Chapter Three Stepping off the gangway at West Point, Sherman first saw “a soldier with his dress & sword and slate in his hand.” That man recorded the name of every new cadet coming off the Cornelius Vanderbilt, afterward instructing the men (for no longer would they be considered “boys”) to take “the winding road that mounts to the plain.” There Sherman met the adjutant of the military academy, Lieutenant Charles F. Smith. His office was located on the second floor of “a magnificent stone building,” observed Sherman, where the young man presented his credentials.1
He thought Smith an impressive soldier, an opinion that he never found reason to change. In the decades to come—following thirteen years at West Point, distinguished service in the Mexican War and a stint as commander of the Department of Utah—not a few regular officers came to consider the crusty, square-shouldered Smith the all-around best soldier in the army. As a major general in the Civil War, he would play a leading role at Fort Donelson, commanding a division, and for a while afterward replaced Grant as the army commander. But prior to the Battle of Shiloh, Smith experienced a freakish rowboat accident, and soon succumbed to an infection that today probably could have been easily cured.2
From the office of the adjutant, Sherman was directed to the treasurer’s office for the purpose of depositing “his spare cash”—as the young cadet expressed the mandatory separation from his money. Thenceforth he would receive sixteen dollars per month from the U.S. government, plus an additional twelve dollars per month for rations. All the academy’s charges were expected to commence their military schooling on an equal financial footing. Then he was “shown to the Barracks,” and along with six other newcomers, “thrust . . . into a room,” not half large enough, and “without a blanket or anything else whereon to lay [one’s] head.”3
Next came an inaugural meeting with the academy superintendent, Colonel Rene E. De Russy, whom Sherman characterized as “Emperor in [these] dominions.” Along with several faculty members, Colonel De Russy conducted a preliminary examination, designed to ensure that every young man possessed a fundamental knowledge of reading and arithmetic. Having successfully navigated his prelim, which presented no problem whatsoever, Sherman was then issued “the sum total of a Plebes estate,” one lamp, one bucket, one broom and two blankets.4
Yet another important event of the first day occurred when Sherman, as he later wrote in his memoirs, “became installed as the ‘plebe’ of my fellow-townsman,” William “Bill” Irwin, then entering his third year at the academy. The duty of a plebe, or first-year man, was to serve his upper-class man: to run errands for him, clean his gun and other equipment and generally make himself useful.5
“Upper classmen, it seems,” observed historians James Lynch and Ronald Bailey, “could not resist . . . having a little fun at the expense of the bewildered neophytes. . . . Still, there was nothing approaching the . . . improper and debasing behavior . . . that in later years came to plague the Academy.” Cadets of all classes freely associated with one another if they so chose, and since the cadet corps numbered far less than today, many of the men came to know one another well, regardless of their class. This situation contributed to building a tightly knit cadet camaraderie, which most of the men would honor for the remainder of their lives.6
After depositing the simple articles of his self-defined “Plebes estate” in his assigned room, Sherman experienced a few free moments. Soon, however, he was aroused by “a rattling drum” and a commanding, no-nonsense voice that carried strongly through the barracks: “Turn out New Cadets!” Rushing down the stairway, Sherman gathered for the first time at the Point with “his comrades for life,” as he memorably characterized them, men “from Maine to Louisiana and from Iowa to Florida.” They were being summoned to view the evening parade, which Sherman thought an inspiring spectacle. He could “feel the beauty of Military parade and Show—the fine music—the old cadets marching by companies, stepping as one man—all forming in line—[hearing] the echo of commands, . . . the roar of the evening gun & seeing the flag fall and the parade dismissed.” What followed was not so magnificent. The cadets were “marched to Supper, fared badly,” and afterward were “ordered to rise and marched back [to the barracks] to be again incarcerated.” His first day at West Point had come to a close.7
Although Sherman was only sixteen years old, the minimum age required for admission to West Point (the maximum age being twenty-one), he was physically strong, able to hold his own with the older cadets. He was also a fun-loving young man who found that the school’s rules and regulations hampered his style. For years the academy had tolerated an unlimited number of black marks, or demerits for misbehavior. But the system had been altered, and 200 demerits in any year resulted in a cadet’s being expelled. In Sherman’s eyes the demerit program was a nuisance, involving only minor misconduct; therefore, the accumulation of demerits was of relatively little importance.
In a letter to Senator Ewing, Sherman listed the number of demerits exacted for certain offenses: 1 demerit for soiled clothing (occasionally Sherman would have a grease spot on his trousers from clandestine, nighttime, hash-making in his room), 3 demerits for missing roll call and 8 demerits for absence from drill or parade. Demerits resulted also from such misdemeanors as talking in the ranks, visiting the rooms of other cadets at forbidden times and failing to have one’s shoes properly shined. Years later, Sherman declared that his “average demerits, per annum, were about 150.” Actually they were not that high, averaging a little under 100 per year. His final year he received 148, which ran up his average. He never came close to the 200 that would have resulted in dismissal. He thought most cadets were “fine fellows up to any kind of devilment or fun which must occasionally be resorted to as the only relief after our arduous duties and studies.”8
While Sherman relished having a good time, he also demonstrated considerable maturity. Among his classmates, he established a close rapport with Stewart Van Vliet of Vermont and George H. Thomas, a Virginian, ultimately regarded as one of the top Union generals of the Civil War. “That the Vermonter at twenty-one years of age and the Virginian at twenty,” observed Sherman’s astute biographer Lloyd Lewis, “should have taken the sixteen-year-old Ohio youth as their intimate was evidence that Sherman had matured early.” Years later, after the death of Thomas, Sherman spoke of the Virginian as “high-toned” and of “extraordinary courage.”9
From the beginning, Sherman took to the academic life at West Point, probably the strongest evidence of his early maturity. In one of the first letters he wrote home after arriving at the academy, he expressed a straightforward confidence in his ability to compete scholastically: “From what I have seen of my classmates I have no doubt that I might be among the first.” This early self-assurance in both his intellectual potential and his work ethic was no mere braggadocio. Of the 119 young men who entered the Point in Sherman’s class, only 42 would survive the four-year ordeal. He would finish sixth in the class of 1840 and, except for demerits reducing his standing, would have ranked fourth. He thus would have qualified as a graduate of honor (meaning one of the first five cadets in his class) and been eligible for the army’s elite branch, the Corps of Engineers, had he taken the accumulation of demerits a little more seriously.10
When Sherman entered West Point, “the routine of military training and instruction,” as he later wrote, was “fully established, and has remained almost the same ever since.” The schedule was demanding. The day began at 5:30, as reveille aroused the cadets from their slumber. Quickly they dressed in uncomfortable gray and white uniforms, pulling on trousers that buttoned along the side. (Not until he graduated were the buttons changed to a more practical front position, despite the protests of ladies who thought the new design immodest.)11
Breakfast was followed by study, both in and out of class, until broken by lunch at 1:00 p.m. Then came more study, plus drill, followed by a brief respite before supper at six o’clock. After supper, it was back to the books until 10:00 p.m., when taps sounded and lights were to be extinguished. Roll call, inspections and guard duty also got worked into the typical hard day of a cadet, who sometimes felt compelled to study after hours, using a candle for light. Of course he had to somehow hide the light in order to escape detection.12
During his days at West Point a few changes did occur, which the cadets generally welcomed. Superintendent De Russy initiated a ball to conclude the summer encampment, a step that Sherman considered quite appropriate. De Russy also took a genuine interest in the academy band and succeeded in improving its quality. Then, when Major Richard Delafield became superintendent in 1838, he allowed the men to sleep on beds instead of on the floor. This, predictably, constituted a very popular adjustment of cadet life. Delafield also replaced candles with oil lamps, another change meeting with widespread approval.13
The principal professors while Sherman was at West Point were Dennis Hart Mahan, the legendary engineering instructor; William H. C. Bartlett, professor of natural philosophy (physics), recognized as a national authority on astronomy; J. W. Bailey in chemistry; Albert E. Church in mathematics; Claudius Berard in French; and Sherman’s personal favorite, the drawing professor, Robert Walter Weir, who became one of the nation’s leading painters.14
Weir was a gifted artist who had honed his skills by studying in Florence and Rome. For more than forty years he served as West Point’s drawing master, establishing a deserved reputation as one of the most unique and memorable faculty members ever to be associated with the academy. Under Weir’s tutelage, Sherman discovered that he had a previously unknown talent for drawing. During his second year, he ranked first in drawing, achieving a perfect score. “I flourish as usual with regard to my studies, especially in drawing,” he wrote Phil Ewing, “which is an entirely new thing.” Most of his drawings at West Point were of either Greek and Roman warriors or landscapes. His interests in art would broaden. A little over two years after graduation, while stationed at Fort Moultrie, South Carolina, he wrote to Ellen Ewing, who had become his most frequent correspondent during the West Point days, that he had “taken a notion into my head that I could paint.”15
He described how he went into Charleston and acquired “a full set of artist’s equipments, prepared my studio, and without any instructions whatever, have finished a couple of landscapes and faces which they tell me are very good.” Declaring that he had developed “a great love for painting,” Sherman claimed a near obsessive “fascination” was overwhelming him, which “sometimes . . . amounts to pain to lay down the brush.” He wondered if perhaps he should stop painting, “discarding it altogether,” before the onset of artistic flair “swallows all of [my] attention, to the neglect of my duties.”16
While Sherman did well in every subject he studied at West Point, he did find chemistry particularly vexing. Once he wrote Phil Ewing that “I have been cursing for the last month . . . all Chemists that ever did exist.” Immediately reconsidering the breadth of such a chastisement, he stated: “I ought not to have included all Chemists for our professor is a perfect Gentleman [who] renders Chemistry as interesting as possible.” Although the subject may not have been to his liking, he studied diligently and when that school year ended, he ranked sixth in his class in chemistry. “In studies I always held a respectable reputation with the professors,” he declared in his memoirs, “and generally ranked among the best, especially in drawing, chemistry, mathematics, and natural philosophy.” He well might have included French in his list of achievements. In the final examinations prior to graduation, he scored 96 out of a possible 100 points in both French and drawing.17
Sherman recognized his intellectual prowess early on, and took every opportunity to broaden his knowledge. While he clearly came to view himself as a competent military man and engineer, he also took pride in developing a wide-ranging, general fund of information. Whether science, art and law, or dancing, riding and the theater, Sherman’s keen mind and abilities ranged across a far-reaching cerebral and physical horizon. Although he did not like the regimen of the Point, speaking of “a monotonous life” in which “we drill and recite all day [and] bone . . . all night,” and while he seemingly flaunted the rules more than ever during his senior year, he nevertheless developed a warm feeling for West Point, and for graduates of the academy. In the profession of arms he was experiencing a sense of place, belonging and loyalty. The biographer Basil H. Liddell Hart strikingly and accurately expressed the essence of his character evolution when he wrote: “The germ of soldiering is now in his blood, and never will it loose its hold. All that is spiritual in the West Point tradition has been absorbed into his soul, as into his mind all that is profitable in the West Point education.”18
Sherman already acknowledged a particular mystique associated with the academy when he wrote to Ellen Ewing in May 1839, conveying his delight in the possibility that she might visit the Point during the coming summer. “Will you ever have a better opportunity? Is not West Point worth visiting? Is not the scenery of the finest order in the world in its vicinity? Are there not incidents in its history that render it dear to us all? I might ask a hundred such questions which any individual who has ever been here would be compelled to answer in the affirmative.” A few sentences afterward, he closed with yet more encouragement: “Let me once more advise you to come this summer if you can.” Ellen’s trip did not materialize, much to Sherman’s disappointment. In fact, although her father and her brother Phil went to see him during the final examination week in 1840, Ellen never got to West Point while he was a cadet.19
Even more revealing of his strong, positive attitude about the military, and the U.S. Army, was his disapproval of Bill Irwin’s plan to quit the army as soon as possible and become a lawyer. Writing to Ellen and speaking “plainly and candidly,” Sherman declared: “I would rather be a blacksmith. Indeed, the nearer we come to . . . graduation day, the higher opinion I conceive of the duties and life of an officer of the United States Army, and the more confirmed in the wish of spending my life in the service of my country. Think of that!”20
Upon learning, during his final year at West Point, that his younger brother John had decided to study the law, Sherman reacted negatively, almost disdainfully, writing “for my part, it would be my last choice. Everybody studies law nowadays, and to be a lawyer without being exceedingly eminent—which it is to be hoped you will be some day—is not a sufficient equivalent for their risks and immense study and labor.” Sherman proceeded to elaborate upon the satisfaction and security of the military profession. “As soon as I graduate I am entitled by law to a commission in the army, and from my standing in the class to a choice of corps. To be stationed in the east or west, to be in the artillery, infantry, or dragoons, depends entirely on my choice. . . . Whether I remain in the army for life or not . . . one thing is certain—that I will never study another profession.” Unquestionably, he had become comfortable with the life of a soldier, in spite of the regimentation at the Point. He firmly believed that he was going to like real soldiering even more, wherever he might be stationed.21
In his memoirs, Sherman wrote: “At the Academy, I was not considered a good soldier, for at no time was I selected for any office, but remained a private throughout the whole four years.” That statement conveys an element of truth, particularly regarding the impact of demerits, but is basically misleading about how he was regarded by both faculty and cadets. Professor Mahan’s summary description of young Sherman is far more satisfactory. He called Sherman “eager, impetuous, restless.” He said that if Cadet Sherman was not at work, “he was into mischief. If while explaining something . . . at the blackboard, I heard any . . . disturbance, denoting some fun, I was seldom wrong in turning . . . to Mr. Sherman.” But, Mahan continued, “one was more than repaid for any slight annoyance . . . by his irrepressible good nature, and by the clear thought and energy he threw into his work.”22
Cadets liked Sherman, too. William Starke Rosecrans penned an interesting appraisal of him: “Sherman was two classes above me,” wrote Rosecrans, declaring that he was “one of the most popular and brightest fellows in the academy.” He remembered him as “a red-headed fellow, who was always prepared for a lark of any kind.” Rosecrans praised the “clandestine midnight feasts, at which Sherman usually made the hash. He was considered the best hash-maker at West Point, and this, in our day, was a great honor.”
Remarking that the food given the cadets “was cheap and poor,” Rosecrans then stated: “I sometimes think that the only meals we relished were our midnight hash lunches.” He related how “Old Cump” would mash the potatoes, “mixing them with pepper, salt, and butter in such a way as to make the most appetizing dish. This he would cook in a stewpan over the fire—we had grates in those days—and when it was done we would eat it sizzling hot on our bread, which we had toasted.” Occasionally a cadet might manage to appropriate a particular delicacy as his contribution to the stew, with perhaps nothing being prized so much as oysters. As the cadets relished their late-night repast, Rosecrans said, “we would tell stories and have a jolly good time; and Sherman was one of the best story tellers of the lot.” Also, noted Rosecrans, he “was one of those fellows who used to go down to Benny Havens’s of the dark night at the risk of expulsion to eat oysters and have a good time.”23
Back in 1824, a genial Irishman named Benny Havens had opened a tavern on the bank of the Hudson River, in Buttermilk Falls, which lay about a mile and a half south of West Point. Described in a bicentennial history of the U.S. Military Academy as “an instant success,” the establishment specialized “in buckwheat cakes and flips, and serving a wide variety of spirituous liquors. It was, of course, off limits to cadets, who formed nonetheless a large percentage of its customers.” Indeed, from 1826 onward, by decree of then Superintendent Thayer, cadets were forbidden all liquor at all times.
From the moment of Thayer’s order, which constituted a bowing to the era’s powerful temperance advocates, many a cadet’s thirst for illegal liquid mounted remarkably. Simultaneously, Benny Havens’s tavern prospered. Enticing the Point’s young men like an enchanting Greek siren, the Havens public house would be in operation long after the Civil War. Benny and his wife occasionally even ran liquor to cadets at the academy. When their actions were discovered by the authorities, the Havenses thenceforth enjoyed “a unique honor of being the only two American citizens forbidden to set foot on the post of West Point.”24
When Sherman arrived at the academy, the Havens tavern was already an institution of renown, well on its way to becoming, as one writer expressed it, “the most famous establishment in all West Point history, honored by song, story and hundreds of cadet visitors.” One reason for Sherman’s great reputation as a hash-maker was that he occasionally acquired food from Benny’s, smuggled it back to his room and mixed it into his stew. Benny himself proved easy to deal with, willing to barter for a blanket, a candle or some other item if a cadet did not have cash available. Despite his friend Bill Irwin’s being caught at Benny’s and court-martialed, Sherman would not be deterred, continuing to seek the good food and drink of the legendary establishment. Irwin was soon reinstated, a not unusual occurrence—unless West Point sought to expel a young man for reasons other than visiting Benny’s.25
During Sherman’s academy years, he crossed paths with a number of cadets who became famous during the Civil War. Among his own classmates, none would become more prominent, with the exception of Sherman himself, than George H. Thomas, the general deservedly remembered as “the Rock of Chickamauga.” Stewart Van Vliet would serve throughout the Civil War, although never approaching the stature of Sherman or Thomas. Sherman enjoyed a lifelong friendship with Van Vliet. Graduating first in Sherman’s class was Paul O. Hebert, from Louisiana, who worked for a time as assistant professor of engineering at West Point. He fought in the war with Mexico, being breveted a colonel for “Gallant and Meritorious Conduct in the Battle of Molino Del Rey.” Afterward, he became the governor of Louisiana.26
When the Civil War erupted, Hebert joined the Confederacy. In fact, several of Sherman’s classmates became prominent in the Confederate Army, including Richard S. Ewell, Bushrod R. Johnson, Thomas Jordan and John P. McCown. Another classmate Sherman recalled vividly was a fellow Ohioan, Job R. H. Lancaster, six feet five inches tall “in his stockings,” according to Sherman, with shoulders that measured “a yard across.” Lancaster weighed a solid 260 pounds and was said never to have been exposed to a math book before arriving at the Point. Nevertheless, he graduated seventh in the class, only to die the next year while serving in the Seminole Wars, struck by lightning near Crystal River, Florida.27
Among those completing their final year at the Point while Sherman experienced his first were Joseph Hooker, whom Sherman never liked (and the feeling seemed to be mutual), John Sedgwick, Jubal Early, John C. Pemberton and the most notable future Confederate general in the class—the enigmatic Braxton Bragg of North Carolina. Other notable cadets in the classes ahead of Cump included Union generals-to-be Henry W. Halleck, Edward O. C. Ord and Irvin McDowell. Casting their fortunes with the Confederacy would be William J. Hardee, as well as the Creole with the grand and delightful name Pierre Gustav Toutant Beauregard.
Matriculating in the classes behind Sherman were such future Union officers as Don Carlos Buell, Nathaniel Lyon, John Pope, John F. Reynolds, William S. Rosecrans and Julius P. Garesche. Garesche would serve as assistant adjutant general (chief of staff) to Rosecrans at the Battle of Stones River, having long believed that he would be killed in his first battle. In a gory episode, he was decapitated by a cannonball that narrowly missed Rosecrans. Stephen D. Carpenter, a member of Sherman’s class, would also be killed at Stones River.
In Sherman’s final year at the Point, among the plebes was a young fellow named Ulysses S. Grant, who was called “Sam.” There was nothing about Grant’s appearance that caused the average person to remember him. He said very little to anybody, and Sherman later acknowledged that he hardly noticed Grant. Regardless of his unlikely appearance and demeanor, Grant, like Sherman, would rise to the top of West Point’s legendary graduates.28
During the summer of 1837, Sherman enjoyed a brief furlough. Since the time was too short for a trip to Ohio, he headed for New York, once again visiting Charles Hoyt, his mother’s brother. Exploring the intriguing city proved a wonderful break after the restrictive atmosphere of West Point. The museums, the gardens, the parks, the navy yards, vied for his attention. Above all, in the mind of young Sherman, towered the theater. As for New York City itself, he unabashedly declared that he was “in love with the place.”29
Returning to the Point for the commencement of his second year, Sherman soon got off an interesting letter to thirteen-year-old Ellen Ewing, whom he once described as “my best Lancaster correspondent” during his cadet years. She had sent him some candy which “was so very good” that he invited some of his friends “to come and taste it.” Alas, they so relished the taste that “they put it beyond my power (although very desirous to do so) to reserve some for the next day.” Then he gave Ellen a glowing description of the newly instituted military ball.
“A great many ladies [were] in attendance,” he wrote, and the room “was decorated in true military style; the walls were literally covered with burnished sabres and bayonets, as well as with wreaths and flags.” The ball was certainly a grand affair, but what most accorded with Sherman’s taste was the all-male, “royal ‘stag dance.’ . . . I think I never saw the encampment so enlivening. There were about 150 cadets dancing before a double row of candles and a great many ladies and gentlemen looking on.” He delighted in energetic dancing and singing with the other cadets—some males leading, while others danced the woman’s role. The ritual embodied camaraderie, and it would last well into the twentieth century. Sherman always liked to dance, and increasingly enjoyed the company of women who loved dancing.
He closed the letter to his foster sister with a reference to the demanding studies that lay ahead of him “until next June, when I expect to have the extreme pleasure of visiting Lancaster.” Sherman’s second year at the academy went well. Academically he continued to perform admirably, improving his scores in French, mathematics, and drawing (ranking number one in drawing, as previously noted), while raising his overall class rank from ninth to sixth, and keeping his demerits under fifty. The latter constituted a notable achievement. A week into December, he penned a letter to his brother John, revealing his Christmas plans.30
“Preparation for the Christmas spree is now all the go. I have joined in with about a dozen others and laid the foundation for a very good dinner costing about three dollars apiece.” Yet he realized the meal would lack some prized ingredients. “I wish we could get ahold of some of our western turkeys, chickens, and the like, which cannot be obtained here except at an enormous price, and as money is something to us like teeth, we are obliged to go without.” He also noted the unusually warm weather. “Winter seems to be very reluctant about setting in,” he wrote. “This time last winter, the river was closed [frozen over], and we had fine skating, but no doubt it will soon set in with a vengeance, giving us our full share of north winds.” Obviously the cadets were hard-pressed to find recreational activities to counter the dull routine of their academic life and unappetizing food. Even horsemanship—which one might suppose a natural course at a military academy in Sherman’s day, when officers rode horses and cavalry played an important role in battle—would not be introduced until 1839.31
By early spring of 1838, Sherman and his classmates were, as he phrased it, “feeding on the anticipations of a fine furlough.” They looked forward, he wrote Phil Ewing, to the “good dinners they shall enjoy . . . the balls, dances, parties, etc. . . .—in a word they expect all kinds of pleasures and not one of pain.” Parties, food and girls were much on Sherman’s mind. Perhaps, after two years of essentially austere living, Sherman expected too much of his “fine furlough.” The two-month break from study and drill, and the opportunities to enjoy good food were surely welcome, but all in all, the Ohio visit proved less rewarding than anticipated.32
Dividing time between the Shermans and the Ewings, Sherman traversed the state during his vacation. In addition to Lancaster, he spent time in Cincinnati, Dayton, Columbus, Oxford, Mansfield and Sandusky. For the first time, he met his father’s brother, Daniel Sherman, “a very fine old man, but,” he afterward told his younger brother John, “I do not think he resembles father (if you recollect him).” In Columbus, he visited Thomas Ewing, who was again practicing law, after the state legislature did not reelect him to the U.S. Senate. Ellen Ewing, then fourteen, who had not seen Sherman in two years, seemed quite impressed by his appearance, struck by how Cump’s “training at West Point had developed him physically; how straight and strong he was, how clear and bright-eyed, and what . . . pride . . . in his bearing.” He looked “very grand” in his uniform.33
Before returning to West Point, Sherman stopped at Buffalo to visit Niagara Falls, which he said “far surpassed anything my imagination had pictured from its description.” He relished another visit, although briefly, to New York City. While enjoying again the time spent with his mother’s relatives, and the charms of the city, he seemed to be a bit taken aback when he chanced to run into a former resident of Lancaster, who having deserted his family, had “a great big whore (I expect) on his arm.” Sherman reported to Phil Ewing, “I left him as soon as common politeness would admit.” Arriving back at West Point, Sherman was becoming, for his age and day, a well-traveled young man. All his life he would seek opportunities to visit new places.34
During 1839 a tense situation developed between the United States and Great Britain over the boundary line separating Maine and New Brunswick. Many Americans, harking back to the Revolutionary War and the War of 1812, looked upon Great Britain as their young nation’s hereditary enemy. Trouble had flared in 1837, when hundreds of Americans supported a short-lived Canadian insurrection against Britain. Then, two years later, lumberjacks from Maine and Canada disputed the national ownership of the timber-rich valley of the Aroostook River. Their clash also involved a British plan to build a road, for strategic purposes in the event of war, from Halifax to Quebec; a road projected to pass through the territory in question. The so-called Aroostook War just might widen into a full-scale conflict. Sherman kept abreast of the issues, reading the National Gazette, as well as newspapers sent to him from Lancaster.35
In a letter dated March 10, 1839, he wrote Ellen, “All the talk in this part of the world now is about war with England. Every person seems anxious for it and none more so than the very persons who would most suffer by it, the officers of the army and the corps of cadets.” Should war break out, “we would be commissioned and sent into the ‘field’—at all times preferable to studying mathematics or philosophy, and it would undoubtedly prove a better school for the soldier than this.” But Sherman did not believe the conflict likely. “I cannot think that England,” he wrote, “will take the same stand in this controversy that her colony has done. If, however, she does, war will be inevitable.” A month later, in a letter to John Sherman, he again addressed the border issue. “I presume you have heard of these Maine difficulties before now. . . . For my part, there is no nation that I would prefer being at variance with than the British, in this case more especially as our cause is plainly right and just.” In another letter, apparently with a dash at military humor, he said that “books are thrown in the corner, and broadswords and foils supply their place. Such lunging, cutting and slashing—enough to dispose of at least a thousand British a day.”36
Certainly the passions of some Americans had been deeply aroused against Great Britain and once again, as in the War of 1812, eager expansionists dreamed of annexing the vast Canadian territory. But Sherman was right in thinking that Britain would not fight a third war with the United States in order merely to support the prideful stance of her colony. Eventually then, the Maine–New Brunswick boundary question and a few other disputed matters between the United States and the United Kingdom were peacefully and satisfactorily settled through the amicable negotiations of Daniel Webster and Lord Alexander Ashburton.37
WHEN SHERMAN ENTERED his senior year at West Point, and could see the goal of all his efforts drawing near, his attitude toward a military career seemed ever more positive. In camp, he delighted in having a plebe at his call, “whom I made, of course, tend to a plebe’s duty, . . . bringing water, policing the tent, cleaning my gun, and accouterments, and the like.” He repaid the plebe with “the usual and cheap coin—advice.” As for his studies, Sherman seemed very comfortable during his last year at the Point, and his grades again were high. The fact that he accumulated more demerits than in any previous year indicates, perhaps, an impatience to get on with “real” soldiering, and the development of a superior attitude. There is no doubt that Sherman believed he had gained a prized education and was about to take his place among a very special, prestigious group of men, as an officer of the United States Army.38
His letters reveal that he was giving a lot of thought to where he would first serve after graduation. To his mother he wrote that his number one choice, barring an outbreak of war with England, would be the Fifth Infantry Regiment, “because it is stationed on the north-west frontier, a country which I have always felt a strong inclination to see.” Furthermore, Sherman thought it likely that “the Indians will break out again, in which case I should have an opportunity of seeing some active service.” However, if war with Great Britain should erupt, he preferred service with the artillery, because “it is stationed east of the mountains, which would be the seat of war.” Obviously he hoped for a taste of combat, as the path to military promotion. He also nurtured a young man’s enchantment with the alleged glory and fame of warfare.39
As the day of graduation from West Point approached, Sherman must have found the attitude of the Ewings disconcerting. They advised him to resign from the army after graduation and take up the law, engineering or some other profession. Apparently, as they saw the matter, his West Point education should be nothing more than a stepping-stone to a civilian career. He was being asked to turn his back upon the army, the institution that had given him significant direction, an establishment that would provide a regular salary, enabling him to support both himself and his mother and never again have to call upon anyone for financial assistance. Little wonder that in revealing to Ellen Ewing his hope of service with the infantry, he wrote that it was in order to be assigned “in the Far West, out of the reach of what is termed civilization.”40
Sherman graduated from West Point in June 1840. With justifiable pride in his excellent record, a satisfying camaraderie as a USMA alumnus and the anticipation of a significant career “in the service of my country,” the day must have been a happy occasion. Yet, at the same time, he likely experienced a degree of disappointment and even frustration, knowing that Thomas Ewing, whose influence had placed him at the Point, really wanted him now to reject the army. Although both Ewing and his son Phil were present at West Point for Cump’s great day, he knew they were engaged in a campaign tour on behalf of William Henry Harrison, the Whig candidate for the presidency. Perhaps he wondered if they otherwise would have made the long trip to West Point. Probably most disappointing, Ellen Ewing, Sherman’s faithful and constant correspondent, was not at hand for his triumphal celebration, thus never visiting him during the four years that had become the most important period in shaping his life.
As Sherman and his classmates anticipated the future, the Civil War lay twenty-one years ahead of them. Beyond doubt, those two decades proved disappointing for several of the men. In fact, fourteen of the class, fully one-third of those who graduated in 1840, would already be dead when the Civil War began. Two were killed fighting in the Mexican War, and another died in Mexico during that conflict. Four members of the class died in accidents, and still others from natural causes. One man, William Torrey, simply disappeared, last heard from in 1845 in Venice, on his way to Constantinople to seek military service under the sultan.41
Sherman himself would find those twenty-one years after West Point increasingly hard and, for the most part, unrewarding. Ultimately, of course, the Civil War would change all that, as if the stars of destiny had fallen upon him at long last. He would rise to become the most successful and famous of his academy classmates—indeed, one of the great soldiers in American military history.