General Sherman

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Title:     General Sherman
Author: George William Curtis [More Titles by Curtis]

NONE of his great contemporaries was universally beloved more than General Sherman, perhaps none so much. The rare happiness was his not only of becoming famous by taking a great part in a great historic achievement, but of the complete enjoyment of fame. His later years forecast the future. He saw not only that his name would be remembered, but remembered with personal affection. Very few men have been able to foresee this, and very few more clearly than Sherman. It is due not to achievement alone, but to personal quality blended with achievement.

In his last years he was wholly withdrawn from public affairs, and with extraordinary tact, although constantly in the public eye and mind, and although the sense of his historic personality, so to speak, was constant, he refrained from declarations upon pending public questions, and the remarks of his interviews were not devoted to subjects of general controversy. This was doubtless the result of his accurate apprehension of his relation to the country. He had been educated by it, and had served it as a soldier. He had strong convictions and was frank of speech, but he belonged to all. He could not well be a common partisan. He was apparently untouched by political ambition. If he had felt its spur at all, he was happily able to prefer the general permanent affectionate popular regard to the fierce enthusiasm of a political campaign and the passionate ardor of partisanship.

Whatever the reason, he held aloof. Perhaps at one moment, had he assented, his name might have been caught up in a vast and tumultuous political convention, and to a burning and skilful appeal to patriotism and the still glowing memories of the war a palpitating party might have responded, and made him its leader. But if others doubted and hesitated he did not. He comprehended the situation as in a comprehensive and far-extending military movement. He knew himself, and he refused. The opportunity for which the most illustrious and the most famous of Americans have longed and labored and pined offered itself to him, unsought, unwished, and he smiled it away.

Among the chief figures of the epoch of the war probably Lincoln and Sherman were the most individual and original. The most romantic and picturesque of the many renowned events of that time was the march to the sea. It has already a distinctive character, like that of the Greeks in Xenophon's story of the ten thousand. When the news of its successful issue reached this part of the country, it served to show the simple and honest patriotism of one of the more unfortunate of the Union generals. Burnside, after the explosion of the mine at Petersburg, had been relieved, and was staying with a company of friends at a country-house on Narragansett Bay. The company were all sitting one morning upon the spacious piazza, when a messenger rode up and announced Sherman's success. Burnside's delight was enthusiastic. All thought of himself vanished. The good cause only was in his mind and heart, and, running to his wife, he joyfully kissed her, saying, "I know that the company feels as I do, and will forgive me."

It was the feeling of a soldier as simple and true-hearted and patriotic, but not so fortunate, as Sherman; and it was the same candor and manly sweetness of nature that softened Sherman's voice whenever he spoke of the soldiers of the war to whom fate had seemed to be unkind. He is gone, the last of the old familiar figures, some of his old foes bearing him tenderly to the grave. And are not Lincoln, Grant, Sherman, Sheridan, Porter, Seward, Chase, Stanton, Sumner, and their fellows, historic figures worthy to rank with the elder Revolutionary group dear to all Americans?

[The end]
George William Curtis's essay: General Sherman

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