to steal a short period in which to write to you, but I can hardly trust myself. Sleeping, waking, everywhere I see poor little Willy. His face and form are as deeply imprinted on my memory as were deep-seated the hopes I had in his future. Why, oh why, should that child be taken from us, leaving us full of trembling and reproaches? Though I know we did all human beings could do to arrest the ebbing tide of life, still I will always deplore my want of judgment in taking my family to so fatal a climate at so critical a period of the year. . . . To it must be traced the loss of that child on whose future I had based all the ambition I ever had. . . . I follow you in my mind and almost estimated the hour when all Lancaster would be shrouded in gloom to think that Willy Sherman was coming back a corpse. Dear as may be to you the Valley of Hocking,* no purer, nobler boy ever will again gladden it. . My command will be much smaller than the world thinks, but I do not even name the fact to those about me. Our country should blush to allow our thinned regiments to go on till nothing is left. But I will go on to the end, but feel the chief stay to my faltering heart is now gone.

"But I must not dwell so much on it. I will try and make poor Willy's memory the cure for the defects which have sullied my character."

At the end of a letter written two days later (October 8) Sherman exclaimed: "Oh! that poor Willy could have lived to take all that was good of me in name, character and standing, and learn to avoid all that is captious, eccentric or wrong. But I do not forget that we have other children worthy of my deepest love. I would not have one different from what they are."

Again on October 10: "I still feel out of heart to write. The moment I begin to think of you and the children, poor Willy appears before me as plain as life. I can see him now stumbling over the sand hills on Harrison Street, San Francisco, at the table in Leavenworth, running to meet me with open arms at Black River, and last, moaning in death at this hotel. . . . I see ladies and children playing in the room where Willy died, and it seems sacrilege. I know you are now at home, and I pray that Min

*Lancaster, Ohio, is on the Hocking, a tributary of the

Ohio.

VOL. XLV-58.

nie* has gradually recovered her health and strength, and I hope all our children will regain their full health. Why should I ever have taken them to that dread climate! It nearly kills me when I think of it. Why was not I killed at Vicksburg, and left Willy to grow up to care for you? God knows I exhausted human foresight and human love for that boy, and will pardon any error of judgment that carried him to death."

Less than two years before the death of Sherman's boy Lincoln had lost his elevenyear-old son Willie, also through typhoid fever, and had put aside the private grief to bear with all his strength the burdens of his country. To Sherman's lot fell the same hard necessity. The battle of Chattanooga (November 23-25) was to be fought and won that the North might receive a Thanksgiving day message of rejoicing such as had come from Vicksburg on the previous Fourth of July; and Sherman, leaving Memphis on October 11, had to march his command over three hundred and fifty miles of hostile country in order to contribute, in the very nick of time, to the Union victory. Letters from Chattanooga itself are lacking, but passages from two letters written on the way thither illustrate yet again the depth of Sherman's bereavement and that loyalty to Grant which has already been shown:

CORINTH, MISS., October 14, 1863.

I was much relieved at the receipt of your two letters from Cairo and Cincinnati, both of which came out last night. I shew your message to Dr. Roler, who was affected to tears. Poor Doctor, although I have poured out my feelings of gratitude to him, he seems to fear we may have a lingering thought that he failed somehow in saving poor Willy. Your loving message may have dispelled the thought, and I shall never fail to manifest to him my heartfelt thanks for the unsleeping care he took of the boy. I believe hundreds would have freely died could they have saved his life. I know I would, and occasionally indulged the wish that some of those bullets that searched for my life at Vicksburg had been successful, that it might have removed the necessity for that fatal visit. . . .

Everybody in Memphis manifested for me a respect and affection that I never experienced North. I am told that when the

*Sherman's oldest daughter.

report went into Memphis that my train was surely captured at Collierville, the utmost excitement prevailed at Memphis, and a manifest joy displayed when they heard the truth, that we were not only safe, but that we had saved Collierville and the railroad. At Lagrange, east of Collierville, Gen. Sweeny, the one-armed officer you may remember at St. Louis Arsenal, hearing that I was captured started south with his whole force, determined to rescue Gen. Sherman. As soon as I learned the fact I sent a courier to overtake him, advising him of my safety, but advising him to push on and drive Chalmers far to the south. He is still out. I have this moment received a despatch from Gen. Grant at Memphis. He is en route to Cairo to communicate by telegraph with Washington. I know there is a project to give him command of the Great Centre, the same idea I foreshadowed in my days of depression and insult. I advise him by all means to assent, to go to Nashville and command Burnside on the Right, Rosecrans Centre, and Sherman Left. That will be an Army, and if our ranks were full I would have hopes of great and decisive results. I have stood by Grant in his days of sorrow. Not six miles from here* he sat in his tent almost weeping at the accumulated charges against him by such villains. as Stanton of Ohio, Wade and others. He had made up his mind to leave for good. I begged him, and he yielded. I could see his good points and his weak points better than I could my own, and he now feels that I stood by him in his days of dejection and he is my sworn friend. Corinth brings back to me the memory of those events and bids me heed my own counsels to others. Oh! that poor Willy could live to reap the fruits of whatever is good in me, and avoid the evil. If it so be that he can see our hearts from above he will read in mine a love for him such as would not taint the purest heaven that you ever dreamed of. God spare us the children that are left, and if I am pardoned for exposing them wrongfully I will never again..

IUKA, MISS., October 24, 1863.

I have had a pretty bad cold for the past two days and am delayed here by bad breaks on the Railroad ahead. The Ten* See previous article.

nessee is also swollen, and I expect all sorts of trouble in getting over, unless boats are sent up the Tennessee. We have had some fighting ahead with the enemy's cavalry, a pretty formidable body sent ahead from Mississippi, the same division that was in my front at Big Black and all of Wheeler's Cavalry that escaped from Tennessee; but I can engage their attention and then divert their minds from the road which supplies Rosecrans' army. Grant I suppose now is at Nashville, and will by his presence unite the army more in feeling than it seems hitherto to have been. He is so unpretending and honest that a man must be base who will not yield to him. The only possible danger is that some may claim his successes hitherto have been the result of accident, but then too I hope they will find themselves mistaken. I have telegraphic notice from Memphis that he has assumed command of the Armies of the Cumberland, Ohio and Tennessee, and that I am to command the latter. My desire has always been to have a distinct compact command, as a Corps, but spite of my efforts I am pushed into complicated places that others aspire to and which I wish they had. But with Grant I will undertake anything in reason. . . .

I see your thoughts as mine dwell with poor Willy in his grave. I do not, and you should not, reproach yourself a moment for any neglect of him. He knew and felt every moment of his life our deep, earnest love for him. The day he came on board the Atlantic * I think I observed that usual suppressed feeling of pride at having secured that gun. I know I joked him about it and think he received it in his usual manner, and yet at that moment he must have felt the seed of that disorder which proved so fatal. He did not know it then, and we could not so quickly detect the symptoms. . . . God knows and he knows that either of us, and hundreds of others, would have died to save him. . . .

In the winter months following the victory at Chattanooga, operations on a large scale were impracticable. For himself, Sherman planned an expedition, his "Meridian Campaign," east from Vicksburg to impair the strength of the Confederacy in

* The boat from Vicksburg to Memphis. See "Memoirs," I, 376.

the interior of Mississippi. One letter written on the eve of this expedition, and two on its completion, illuminate his part in it:

ON BOARD GUN BOAT Juliet, MOUTH OF WHITE RIVER, January 28, 1864.

I sent you a paper about the banquet* which was really a fine affair. The hall of the Gayoso was crammed and the utmost harmony prevailed. Everything passed off well. My remarks as reported by the Argus were about right. The Bulletin got mere incoherent points. I cannot speak consecutively, but it seems that what I do say is vehemently applauded. The point which may be wrongly conceived was this. As the South resorted to war, we accepted it, and as they fought for Slaves and States' Rights they could not blame us if they lost both as the result of the war; and again, that they, the South, prided themselves on high grounds of honor. I was willing to take issue then adopting their own rules, as those of the most fashionable clubs of London, New Orleans, and Paris. If a member goes into an election he must abide the result or be blackballed or put in Coventry. Now as the Southern People went into the Presidential Election they, as honorable men, were bound to abide the result. I also described the mode and manner of seizure of the garrison and arsenal at Baton Rouge and pronounced that a breach of soldierly honor, and the firing on boats from behind a cottonwood tree. People at the North may not feel the weight of these points, but I know the South so well that I know what I said will be gall and wormwood to some, but it will make others think. I was at Memphis Tuesday and part of Wednesday. The Festival was on Monday and several real old Southerners met me and confessed their cause would be recorded in History as I put it. I was not aware of the hold I had on the people till I was there this time. Hurlbut did not mingle with them and was difficult of access, and every time I went into a theatre or public assemblage there was a storm of applause. I endeavored to avoid it as much as possible, but it was always so good-natured that I could not repel *In a letter written on the same day to his brother John, Sherman said: "I could not well decline an offer of a public

dinner in Memphis, but I dreaded it more than I did the assault on Vicksburg." See Sherman Letters, p. 221.

it. If I succeed in my present blow I would not be surprised if Mississippi would be as Tennessee, but I do not allow myself to be deceived. The Old Régime is not yet dead, and they will fight for their old privileges; yet so many of our old regiments are going on furlough that we will be short handed. If we had our ranks full I know we could take Mobile and the Alabama River in thirty days and before summer could secure all of Red River also, leaving the Grand Battle to come off in East Tennessee or Georgia in June. We could hold fast all we have and let the South wriggle, but our best plan is activity. . . .

I am about to march two hundred miles straight into danger with a comparatively small force and that composed of troops in a manner strange to me; but my calculations are all right, and now for the execution. I expect to leave Vicksburg in a very few days, and will cut loose all communications, so you will not hear from me save through the Southern papers till I am back to the Mississippi. You, of course, will be patient and will appreciate my motives in case of accident, for surely I could ask rest and an opportunity for some one else, say McPherson, but there are double reasons: I will never order my command where I am not willing to go, and besides it was politic to break up the force at Memphis which was too large to lie idle, and Hurlbut would not reduce it. I had to bring him away and make a radical change. He ranks McPherson, and we have not confidence enough in his steadiness to put him on this expedition. He is too easily stampeded by rumors. I have a better sense of chances. I run two chances, first in case the enemy has learned my plans or has guessed them he may send to Meridian a superior force. A bad road may prevent my moving with the celerity which will command success. Would that I had the Fifteenth corps that would march in sunshine or storm to fulfil my plans without asking what they were. I almost wish I had been left with that specific command, but confess I prefer service near the old Mississippi which enables us to supply ourselves so bountifully. I hear but little from Huntsville, but suppose all our folks are comfortable there. I sent Maj. Taylor, Fitch and McFeely back to Huntsville from Memphis, and have with me only my aids and Quarter Master.

I don't want any non-combatant mouths along to feed, and am determined this time not to have a tribe of leeches along to consume our food. Not a tent shall be carried or any baggage save on our horses. The wagons and packs shall carry ammunition and food alone. I will set the example myself. Experience has taught me if one tent is carried any quantity of trash will load down the wagons. If I had ten more Regiments I would be tempted to try Mobile, but as it is if I break at Meridian and Memphis, I will cut off one of the most fruitful corn supplies of the enemy, and will give Mississippi a chance to rest. The State is now full of conscript gangs carrying to their armies the unwilling, the old and young. We will take all provisions and God help the starving families! I warned them last year against this last visitation, and now it is at hand. . . .

I feel the full load of care and anxiety you bear. Mourning for Willy, fearing for the future, and oppressed with intense anxiety for parents. I believe you can bear all, and that you will for our sakes. Just think of me with fifty thousand lives in my hand, with all the anxiety of their families. This load is heavier than even you imagine.

STEAMBOAT Westmoreland, Approaching MEMPHIS, March 10, 1864.

I have no doubt you were amused at the thousand and one stories about my Meridian trip. It certainly baffled the sharp ones of the Press and stampeded all Alabama, but in fact, was a pleasant excursion. Weather was beautiful, roads good and plenty to eat, what fighting we had was all on one side. Our aggregate loss is 21 killed, 68 wounded, and 81 missing, 170 all told. But in a day or two I will send you my report which will be clear and explicit. I have sent 10,000 men up Red River under General A. J. Smith with Admiral Porter to co-operate with General Banks. They are to be gone only thirty days when they come around to me at Huntsville. I want to make up my army there to 40,000 men. So when we cross the Tennesssee look out. Grant in command, Thomas the Centre, Schofield the Left and Sherman Rightif we can't whip Joe Johnston, we will know the reason why; Banks in the meantime to come out of Red River and swing

against Mobile. If he had been smart he could have walked into Mobile when I was in Meridian. I am down on Wm. Sooy Smith. He could have come to me, I know it, and had he, I would have captured Polk's army; but the enemy had too much cavalry for me to attempt it with men afoot. As it was I scared the Bishop out of his senses. He made a clean run and I could not get within a day's march of him. He had railroads to help him but these are now gone. Had I tolerated a corps of newspaper men how could I have made that march a success? Am I not right? And does not the world now see it? . . .

On my way down I picked up at Natchez a prisoner of war, Professor Boyd, my favorite among the officers of the academy at Alexandria. I never saw a man evince more gratitude. He clung to me till I came away. Stone promised to be kind to him and to exchange him the first opportunity. He told me all about the people up river and said they talked about me a great deal, some with marked respect and others with bitter hatred. . . .

Many of the negroes are gone and the present trip up Red River will clean out the balance. Boyd tells me the motto over the door of the Seminary is chiselled outYou remember it in my letter of resignation: "By the liberality of the General Government of the United States. The Union, Esto perpetua." The fools! Though obliterated it lives in the memory of thousands and it maybe will be restored in a few days. I wanted to go up Red River, but as Banks was to command in person I thought best not to go. Grant wanted me to command, but I reported my reason as before stated. Banks ranks Grant and myself. But now Grant will be Lieutenant-General and will command all he pleases. course I can get anything I want, but as soon as the spring campaign is over I want to come here and look after the Mississippi. Like the story of Gil Blas, "Here lies my soul." Though Willy died here his pure and holy spirit will hover over this the grand artery of America. I want to live out here and die here also, and don't care if my grave be like De Soto's in its muddy waters.* . .

Of

buried, in 1891, at St. Louis by the side of his son. *It was at General Sherman's own request that he was

MEMPHIS, March 12, 1864.

Of all the expeditions sent out this spring mine has been best conducted and most successful simply because of the secrecy and expedition with which it was planned and executed. Had the enemy been informed of these in advance by our prying correspondents I might have shared the fate of Seymour.* He did not go forty miles from his base, whereas I went one hundred and eighty-two miles. I have written Grant a long letter and begged him to adhere to his resolution not to stay at Washington. He would not stand the intrigues of politicians a week. He now occupies a dazzling height and it will require more courage to withstand the pressure than a dozen battles. I wonder if you kept a certain despatch Halleck made me from Corinth in June, 1862 and my answer from Moscow. I foretold to Halleck his loss, and the fact that the man who won the Mississippi would be the man. I wish you would hunt it up-I know I saw it among your papers and show it to Phil† to satisfy him however extravagant my early assertions may have seemed how they are verified by time. I feel that whilst my mind naturally slights the events actually transpiring in my presence it sees as clear as any one's the results to be evolved by time. Now Halleck has more reserve booklearning and knowledge of men than Grant, and is therefore better qualified for his present post; whereas the latter by his honesty, simplicity, candor and reliance on friends, is better suited to act with soldiers. I would rather occupy my present relation to the military world than any other command and therefore must serve out this campaign which is to be the test. All that has gone before is mere skirmishing. The war now begins, and with heavy well-disciplined masses the issue must be settled in hard fought battles. I think we can whip them in Alabama and it may be Georgia. . . . No amount of poverty or adversity seems to shake their faith: niggers gone, wealth and luxury gone, money worthless, starvation in view within a period of two or three years, and causes enough to make the bravest tremble. Yet I see no signs of let up-some few de*In the previous month Gen. Truman Seymour had met

defeat in Florida.

† Mrs. Sherman's brother.

serters, plenty tired of war but the masses determined to fight it out.

The "Meridian Campaign" was followed by minor activities on Sherman's part, but a greater enterprise than any he had undertaken was near at hand. On Grant's removal to the East in March of 1864, to take command of all the armies of the United States, the command of the Military Division of the Mississippi fell to Sherman. The prominence and responsibility he had long shunned were no longer avoidable. His immediate duty was to plan and direct the "Atlanta Campaign," which was to last from May to September. Not only was Sherman's chief antagonist, General Joseph E. Johnston one of the most elusive and skilful of soldiers; but advancing into a hostile country, fed from without by a single artery of supply, "it was manifest," as Sherman wrote in his "Memoirs," "that we should have to repair the railroad, use it, and guard it likewise." The difficulties of the problem were innumerable. Through April Sherman employed all his foresight to meet those which could be met in advance. The following letters, all written after his own start from Chattanooga was made on May 5, deal with events of the highest moment in the progress of the Union cause.

KINGSTON, GEO., May 20, 1864. I have no doubt you will complain of neglect on my part, but you have sense enough to see that my every minute has been taken. According to appointment with General Grant I got everything as far ready as possible on the 5th and started from Chattanooga on the 6th. Troops had to be marched and collected from all parts of the country without attracting attention and I got McPherson up to Chattanooga and on Johnston's flank before he suspected anything more than a detachment of Thomas' command.

Dalton lies in a valley, but the road passes through a gap which was a most formidable place. I drew Johnston's attention to it whilst I moved the army round through a gap thirty miles further south and appeared on his rear and flank. He hastily evacuated Dalton and succeeded in getting into Resaca, eighteen miles, where he had prepared a strong position. This