Chapter Twenty-Eight WE CAN ONLY BOW TO THE INEVITABLE
Sherman took up his New York residence at the famous old Fifth Avenue Hotel, located at the corner of Fifth Avenue and Twenty-third Street. He, Ellen, Rachel and Lizzie occupied three comfortable rooms on the second floor. Not surprisingly, Sherman was well received in New York, his popularity equaling, if not exceeding, the acclaim he had received in St. Louis. Soon he was attending the theater, appearing at dinner parties or participating in some other type of event three or four times a week. John Sherman was pleased by his brother’s move to the east. “You must be aware,” he wrote the General, “that the wonder has been that, having the whole country to choose as a home, you should settle upon St. Louis.” John said that while he “could understand it, many others did not.”1
The move to New York did not change Sherman’s busy schedule of meeting with veterans all over the country. In early August 1886, he journeyed again to the West Coast, attending the Encampment of the Grand Army of the Republic in San Francisco, where he gave a featured speech, saying that the American desire to acquire California was the basic cause of the war with Mexico. On another memorable occasion in 1886, the General spoke at a banquet in honor of the dedication of the Statue of Liberty. Funerals also continued to demand his presence, and often his participation. Winfield Scott Hancock died in 1886, and at a Cincinnati meeting of the Loyal Legion of the United States, Sherman was pressured, on the spur of the moment, to reflect upon General Hancock. Speaking extemporaneously for about ten minutes, he had no chance to review and edit his remarks before they were in the hands of the press. The General was relieved when he afterward learned that Mrs. Hancock “was especially pleased” by what he had said. Without a doubt, highly accomplished though he was as a speaker, the pressure of funeral tributes was often a difficult experience for Sherman. In 1888, he declared to Ellen, “I am at the end of my rope; will attend my own funeral, but must be excused from others.”2
Sherman’s personality, as he aged, remained essentially unchanged. He was still outspoken and held many of the same beliefs and opinions as in his earlier years. When John Sherman, for example, made a trip to the Pacific over the Canadian Railroad in the summer of 1887, he wrote Cump, “If the population of Mexico and Canada were homogeneous with ours, the union of the three countries would make the whole the most powerful nation in the world. I am not so sure but this would be a good thing to do.” The General shot back at once: “I am dead opposed to any more of Mexico. All the northern part is desert, like the worst parts of Texas, New Mexico, and Arizona. Further south the population is mixed Spanish and Indian, who never can be harmonized with our race. Eight millions of such people would endanger our institutions. We have already enough disturbing influences.”3
While Sherman energetically pursued a variety of activities, both in New York and around the nation, Ellen spent a lot of time visiting with Minnie, Elly and the grandchildren. Typically she was away from New York for several weeks on such trips. She also tried to see Cumpy as frequently as possible. But her health, never really good, now deteriorated rapidly and she was often sick during 1888. When in New York, Ellen seldom went down to eat in the hotel dining room. In the summer, as she visited with Elly at her home, and then with Tom, who was at Woodstock, Sherman decided to buy a house in New York.
The General knew that his wife was tired of living in the hotel and thought that he might lift her spirits and also make a good investment with the purchase of a house. He wrote her that he had bought a spacious structure at 75 West Seventy-first Street, and was preparing it for her return. “I am charmed with the prospect of our home,” Ellen replied. Eagerly she looked forward to arriving at the new place, “which I shall be slow to leave.” She said that she almost felt “cured,” just to know “that we . . . need never again endure hotel life.” She seemed very pleased upon seeing the house, and celebrated her sixty-fourth birthday on October 4. However, she was far from well.4
Suffering heart attacks on November 7 and again on the twenty-fifth, according to her biographer, Ellen died on November 28—the day before Thanksgiving. A small service for family and friends was conducted at the house, and then they left for St. Louis aboard a private car provided by the Pennsylvania Railroad. There Ellen was buried in Calvary Cemetery, close to her beloved Willy and Charles Celestine. Inscribed on Willy’s tombstone were the words “Our Little Sergeant; From the First Battalion, 13th U.S. Infantry. In his breast was no guile.” Without a doubt, memories of Willy must have filled Sherman’s mind again as he and the family committed Ellen to her grave. For some time after her death, Sherman experienced asthma attacks, some of which were severe. Probably the winter weather plagued him, and his asthma likely was made worse by the sorrow and stress of losing his longtime companion.5
Death continued to claim others among Sherman’s friends, associates and relatives. Grant, who had suffered the humiliation of going broke in the early 1880s, had died in 1885, stricken with throat cancer, but somehow persevering to complete his memoirs a few days before his death. The memoirs became a best-seller, providing Grant’s family an immense boon. In February 1886, his widow, Julia, received $200,000, the largest royalty check ever written in America to that date. Sherman had declined to speak at Grant’s funeral, telling John Sherman that he feared he would “feel embarrassed in speaking of him, lest I say too much.” While Sherman, for some years, had not been as close to Grant as during the war, he did speak very highly of the general upon several occasions in the years following his death. He was often at the funerals of other generals, among them Ambrose Burnside and Judson Kilpatrick. Sherman and Black Jack Logan, to some degree, had cleared the air of their differences, and the General was present in the U.S. Senate chamber for Logan’s funeral on the last day of 1886.6
But of all the Union generals, the death of Phil Sheridan, which occurred only a few months before Ellen died, seemed to affect Sherman the most. Sheridan, who was more than a decade younger than Sherman, was buried in Arlington Cemetery, according to his wishes, high on a knoll looking eastward toward the capital. The day of the funeral was beautiful, and after the bugler sounded taps, the crowd slowly dispersed, leaving a single man standing at the grave side, weeping. That lone figure was General Sherman. “At last he turned,” wrote Sheridan’s biographer, “walking down the grassy knoll, past the white markers aligned in orderly ranks spreading out from the base, and away from the final encampment of General Sheridan.” With Sheridan’s death, Sherman was the only one of the top Union generals still alive. Afterward, he sometimes referred to himself as “the Last of the Mohicans.”7
The support and presence of Sherman’s daughters, Rachel and Lizzie, who continued to live with the General, helped him get through the trauma of Ellen’s death. The companionship of friends was also uplifting for a man as socially inclined as Sherman. His birthday came early in the year of course, on February 8, and he enjoyed, he wrote, “a very pleasant birthday dinner party” at his home, in celebration of his sixty-ninth. He invited another set of friends for another dinner party a week after the birthday, and yet another set for the week following that. Sherman’s daughters played a big role in arranging those festive events. By the time the celebrations of his birthday were over, the General was preparing to attend the inauguration of Benjamin Harrison as president of the United States.8
Harrison, who was a grandson of President William Henry Harrison, had been a brigadier general in the Civil War, and Sherman found himself inundated by men seeking an office in the new administration, who sought his influence with the country’s in-coming chief executive. The assassination of President Garfield had led to the passage of a civil service reform act, attempting to eliminate the worst abuses of the “spoils system,” but only a small percentage of public offices had been classified under the Civil Service Act when Harrison became the president. “Every acquaintance I have on earth,” Sherman wrote his daughter Elly, “wants an office and says or writes they are ‘Sure of Success’ if only General Sherman will say a good word to General Harrison. Of course this I will not do, and from friends they pass into the camp of Enemies. . . . I would not be in Harrison’s shoes for all the money in the Treasury.”9
Sherman spent about a week in Washington, attending the inauguration ceremony, and enjoying visits with friends—that is, friends who were not trying to get some favor from him. Soon after his return to New York, the city became enthralled with preparations to celebrate the April centennial of George Washington’s inauguration as the nation’s first president. Sherman always enjoyed a big festive event, whether an opening night at the theater, a circus coming to town or a happening of historical significance, and he got right into the spirit of the occasion. He attended several of the special observances to celebrate the centennial and was present when President Harrison arrived by ship, coming ashore at the same place where Washington had landed in 1789. Sherman attended a series of dinners, too, complaining that each was so like the others that they grew monotonous. He told Elly that he “had seen everybody,” many of them visiting in his home, among them Generals Dodge, Schofield and McCook, as well as former President and Mrs. Hayes. Sherman claimed there must have been two million people between Wall Street and Central Park, “well dressed and well behaved.”10
Obviously, by late spring of 1889, General Sherman was back into the swing of activities that vied for his attention. In June, accompanied by Rachel, he again journeyed to West Point for the graduation ceremony, and planned to attend veteran reunions in August and September at Milwaukee and Cincinnati, respectively. He also arranged a trip to the Catskills with Lizzie. In July he made another railroad excursion to San Francisco, and notably missed Tom Sherman’s ordination as a Jesuit priest on July 7, in Philadelphia. He did meet with his son in New York after he got back from the West Coast.11
The Cincinnati gathering of veterans in late September was the annual meeting of the Society of the Army of the Tennessee, and Sherman spent a week in Ohio’s queen city on the river, enjoying the camaraderie with the men he had commanded when they were young. Clearly, however, such events had become very tiring, and he complained to Elly: “I want to throw off the burden of these Army meetings—they are very Exhausting & Expensive.” A few months later, having declined to attend a Philadelphia meeting of the Loyal Legion of the United States, but anticipating trips to Boston for the Grand Army of the Republic Encampment in July 1890, which he characterized as a “must” attend affair, as well as Cincinnati again in September for the Society of the Army of the Tennessee, the General said, “They all promise not to tax me with speeches & hand shaking, but they can not keep their promises, because the Crowd . . . won’t obey their officers.” He declared to Elly that he was “resolved” to attend fewer of the veterans reunions; it had become too hard physically. A letter to brother John in late 1889 further confirms the many and constant calls for his presence. “I continue pretty much as always in universal demand,” he wrote, “for soldiers’ meetings, college commencements, and such like things—always with a promise that I will not be called on to speak, which is always broken.”12
After the General had moved to New York, he and John saw each other more frequently, and so did not write nearly as many letters to each other as in the earlier years. Sherman certainly was proud of his younger brother’s achievements, and in the above referenced letter of November 12, 1889, the General took the opportunity of praising the career of the senator. “To be a President for four years is not much of an honor,” he declared, “but to have been senator continuously from 1861 to 1892 [when John’s term would be up]—less the four years as Secretary of the Treasury—is an honor. Webster and Clay are better known to the world than Polk and Pierce.”13
As Sherman drew nearer to his seventieth birthday and realized that his energy had been waning markedly, one of the burdens weighing upon him was the mortgage on the house he had bought shortly before Ellen’s death. Probably spurred on by the memory of the dire financial straits in which his father had died, as well as thinking of Rachel and Lizzie, who made their home with him, Sherman desperately wanted to have the place paid for before his own death. “I still owe $14,000 on this house—and want to pay it off in 3 or 4 years,” he wrote Elly in September 1889, remarking, “I hate debt worse than slavery.” A year later, on September 26, 1890, he would record that he had made substantial progress, reducing the amount owed to $9,000. He thought that “in two more years I can close this out without selling anything at St. Louis.”14
The General’s seventieth birthday was an occasion of great celebration. While the New York winter may have been, as Sherman claimed, “enough to give anyone the blues if not the grippe,” he refused to allow the inclement weather to hinder his festive plans. With the indispensable assistance of Rachel and Lizzie, he hosted dinner parties at his house on Saturday, February 8, and again on February 15. On the eighth he was showered by letters, telegrams, presents and flowers. And there was more, much more. On February 9, he acknowledged “the kind and gracious message,” from Mary Audenreid, who had written him from Naples, as well as the bouquet of flowers received from the Honorable Charles F. Manderson and friends. Manderson, a lawyer who was a U.S. senator from Nebraska, had risen to the rank of colonel of volunteers in the Civil War. Sherman told Manderson that the bouquet “fell like the dew of Heaven on the head of your old Commander, and may revive his vital energy that he may yet dance at some of your funerals.” Clearly in a spirited mood, and rather full of himself, Sherman then assured Manderson that his “hair is not silvered over, but yet remains the same old chestnut Sorrel it was in the days we played Soldier.”15
Although ever more aware of an aging body, and in spite of his protests about engaging in too many tiring activities, Sherman cut back on his demanding way of life only minimally as 1890 progressed. On March 19, he hailed the approach, once again, of spring. “In two more days,” he wrote, “the Sun will come north of the Equator, and winter will have to give up.” With warmer weather, he felt more energized and continued to pursue a busy schedule throughout the summer and fall. In September, he again joined his comrades of the Society of the Army of the Tennessee. He was pleased, too, when he learned that Ellen’s monument had been placed in Calvary Cemetery, and he was making provision for his own monument, “not to exceed in size or art” that of Ellen’s, he assured his daughter. Sherman intended to make certain that his friends would not be called upon to contribute to the monument, as had occurred with some of the Civil War generals. On October 1, he spoke at a dinner, extemporaneously he remarked, in honor of the Count of Paris at the new Plaza Hotel. He did not get home until midnight, and on the next day was “caught in two hard rains,” although he managed to keep “pretty dry.” Still, he admitted to Elly, “I ought not to expose myself too much, as my cough is unusually severe.”16
As the new year of 1891 dawned, Sherman’s general health had deteriorated strikingly from a year earlier, and his asthma was worse. Nevertheless, he apparently kept up a grueling pace, especially considering his physical condition, and wrote John on February 3, “I am drifting along in the old rut in good strength, attending to about four dinners a week at public or private houses, and generally wind up for gossip at the Union League Club.” Although he did attend a wedding with Rachel on February 5, the General was no longer attempting to host any of his friends and made no plans for celebrating his seventy-first birthday. In fact, he spent part of that day in bed, feeling miserable as the result of a cold he had contracted. Three days earlier, responding to a lady who invited him to attend the funeral of her son, he stated that while he sympathized with her loss, it was “simply impossible” for him to be present for the occasion, and then declared: “We can only bow to the inevitable.”17
The day after his seventy-first birthday, Sherman was gradually growing worse; in all likelihood he had contracted pneumonia, which coupled with asthma, would prove too much for his weakened body to overcome. By February 11, his daughters were convinced that their father was dying. Late that evening they called in a Roman Catholic priest, who administered the rite of extreme unction to the General while he lay unconscious. Without question his daughters were acting from the purest of motives, desiring to save, as they believed, Sherman’s immortal soul. But all through the years the General had denied, again and again, both publicly and privately, that he was a Catholic. He had refused to accept, despite his wife’s frequent pleadings throughout their marriage, a religious dogma that he considered irrational. He had denounced the Catholic Church unequivocally.
The General died shortly before two o’clock on the afternoon of February 14. Sherman’s desire was that his body be placed in the casket which he had selected and conveyed at once to St. Louis for burial. His passing was not to be that simple. A host of people wanted to honor one of America’s greatest military men. Thus for two days the Sherman home was open to the public, the General’s casket adorned with the American flag and his body arrayed in full uniform, as a vast number of people filed by his coffin. A Catholic funeral service was then held at Sherman’s home, with Tom Sherman, who had just returned from England, presiding.
Five days after his death, an impressive funeral procession slowly made its way through the streets of New York. Thousands upon thousands of people lined the avenues, or gathered on balconies, rooftops and other vantage points, to silently, respectfully watch the General’s casket, resting on a caisson drawn by four horses, as his body was borne, with military precision, to the tip of Manhattan. Ferried from there to a Pennsylvania Railroad train, Sherman’s body was conveyed to St. Louis by a direct route. All along the way, crowds gathered beside the tracks in cities, towns and even, in some places, the countryside, to pay their respects as the heavily draped funeral car, its door open for people to see the coffin, passed by.
In St. Louis another service was held at a Catholic church, again led by Tom Sherman. Some of the General’s military comrades, who knew him well, considered a Catholic service, as well as certain remarks made by Tom about his father’s religious views, to be inappropriate. But what was done was done. The General was then interred in Calvary Cemetery, next to Ellen, Willy, and the little child he had never seen. While all the proceedings surrounding Sherman’s death had not gone as he would have preferred, there were, in the end, two major events about which the General would have been quite pleased. A simple, ten-foot, self-designed, shaft monument, inscribed with the words “Faithful and Honorable,” upon which Sherman had insisted, was soon put in place. And at last, permanently, the General was in St. Louis, residing close to the great Mississippi River.18