Chapter Eleven During the late summer and throughout the fall of 1859, Sherman stayed busy planning for the opening of the new military school. He sought pertinent information from West Point, the Virginia Military Institute, the Kentucky Military Institute and George B. McClellan, a West Pointer then serving as president of the Illinois Central Railroad. Some years earlier McClellan had visited several European military schools, and Sherman wanted to make comparisons between American and European practices. George Mason Graham, also a West Point man and veteran of the Mexican War, was helping him in every way that he could. The two seemed to like each other from the first and worked well together. Graham made a fact-finding visit to VMI and Sherman sent him a list of questions he hoped to have answered, concerning all manner of equipment used, procedures followed, as well as prices and wages at the Virginia institution. He tried to think of everything. Concerned about the Louisiana climate, with its heat and humidity, he asked Graham, for example, “Can we not select a dress more becoming, quite as economical, and better adapted to climate than the grey cloth of West Point and Virginia?”1
The bulk of equipment and supplies for the new school had to come out of New Orleans; some of them were produced there, although far more were imported. In the course of arranging for the academy’s requirements, Sherman spent several days in the Crescent City. His superintendency of a military-oriented institution was an interesting challenge, and a welcome job. However, it was not the army, and his new work keenly reminded him of the life he once led as a soldier. “I am . . . at the City Hotel which is crowded,” he wrote Ellen, “and have therefore come to this my old office . . . to do my writing. I wish I were here legitimately, but that is now past, and I must do my best in the sphere in which events have cast me. All things here look familiar, the streets, houses, levees, drays, etc., and many of the old servants are still about the office, who remember me well, and fly around at my bidding as of old.”2
Sherman was also writing to his brother, advising moderation on the slavery issue, just as he had been doing ever since John first was elected to the U.S. Congress. Sherman had more reason than ever before to be worried about what John might say on the subject. “As you are becoming a man of note and are a Republican,” he explained in September, “and as I go south among gentlemen who have always owned slaves, and . . . whose feelings may pervert every public expression of yours . . . I would like to see you take the highest ground consistent with your party creed.” A few weeks later, Sherman acknowledged that “a majority in Congress has an absolute right to govern the whole country; but the North, being so strong in every sense . . . can well afford to be generous, even to making reasonable concessions to the weaknesses and prejudices of the South.” He thus hoped to see John’s position “yet more moderate.”3
During the latter part of 1859, Sherman had to spend some time winding up his responsibilities with the law firm in Kansas. Family affairs demanded attention as well. For the fifth time he became a father, when Eleanor Mary Sherman, who would become known as Ellie, was born on September 5. Soon after Ellie’s delivery in Lancaster, Sherman visited the new military school in Kentucky. Following a brief, fact-finding stay in the Bluegrass State, he left for the Louisiana assignment, by way of St. Louis, where he narrowly, and regrettably, missed seeing Henry Turner but enjoyed a satisfying visit with James Lucas.4
Good news had arrived from San Francisco. Sherman’s house had finally been sold, bringing $5,600. Moving the property at last, in a depressed economy, brought a sense of relief. He had long before deeded the house to Henry Turner as security for his indebtedness to the firm, contracted because his and Ellen’s expenses exceeded their income. James Lucas insisted, however, that the money from the sale—all of it—should go to Sherman for his faithful service, and Turner agreed. Sherman protested, to no avail. The money was an unexpected surprise, and helped ease the increasing financial pressure that had been troubling him, seemingly more than ever before, during recent months.5
THEN JOHN BROWN resurfaced—and with results immensely greater than when he first appeared in Kansas. Looking the part of a long-bearded Old Testament patriarch, while thundering against the “wicked curse of slavery” with the fanatical zeal and ringing certainty of an ancient prophet speaking on behalf of Jehovah, he struck the federal arsenal in Harpers Ferry, Virginia, under cover of darkness on October 16, 1859. Leading nineteen men, including five blacks, he succeeded in capturing the federal arsenal and armory, and seizing a few hostages. Brown grandiosely envisioned nothing less than the overthrow of slavery. Apparently he intended to establish a mountain stronghold, take hostages from slave-owning families and arm large numbers of slaves. Slave insurrections would then be initiated across the Southern states.6
But Brown had made no provisions to feed the pitifully small group that he led and never informed any slaves that he was initiating an insurrection. Having seized the arsenal, he simply waited—presumably waiting for the slaves to rise. Mentally, Brown was not “a well-adjusted man.” Probably any slaves who learned of the projected revolt had sense enough to realize that it could not succeed. Having refused to retreat to the mountains while an escape route still lay open, Brown and his little band soon found themselves cut off and surrounded.7
A force of U.S. Marines broke down the barricaded doors and quickly overwhelmed Brown and his followers. Ten of the nineteen were killed (including two of Brown’s sons), while Brown himself was beaten unconscious and turned over to the state of Virginia. Charged with treason against the state, conspiracy to foment a slave insurrection and murder, he was brought to trial one week after being captured. With remarkable haste, Brown was convicted on October 31, and hanged on December 2 at Charlestown, Virginia (now West Virginia).8
Although of unsound mind, Brown seemed to realize that he would be worth more to the antislavery cause in death than he had ever been in life. Having uttered eloquent words on behalf of freedom for the slaves at his sentencing, he courageously faced the hangman’s noose. He became an instant martyr. Moderate men in the North, including many Republicans—among them William H. Seward and Abraham Lincoln—sincerely deplored Brown’s actions. But abolitionists, infuriated by his execution, praised his righteous efforts on behalf of freedom. Ralph Waldo Emerson famously declared that Brown had made “the gallows as glorious as the cross.” The hallowed memory of the martyred Brown intensified during the following weeks and months, eventually giving birth to the moving and now legendary refrain: “John Brown’s body lies a-mould’ring in the grave, but his soul is marching on.”9
Many Southern minds were enraged at the mere mention of John Brown. They often made no distinction between Brown and the Republican Party, which had become, in their eyes, the party of abolition. Anyone proposing the containment of slavery was advocating its destruction. Throughout the late fall and the winter of 1859–1860, rumors of slave insurrections, often stemming from panic in the wake of Brown’s raid, swept the South. All persons from the North came under suspicion. Many were driven out of the region. Brown’s raid also strengthened and emboldened Southern politicians who favored secession from the Union.10
The tremendous impact of John Brown left Sherman increasingly concerned about the destiny of the nation, as well as his own position in the Deep South. “As long as the abolitionists and the Republicans seem to threaten the safety of slave property, so long will this excitement last,” he told Ellen, “and no one can foresee its result.” He wrote that “these southern politicians have so long cried out wolf that many believe the wolf has come,” and he was afraid that “in some moment of anger they [may] commit an act resulting in Civil War.” He also said that “all here [he was in New Orleans at the time] talk as if a dissolution of the Union were not only a possibility but a probability of easy execution.” He prophesied that if secession is attempted, “we will have Civil War of the most horrible kind.” He wrote Thomas Ewing Jr. that he used to laugh at talk about disunion, “but I now begin to fear it may be attempted.”11
The inflamed Southern passions triggered by John Brown’s raid did not involve Sherman in any specific manner. But unfortunately, a foolish action by his brother had a bearing on his position as he prepared for the superintendency of the Louisiana military school. John Sherman had emerged as the leading candidate to take up the gavel as the new speaker of the House of Representatives. The problem was that John had recently endorsed an abridgement of Hinton Helper’s highly controversial book The Impending Crisis of the South. John had not read the book, or the compendium, merely relying upon assurances from Republican friends that his name should appear among the supporting signatures. Very likely, he did not understand the degree of animosity the book had raised in the South, where it was being burned and banned.12
Hinton Helper was a nonaristocratic North Carolinian who despised slavery. He attempted to prove, with an array of statistics, that the despicable institution effectively impoverished the nonslaveholding white people—who of course constituted the great majority of the Southern population. Although he hoped to see slavery destroyed, Helper had no love for the slaves themselves, whom he considered inferior beings. Wealthy slave owners had more than one reason to fear Helper’s thesis. Not only was he calling for the destruction of slavery, he was striving to raise class consciousness. He was preaching class warfare—trying to arouse the Southern masses against an impoverishing domination by a wealthy oligarchy based on plantation slavery. The message of class warfare, whenever and wherever it sounds, naturally alarms the ultra-wealthy, who strive mightily through whatever means—propaganda, diversion, intimidation, etc.—to smother the challenge.13
The contest for Speaker of the House dragged on for weeks, with John Sherman always within a few votes of success. At one point in mid-December, he had garnered 112 of the 114 votes required to elect. But ultimately, John was unable to gain the Southern support necessary for victory. While the issue remained in doubt, Sherman wrote Ellen about John’s chances of success, and the impact he anticipated, win or lose, upon his own position. “I regret he ever signed that Helper book. . . . Had it not been for that, I think he might be elected, but as it is, I do not see how he can expect any southern votes, and without them it seems that his election is impossible.” His brother’s extreme stance would harm Sherman, “not among the [board of] supervisors, but in the legislature where the friends of the Seminary must look for help.” Southern newspapers were alluding to “the impropriety” of Northern teachers coming south. If John, in the heat of debate, should take “extreme ground,” Sherman was sure people would then learn “that I am his brother from Ohio . . . universally esteemed as an abolition state.”14
Sherman worried, too, that misfortune might be stalking him again. “I have had such bad luck,” he wrote Ellen, “in California and New York, that I fear I shall be overtaken here by a similar catastrophe.” Some key Louisiana men, like Graham, Braxton Bragg and Cump’s West Point classmate Paul Hebert, who had recently been governor of the state, knew that he was not an abolitionist. But Sherman realized that many others would be biased against him, even though he himself was neither a Republican nor an abolitionist. In a letter to Thomas Ewing Jr., written two days before Christmas, he declared, “You can readily imagine the delicate position I now hold at the head of a seminary . . . to open January 1, for the instruction and training of young men to science and arms, at the same time that John Sherman’s name is bandied about as the representative of all that is held here murderous and detestable.”15
He then proceeded, briefly and straightforwardly, to tell Tom Ewing how he viewed slavery, the Negro and the threat to the Union: “I would not if I could abolish or modify slavery. I don’t know that I would materially change the actual political relation of master and slave.” He said that “Negroes in the great numbers that exist here must of necessity be slaves. Theoretical notions of humanity and religion cannot shake the commercial fact that their labor is of great value and cannot be dispensed with.” He did wish that slavery had never existed, because of the volatile emotions from which the institution had become inseparable.
The “dread of revolt, sedition, or external interference” with slavery, he observed, “makes men [who are] ordinarily calm almost mad.” Sherman felt, “moderate as my views are,” that he was under suspicion, “and if I do not actually join in the praises of slavery, I may be denounced as an abolitionist.” He knew that “respectable men” were talking about secession from the Union, and if that happened, there was no question about the result. “Disunion and Civil War are synonymous terms,” he declared. The reason, fundamentally, was the great Mississippi, with its major tributaries, the Ohio and the Missouri. “The Mississippi, source and mouth, must be controlled by one government. . . . Louisiana occupies the mouth of a river whose heads go far north, and does not admit of a ‘cut off.’ Therefore, a peaceable disunion, which men here think possible, is absurd.” But if secession occurs, Sherman “of course” would stand by the Union.16
As long as the struggle for Speaker of the House remained an issue, keeping John Sherman’s name prominently in the news, Cump worried about the effect on his own future. “What I apprehend,” he wrote Ellen, “is that . . . I will first be watched and suspected, then maybe addressed officially to know my opinion, and lastly some fool in the legislature will denounce me as an abolitionist spy.” He believed that his views on slavery “are good enough for this country [the South],” but because of John being “so marked a Republican,” he feared that his own name might become “so suspected” that it could “damage the prospects of the Seminary.” He breathed a little easier when the House finally turned to William Pennington of New Jersey, an old-line Whig who supported the fugitive slave act and had lined up with the Republicans, as its speaker.17
THE NEW SCHOOL opened as scheduled on Monday, January 2, 1860, located near the little village of Alexandria. The institution occupied a single large structure of more than thirty rooms, standing on a hill surrounded by 400 acres of land. The building was three lofty stories tall, accented by five towers, each of which extended an additional story. Sherman described the venue as “a gorgeous palace, altogether too good for its purpose.” Five professors, including Sherman, were on hand at the beginning, all well qualified. The number of cadets was less than expected. By January 12, forty young men were present, and by January 24, the number had increased to fifty-one. However, the total count for the opening session never came close to the early projection of one hundred, eventually reaching a maximum in the midsixties.18
Sherman’s attitude was upbeat when he wrote Ellen on January 12. “Everything moves along satisfactorily,” he said, and “all seem pleased, and gentlemen have been here from New Orleans and other distant points who are much pleased.” More cadets were coming, and “nobody has said boo about John.” He asserted that “the supervisors can’t spare me. I manage their affairs to their perfect satisfaction.” Some days later he remarked about visiting ladies, parting from their sons, and observed that “the most vicious boys come recommended with all the virtues of saints.” He added, “Of course, I promised to be a father to them all.”19
From the start Sherman placed the cadets on a strict schedule, emphasizing mathematics, foreign language and military drill. After breakfast at seven, they studied math for three hours, followed by two hours of instruction in French, before eating lunch. Then came two hours of Latin, with physical exercise afterward, consisting of an hour of intense drill, before dinner in the evening. Sherman was stern about discipline while also building a reputation for being fair. He considered the cadets generally well behaved, as he wrote Ellen’s father in late January.
When two young men got in a fight, one of them producing a knife, Sherman at once expelled the cadet with the knife. Upon a full investigation, from which he learned that the other cadet was equally to blame for starting the fight, he kicked that boy out also. Sherman was demonstrating that he would not tolerate unruly behavior. Five more cadets were expelled before the term ended. He characterized some of the youngsters as “ill bred and utterly without discipline.” Perhaps the worst boys came from the wealthiest families. “I will see whether I am to govern here, or be governed by the cast off boys of rich planters.” He told Ellen’s brother Tom that “the boys are wilful and govern their parents despotically.”20
In mid-February, Sherman made a trip to Baton Rouge, and spent a few days lobbying the legislature. He had dinner with the governor, Thomas O. Moore, a strong backer of the school, and impressively fielded questions from his guests. He dined another evening with the state attorney general. The legislature was very supportive, promising to build a house for Sherman’s family and provide the new seminary with a sizable endowment. The legislature soon appropriated money to build two faculty houses, begin a library, and raise Sherman’s annual salary to four thousand dollars. He wrote Tom Jr., conveying an optimistic enthusiasm: “I am down here at the legislature, log rolling for a bill to the interest of our institution. I have no doubt of success.” Then he mused, “I can not but laugh in my sleeve at the seeming influence I possess, dining with the governor, hobnobbing with the leading men of Louisiana, whilst John is universally blackguarded as an awful abolitionist.” Tom Jr., like John Sherman, was strongly associated with the Republicans, leading Cump to jokingly remark, “If they find me advising with you and John, two desperate Blacks, they will suspect me of treason and hang me.”21
Within a few days Sherman was back at Alexandria, overseeing the academy and once more dealing with “my share of petty troubles and annoyances,” but also feeling pressure from Ellen and her parents, who continued urging him to take the banking job in London. In mid-March he made a brief trip to Ohio, visiting with his family and conferring in Cincinnati with David Gibson, one of the officers of the London venture. Despite the wishes of his wife and the Ewings, Sherman stood his ground. He was not going to give up “a certainty for an uncertainty.” As he wrote Ellen shortly before taking the train to Ohio, he knew that if he went to London, she would not go with him; and he keenly felt that turning away from the Louisiana school, particularly after the manner in which Graham and others had championed him, would not be an ethical action. There was also the fact that Sherman liked his new military-type association.22
“I never did fancy the London scheme,” he wrote Hugh Boyle Ewing after arriving back in Louisiana, having “always doubted its success.” The letter to Hugh, whom he seemed to trust with his innermost thoughts, as noted previously, expressed an intriguing longing. Was the revelation merely a nostalgic musing, or an absolute desire? “To tell the truth,” Sherman said, “I would rather be in California with an old mule, traveling from place to place and fetching up occasionally at Doña Augustias, but I must consider my family.”23
While Sherman had traveled most of the way to Ohio by rail, he came back on the river, aboard “the swiftest boat going down [the Ohio and the Mississippi].” The reason for taking the boat, he informed Graham, was “I have with me a valuable horse that I do not think should or could be safely conveyed without my being along.” The horse was named Clay, and its presence perhaps symbolized Sherman’s commitment to stay with the new job in the Bayou State. After he was back at the academy, and enjoying riding his horse, he wrote Ellen that Clay had arrived in Alexandria “in fine condition, well pleased with his trip,” having experienced “no dread of steamboats.” In fact, he claimed Clay “had a fine opportunity to study the steam engine, and is now familiar with all its parts.” Sherman also noted that “the cadets seemed glad to see me.” Their new uniforms had arrived and they “looked finely” in them. He told Ellen that “everything has worked well in my absence, and now I can begin to provide for the future.”24
Sherman clearly was worried about the future, relative especially to whenever Ellen and the children arrived. He feared that four thousand dollars a year would be inadequate. He had no doubt, he told Tom Jr., that “one of our first troubles will be that Ellen’s servants will all quit, after we have gone into debt to get them here, and then she will have to wait on herself or buy a nigger. What will you think of that—our buying niggers?” He well knew that Ellen was strongly opposed to owning slaves. “But it is inevitable,” he claimed. “Everybody owns their own servants.” The servants Ellen would bring from Ohio would shortly “get married to some roving Texas trader . . . with a few hundred dollars in pocket,” leaving the Shermans “compelled to do without or buy.” With a touch of sardonic humor, he warned Tom, “I have made this point to Ellen, and you must be careful in your Black Republican speeches not to be down on us too hard, for your own sister may be forced by necessity to traffic in human flesh.”25
But all of this would be months in the future, because their house probably would not be ready before sometime in November, and Ellen would come only when the place was finished. Meanwhile, Sherman seemed quite satisfied with his work in general at the school. Clearly he was not getting wealthy, even if, as he hoped, his salary should be increased to five thousand yearly. Nevertheless, he held a position respected by many of Louisiana’s leading men. He was engaged in work that made him reasonably content, and for which he felt thoroughly competent.
Living in the Deep South, however, Sherman was constantly reminded of the highly emotional issues that troubled the country. As the spring of 1860 progressed, the dark clouds of sectionalism continued their steady, threatening accumulation, lying low and heavy upon the national horizon, and menacingly packed with the destructive winds of slavery. Back in winter, Sherman had written John that he “did not like the looks of the times.” The slave states, particularly in the Deep South, were sending commissions from state to state, exploring possible Southern actions if a Republican should be elected president. The political turmoil was great, and there was “universal belief in the South that disunion is not only possible but certain.”26
The political situation worsened in April, when the Democratic Party held its national convention in Charleston, South Carolina, a hotbed of Southern extremism, unmatched in that respect by any other slave state. The convention could not nominate a presidential candidate, breaking up over the Southern demand for a federal slave code in all U.S. territory. When that measure was defeated, Alabama’s delegates walked out of the convention, followed by many other Southern delegates, most of them from the Deep South. The remaining delegates then adjourned, after agreeing to reassemble in Baltimore in mid-June. The cooling-off period did not work, and the Democrats finally split, with the Northern delegates nominating Senator Stephen A. Douglas for president, while the Southerners named John C. Breckinridge of Kentucky, then the vice president. The Southern Democratic platform did call for enacting the federal slave code in the territories.27
After the Democrats broke up in Charleston, Sherman became yet more apprehensive about the nation’s future, and wrote John that “this year’s presidential election will be a dangerous one; may actually result in civil war, though I still can not believe the South would actually secede in the event of the election of a Republican.” He continued preaching moderation, telling John that “so certain and inevitable is it that the physical and political power of this nation must pass into the hands of the free states, that I think you all can afford to take things easy, [and] bear the buffets of a sinking dynasty.” In another message to John he declared, “The worst feature of things now is the familiarity with which the subject of dissolution is talked about. But I can not believe anyone, even . . . [Jefferson] Davis, would be rash enough to take the first step.” Having learned that Ellen’s father “also is out for Lincoln,” Sherman thought it “probable that I will be even more ‘suspect’ than last year.” He was sure that “all the reasoning and truth in the world would not convince a Southern man that the Republicans are not abolitionists.” Ominously he concluded, “You may rest assured that the tone of feeling [in the South] is such that civil war and anarchy are very possible.”28
Obviously Sherman, having made a total commitment to working with the Louisiana academy, wanted to believe that the nation’s critical issues would be resolved peacefully. He thought that the slavery question should never have taken on such magnitude. It was a false issue, in his judgment, veiling the deeper problem of sectional power. He assured Ellen that “northern men don’t care any more about the rights and humanity of the negroes than the southerners.” He did not believe that “the present excitement in politics is anything more than the signs of the passage of power from southern politicians to northern and western politicians.” But once more contemplating the power of emotion, he admitted to Ellen, “Of course no one can guess what the wild unbridled passions of men may do.”29
....................
THE INITIAL TERM at the Louisiana academy concluded at the end of July. Following examinations, an elaborate ball was held in celebration of the occasion, “with as much publicity as possible,” wrote Sherman, in order “to attract general notice.” Afterward, the cadets were free until the first of November, when school would resume. In the meantime, Sherman traveled north, first visiting the family in Lancaster, and then proceeding to Washington, D.C., where he conferred with Major Buell and Secretary of War John B. Floyd, hoping to procure muskets for the cadets by the beginning of the new school year. “Surprised to meet with such easy success,” he remarked that he got “a prompt promise” of two hundred cadet muskets, as well as other equipment, and all did arrive in Louisiana as scheduled, before November.30
Then Sherman left for New York, where he met with Professor F. W. Smith. The two gathered various supplies and equipment for the school, purchasing uniforms, textbooks and hundreds of works of history and fiction to stock the new library. Returning to Lancaster, Sherman spent several weeks with his family before heading back to Louisiana. He was anxious to learn how construction progressed on his new house. The structure was nearing completion, and he said he “pushed forward” the building of fences and gates and all other work. In early November, about the same time that the school year began, he moved into the house, although it was not completely finished. But he did not send for Ellen and the children to join him.31
“Political excitement was at its very height,” according to Sherman, with the presidential election dominating most conversations, “and it was constantly asserted that Mr. Lincoln’s election would imperil the Union.” Some friends advised him to vote for John Bell of Tennessee, on the Constitutional Union ticket, apparently so no one would think that he favored Lincoln. The Illinois rail-splitter was not even on the ballot in Louisiana, as in most slave states. Sherman refused to vote, however; not because he favored Lincoln (actually he preferred Bell), but because he was disgusted with the political scene. In the aftermath of Lincoln’s election, Sherman wrote Ellen that “many gentlemen who were heretofore moderate . . . now begin to . . . go with the foolish mad crowd that seems bent on the dissolution of [the Union].” He said people had “ceased to reason or think of consequences.”
He told Southern friends that war would be folly:
You people speak so lightly of war. You don’t know what you are talking about. . . . You mistake . . . the people of the North. They . . . are not going to let this country be destroyed without a mighty effort to save it. . . . The North can make a steam-engine, locomotive or railway car; hardly a yard of cloth or shoes can you [the South] make. You are rushing into war with one of the most powerful, ingeniously mechanical and determined people on earth—right at your doors. . . . Only in your spirit and determination are you prepared for war. In all else you are totally unprepared, with a bad cause to start with . . . in the end you will surely fail.
It was a striking summary of Northern strength.32
Sherman decided that bringing his family to Alexandria would be premature. Indeed it would have been. Soon after the presidential election, South Carolina’s leaders proceeded with the action they long had threatened. In Charleston on December 20, a specially elected convention voted unanimously to secede from the Union, and called upon the South to form “a great Slaveholding Confederacy.” By February 1, 1861, six more states had declared their separation from the United States of America, Louisiana among them. On February 4, representatives of the seven states breaking away from the Union met in Montgomery, Alabama, to form a new government. Within less than a week, they adopted a provisional constitution for the Confederate States of America and named Jefferson Davis as their president. Once Louisiana voted for secession on January 26, Sherman’s position became untenable. He would have to resign from the academy and go north. There was no alternative. The existence of slavery had presented no problem for him, but the dissolution of the Union, as he had openly stated, and without any qualification, was an action he could never support. With disgust, Sherman informed Ellen that “everybody is striving for the honor of pouring out the deepest insult to Uncle Sam.”33
Actually, Sherman had realized, several weeks prior to the secession of Louisiana, that he no longer had a future in the South. He just found it hard to face the fact. In mid-December, he wrote his daughter Minnie that “the dream and hope . . . that we could all be together . . . in a house of our own . . . is, I fear, about to vanish.” On January 1, he correctly predicted to Ellen, “Louisiana will surely secede this month.” Also, his situation at the new school had become increasingly difficult. Discipline problems seemed to be mounting. He told Ellen on January 8 that it is “all I can do” to suppress disorder and irregularity. A cadet had recently threatened him “with a loaded pistol” when he discovered a whiskey jug in the young man’s room.34
January 10 brought really bad news for Sherman. Governor Moore of Louisiana, alarmed by a message from the state’s U.S. senators, saying the U.S. military might reinforce two forts near the mouth of the Mississippi River, proceeded to seize those installations, as well as a fort on Lake Pontchartrain and the federal arsenal at Baton Rouge. The action directly impacted Sherman, because his Alexandria military academy had been designated a state arsenal (Sherman being paid an additional five hundred dollars yearly as its director), and the governor at once sent a large number of the confiscated arms, as well as munitions, to the school for storage.35
“I remember well,” wrote Sherman in his memoirs, “that I was strongly and bitterly impressed by the seizure of the arsenal.” At the time, he wrote Graham that he had been “waiting as patiently as a Redheaded person could” for Louisiana’s decision about secession. Then came tidings of the governor’s actions, which he regarded, he told both Graham and John Sherman, as “acts of war.” Above all, he thought the capture of the Baton Rouge arsenal, because U.S. troops were stationed there at the request of Louisiana authorities, “a breach of common decency,” as well as an act of war. Not only had Sherman been made the receiver of stolen goods, he was particularly embarrassed because “these goods [were] the property of the United States.” He wrote, in what was probably an understatement, “This grated hard on my feelings as an ex-army-officer.” The familiar “U.S.” insignia had been “simply scratched off” the boxes.36
Before Sherman could leave Louisiana, he believed that he had a responsibility to see that all school records were in proper form, and all property and money accounted for. The institution must not be damaged by his withdrawal from the superintendency. Also, he needed to collect the money owed him, which had to be approved by the legislature. It was three weeks into February before everything was in order. He then stopped briefly in New Orleans, staying at the St. Louis Hotel, while delivering the necessary documents to make “the final settlement” at the bank that handled funds for the school. He was there on Washington’s birthday, February 22, which was observed in a manner different from any previous Washington day commemoration that Sherman had ever experienced. New Orleans held a grand military parade celebrating, according to Sherman, “their emancipation from the despotism of the United States Government.” That evening he wrote in his diary: “Glorious rejoicing at the downfall of our country.”37
Arriving in Lancaster on March 2, he enjoyed a brief reunion with his family, before journeying on to the nation’s capital at the urging of his brother. John thought Washington might offer some attractive possibilities. John’s star was continuing to rise. He had just been appointed U.S. senator from Ohio, replacing Salmon P. Chase, then entering President Lincoln’s cabinet as secretary of the treasury. John wanted his brother to meet Lincoln, inaugurated less than a week, the sixteenth president of the United States. John introduced him as his brother who had just arrived from Louisiana. Lincoln immediately inquired “how are they getting along down there?” Sherman replied with one of his favorite expressions: “They think they are getting along swimmingly—they are preparing for war.” Lincoln responded with, as Sherman recalled, “Oh, well! I guess we will manage to keep house.” Taken aback, Sherman wrote: “I was silenced; said no more to him.”38
Initial impressions of people, whether positive or negative, are obviously based upon inadequate evidence, and frequently they are wrong. Sherman “was sadly disappointed” with Lincoln. He was also disturbed by what he observed in the capital. “Even in the War Department,” he heard “open, unconcealed talk, amounting to high-treason.” When he and John were out of Lincoln’s presence, he turned upon John, damning politicians. “You [politicians] have got things in a hell of a fix, and you may get them out as best you can.” As for Sherman, he “would have no more to do with it.” In retrospect, his declaration is amusingly ironic. For no military figure, except for Grant, would have as much to do with winning the war for the Union as Sherman.39