent by his “chief” to escort Coacoochee to the fort. The Indian leader wanted Sherman to get down from his horse and “talk.” Sherman said that he “had no ‘talk’ in me, but that, on his reaching the post, he could talk as much as he pleased with the ‘big chief,’ Major Childs.” Sherman later recounted how the Indians around him “all seemed to be . . . in no hurry; and I noticed that all of their guns were leaning against a tree.” Perhaps he sensed impending danger. Whatever his thoughts, he demonstrated the coolness and decisiveness that would often characterize his actions at critical moments.

Sherman signaled to the sergeant, who rapidly advanced with the escort. Sherman immediately ordered him to “secure the rifles,” which he quickly proceeded to do. Coacoochee appeared to be enraged, but Sherman said he “explained” to the chief that the Indian warriors were tired, while the soldiers were not. Thus the soldiers would carry the guns for the Indians, while Sherman would provide a horse for the Seminole chief to ride. Whatever Coacoochee may have thought of Sherman’s “explanation,” Sherman’s men controlled all the firearms.

Sherman preferred to leave for the fort at once, but Coacoochee insisted that before they departed, he must bathe and dress appropriately for his meeting with Major Childs. Sherman relented, no doubt fascinated by the chief’s preparations, which he later described in detail. Stripping off his clothes, Wild Cat washed himself in a nearby pond and then “began to dress in all his Indian finery, which consisted of buckskin leggins, moccasins, and several shirts.” The chief “put on vests, one after another, and one of them had the marks of a bullet, just above the pocket, with the stain of blood.” From the pocket, Coacoochee pulled out a one-dollar bank note, “and the rascal had the impudence,” wrote Sherman, “to ask me to give him silver coin for that dollar.” He surmised that the chief had killed the wearer, and was disappointed because he found a paper note instead of a silver dollar. At last the chief was prepared, climaxing the colorful dressing ritual when he donned a turban enhanced with ostrich feathers. Then mounting the horse provided, the splendidly arrayed Coacoochee rode with Sherman back to Fort Pierce.

The chief told Major Childs that he “was tired of war” and ready to lead his people out of Florida. Because they were widely scattered, he said that he needed a month to gather them up, as well as more rations to sustain him. Childs readily agreed both to the month’s time and the provisions, whereupon Sherman said the “talk” ceased, and “Coacoochee and his envoys proceeded to get . . . drunk, which was easily done by the agency of commissary whiskey.” They stayed at Fort Pierce through the night, and the next day departed. The major had no faith in Wild Cat’s sincerity, and seemingly neither did Sherman. When the chief showed up at the fort a month later, he brought with him only twenty warriors and no women and children.

Major Childs had already determined, in such an event, to immediately seize Coacoochee and whoever accompanied him. He arranged for Lieutenant George Taylor to lure the chief and his uncle, who was also an important leader, into the lieutenant’s room on pretense of providing “some good brandy, instead of the common commissary whiskey.” While the first sergeant and another soldier, together with the assistance of Taylor, seized the apparently unsuspecting chief and his uncle, Sherman and Van Vliet, each leading a section of soldiers, simultaneously secured the larger party of warriors. Sherman came upon them from the front, while Van Vliet’s men blocked the open windows in the rear of the building.

That very evening reinforcements from St. Augustine arrived at Fort Pierce. Upon the orders of Major Childs, Sherman then led a band of soldiers who marched during the night and the next day, continuing southward for “some fifty miles, to Lake Okeechobee, in hopes to capture the balance of the tribe.” The chase was to no avail. The Seminoles had “taken the alarm and escaped.” Coacoochee and his warriors were soon put aboard a schooner bound for New Orleans, from where they expected to be dispatched to the Indian Territory. Colonel Worth intervened, however, recalling the group to Tampa Bay. He had decided to give Wild Cat one more chance to bring in his people. That time the chief returned, accompanied by a number of the women and children, all of whom were then shipped westward.

Thus Sherman had been involved in one of the army’s successes, which he characterized as “a heavy loss to the Seminoles.” But the young lieutenant was a realist, and acknowledged that “there still remained in the Peninsula a few hundred warriors with their families scattered . . . who were concealed in the most inaccessible hummocks and swamps. They had no difficulty in finding plenty of food anywhere and everywhere.” These Seminoles were never to be conquered, as the U.S. Army eventually gave up the long, difficult and costly effort to force them from their homes. But the end would not occur until after Sherman had left Florida, and apparently he grew ever more frustrated with the struggle against the Seminoles. Several times during 1841, he expressed an impatience with both the nature and the length of the struggle.25

ALTHOUGH FORT PIERCE entailed an isolated existence far down Florida’s east coast, Sherman did his best to stay abreast of news from the nation’s capital. Reading newspapers whenever he could acquire them, and gleaning information about current events from his brother John and other correspondents, he freely and often strongly expressed his thoughts and convictions about major issues of the day. While he generally favored the Whig Party and Henry Clay, he became incensed that the Whigs were attempting to reestablish the Bank of the United States, destroyed in the mid-1830s by Andrew Jackson. Obviously Sherman thought Jackson, even if a Democrat, did a good thing when he dispatched that “hydra of corruption”—one of the choice phrases Old Hickory employed with relish whenever he spoke of the bank.

Even though Sherman’s foster father, as secretary of the treasury, had sponsored the Whig’s bank bill in the Senate, Sherman did not restrain his opinion on the subject. In fact, he could mount a tirade against banks of which Jackson himself would have been proud. Voicing disgust with “bankers, brokers & hangers on,” he denounced them universally. If a banker had “ever assisted an honest poor man, without exaction and usury, I would like to hear of it,” he thundered.26

By early September of 1841, Sherman continued to find Florida appealing. “Although Florida is losing many of the charms that novelty inspires, still I cannot say that I am very tired of staying here,” he wrote Ellen, adding that he possessed “many of the comforts of life, and what is the greatest of all blessings, good health.” He thought there was just enough action “to give experience to the mind, and strength to the constitution.” Also, he hoped “that a very long period shall not elapse before I shall have the pleasure of hearing from you again,” and made it clear that he looked forward not merely to Ellen’s letters, but to the time, however distant, when he might see her once more. Telling her of the Indian pony which he had acquired, he spoke of the importance “to all persons to ride well.” He declared that whenever he got home again “the first thing I will expect of you will be to mount the wildest horse and charge over the hills and plains. Next to drawing, it is the most ladylike accomplishment in my mind.”²⁷

Was he playfully seeking to amuse Ellen with such a mental image, one that he himself actually considered absurd, and thought that she would too? Or did the thought of a good-looking woman riding a wild horse stir within him some erotic fantasy? Yet again, perhaps he had in mind the pure practicality of a woman, as well as a man, needing to ride well in those days of primitive transportation and merely indulged, as he so often did, his penchant and ability for easily turning an attention-grabbing phrase. Whatever crossed Sherman’s mind as he wrote, the association of a woman’s artistic talent with her charging over hills and plains on a wild horse, which he characterized as “ladylike,” is memorable.

Throughout the tour of duty in Florida, Sherman engaged in extensive correspondence, establishing a pattern he would follow all his life. The majority of letters were addressed to Ellen, Phil Ewing and his brother John. One person to whom he seldom wrote, at any time of his life, was Thomas Ewing, which makes a request addressed to his future father-in-law of more than passing interest. (When he once needed five dollars while a cadet at the Point, for instance, he turned to his mother for assistance, despite knowing that her resources were meager indeed when compared with the wealth of Ewing.) But becoming concerned while at Fort Pierce that the Third Artillery might be moved somewhere in the north or east of the country, “and stationed in the vicinity of some city, from which God spare me,” he wrote to the well-connected Ewing, wondering if his foster father might facilitate a transfer to the western Plains. He was enamored of a life close to nature, a life that entailed keeping his wants few and simple. Obviously, his was a complex and sometimes contradictory mind. For a man who loved the theater, a desire to continue a military exile from civilization is a bit of an enigma.28

Although service on the Great Plains did not materialize, Sherman was promoted to first lieutenant on November 30, 1841. Achieving that rank typically entailed half a dozen years or more. To reach the grade approximately a year and a half after graduation from West Point was highly unusual. “I have been exceedingly fortunate,” he informed his brother. Maybe the rapid promotion reflected a combination of good luck and the army’s recognition of a young man’s potential. One also wonders if the influence of Thomas Ewing might have played a part.²⁹

Sherman’s promotion meant a transfer from Company A to Company G, taking him from Fort Pierce to St. Augustine. Years later, writing his memoirs, he grew somewhat nostalgic about the time he spent at Fort Pierce. Speaking of “the fragrance of the air, the abundance of game and fish, and just enough of adventure,” he declared that the combination “gave to life a relish.” Nevertheless, he quickly adjusted to the charms of St. Augustine, where he found “many pleasant families” and came to “remember the old place with pleasure.” He arrived in St. Augustine shortly before Christmas, and found himself assigned to command a detachment of twenty soldiers at Picolata, on the St. Johns River, about eighteen miles from the city.30

He was pleased that a good and safe road connected Picolata with St. Augustine. He acknowledged in a letter to Ellen that many murders had been committed along the road in the past, “but none since we took Coacoochee, whose party had formerly infested the road. Now there is considered no danger and persons pass . . . constantly in parties of two and three.” To both John and Ellen, he spoke glowingly of his situation at Picolata. “It is a very beautiful spot indeed,” he told Ellen. “Magnificent live oak trees shade the yard, enclosing my splendid quarters, and the St. John’s, a noble sheet of water, about one and a half miles broad, adds beauty to the whole.” Sherman was not exaggerating the breadth of the St. Johns River, and the wild, exotic setting clearly delighted him.³¹

“In fact I would much prefer being here to St. Augustine,” he explained to Ellen, “for ’tis like being in the country with all the advantages of both town and country, for with a good horse I can ride over [to St. Augustine] at any time in a couple of hours, get books, see the ladies, etc.” The ladies seem to have been very much on Sherman’s mind. While he assured his brother that St. Augustine’s old English families, which were not numerous, and “the few Americans whom the delightful climate has enticed,” constituted “the best society,” he was enamored of the Spaniards. He meant the women, whom he depicted as “very ignorant” and possessing “no desire to travel beyond their own circle.” Nevertheless, he told Ellen that they were “very pretty, with beautiful hair and eyes which have . . . allured many officers.” More than a dozen, he said, had succumbed to marriage. Sherman did not intend to fall into that trap, but he readily admitted a deep admiration for the beauty of the women, and especially their grace in dancing.³²

Penning a letter to his brother on February 15, 1842, Sherman enthused about the preservation of the “ceremonies and festivities of old Spain.” He said that “Balls, masquerades, etc., are celebrated during the gay season of the Carnival (just over),” and although he clearly found the activities fascinating, he did not fail to note the contrast between public and private religious conduct among St. Augustine’s Catholics. “The most religious observance of Lent” characterized their public lives, he wrote, “whilst in private they cannot refrain from dancing and making merry.” Sherman, not surprisingly, had no problem whatsoever with their merriment.

“Indeed, I never saw anything like it—dancing, dancing, and nothing but dancing, but not such as you see in the north. Such ease and grace I never before beheld,” he told John. “A lady will waltz all the evening without fatigue, because it is done slowly, with grace; but it is in the Spanish dance they more especially excel, enchanting all who behold or participate.” While he made no mention to Ellen of the contrast between public and private actions during Lent, he was equally straightforward, as with his brother, in admitting his admiration for the Spanish dance, “most beautiful, graceful and enchanting,” he told her—“much more the beauty of the ladies themselves.” In the coming months, declared the young soldier, “I must certainly make an attempt to learn the Spanish dance.”33

It was not to be. His posting in the St. Augustine area proved brief. Within only a few weeks of settling in at Picolata, in February 1842, Sherman was ordered to Fort Morgan, Mobile Point. “The roving life in Florida,” as he characterized the experience, had come to an end. Actually, he had been anticipating the transfer, just not expecting it so soon. But as usual, Sherman would adapt easily to the change. In aptitude, discipline and personality, he was proving well suited for life in the army.³⁴