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WHEN Colonel Sherman joined head-quarters at Washington, in June, 1861, he found a prevailing sentiment that the war would be "short and decisive," and that as soon as the Government showed a firm resolve "to defend its rights and property, some general compromise would result." The public temper was similar in its nature, and it was an unwise impatience, together with a certain contempt for the adversary, which compelled General Scott to enter on the campaign of Bull Run. In that

action, Sherman, like so many of his brother officers, heard for the first time shots fired in anger, and en-Countered the sickening spectacle of wounds and death. We need not dwell on the

Southern victory, which proved a fatal gift to the victors, and a real blessing to the vanquished. After the flight to the Potomac, Sherman had his brigade on the left bank encamped about Fort Corcoran. Here occurred an incident which displayed the char- acter alike of President Lincoln and the young Colonel. The Bull Run Army consisted in a large degree of "ninety-days' men," and a great dispute arose respecting the proper mode of counting those ninety days, the Government, of course, construing the terms of enlistment most favourably to themselves. In Sher- man's brigade was the notorious 69th New York, and most of the

short-service men in that corps desired to go home. As they were very mutinous in their demonstrations, a battery was posted,

with orders to open fire if they left camp :-

" The Sixty-ninth still occupied Fort Corcoran, and one morning, after reveille, when I had just received the report, had dismissed the regi- ment, and was leaving, I found myself in a crowd of men crossing the drawbridge on their way to a barn close by, whore they had their sinks ; among them was an officer, who said, ' Colonel, I am going to New York to-day. What can I do for you ?'—I answered, ' How can you go Memoirs of General William T. Sherman. Written by Himself. In 2 vo London : Henry S. King and Co. to NeIv York? I do not remember to have signed a leave for you.'—He said, ' No; he did not want a leave. He had engaged to servo throe months, and had already served more than that time. If the Govern- Mont did not intend to pay him, he could afford to lose the money ; that he was a lawyer, and had neglected his business long enough, and was then going home.' I noticed that a good many of the soldiers had paused about us to listen, and knew that if this officer could defy us, they also would. So I turned on him sharp, and said Captain, this question of your terms of service has been submitted to the rightful authority, and the decision has been published in orders. You are a soldier, and must submit to orders till you are properly discharged. If you attempt to leave without orders, it will be mutiny, and I will shoot you like a dog ! Go back into the fort now, instantly, and don't dare to leave without my consent.' I had on an overcoat, and may have had my hand about the breast, for he looked at me hard, paused a moment, and then turned back into the fort. The men scattered, and I returned to the house where I was quartered close by."

On that day, President Lincoln and Mr. Seward drove over to see the troops. Sherman joined them, and finding that Mr. Lincoln desired to address the men, he begged that the President "would discourage all cheering, noise, or any sort of confusion," saying the country needed "cool, thoughtful, bard-fighting soldiers,—no more hurrahing, no more humbug." The request was complied with, for when the regiment began to cheer, Mr. Lincoln "promptly checked them, saying, 'Don't cheer, boys. I confess I rather like it myself, but Colonel Sherman here says it is not military ; and I guess we had better defer to his opinion.'" Going through the camp, the President reached Fort Corcoran and the 69th. Here he again made a little speech, winding up with a request that any one who had a grievance would appeal to him:— " In the crowd, I saw the officer with whom I had had the passage at reveille that morning. His face was pale, and lips compressed. I foresaw scene,' but sat on the front seat of the carriage as quiet as a lamb. This officer forced his way through the crowd to the carriage, and said, Mr. President. I have a cause of grievance. This morning I went to speak to Colonel Sherman, and he threatened to shoot me.'— Mr. Lincoln, who was still stan:ling, said, ' Threatened to shoot you?'— 'Yes, sir, he threatened to shoot me.'—Mr. Lincoln looked at him, then at me, and stooping his tall, spare form towards the officer, said to him in a loud stage whisper, easily heard for some yards round, 'Well, if I were you, and he threatened to shoot, I would not trust him, for I believe he would do it.' Tho officer turned about and disappeared, and the men laughed at him. Soon the carriage drove on, and as we descended the hill, I explained the facts to the President, who answered, Of course I didn't know anything about it, but I thought you knew your own business best.' I thanked him for his confidence, and assured him that what ho had done would go far to enable me to maintain good discipline, and it did."

A short time afterwards Sherman was ordered to Kentucky, with the rank of brigadier-general. The Border State had resolved to stand by the Union, if supported, and such force as could be spared was mustered on its borders under Anderson, who had been driven out of Fort Sumter. Finally, the State authorities took the formal step, and as Anderson's health was unequal to the strain, he resigned, leaving Sherman in command. There were few troops, of doubtful value, to defend Kentucky, then threatened by the Confederates on two points. Fremont in Missouri and McClellan in Virginia attracted the bulk of the levies, and central Kentucky was left with a weak, broken line of posts. Sherman, as in duty bound, remonstrated, and when Mr. Cameron, War Secretary, passed through Louisville, our ardent soldier, who always saw so far ahead, after a lucid account of the position of affairs, showing he had only 18,000 men to cover a huge gap, "argued that, for the purpose of defence, we should have 60,000 men at once, and for offence, would need 200,000 before we had done. Mr. Cameron, who still lay on the bed, threw up his hands, and exclaimed, Great God ! where are they to come from ?' I asserted that there were plenty of men at the North ready and willing to come, if he would only accept their services ; for it was notorious that regiments had been formed in all the North-Western States, whose services had been refused by the War Department, on the ground that they would not be needed." Sherman flattered himself that he had aroused Simon Cameron to "a realisation of the great war that was be- fore us, and was, in fact, upon us ;" but Cameron was a mere politician, and when he got back to Washington, he filed a memorandum describing as " insane " the request of Sherman for 200,000 men. More than this, he allowed the substance of his paper to get abroad, and it was stated all over the North, on the War Secretary's authority, that Sherman was crazy. Not un- naturally, the injustice preyed upon his spirits ; he thought the authorities had better send a "mnore sanguine man" to Kentucky, and they sent Don Carlos Buell, ordering Sherman to Halleck's side in Missouri, where, after another interval of vexation, he settled down to work. Halleck devised the plan of campaign that led to the capture of Forts Henry and Donelson ; finally, to Shiloh battle, and the capture of Corinth. But Halleck was a hot-tempered man, prone to hasty conclusions, and he nearly drove Grant out of the service by his misjudgments. Sherman, as all may remember, took part in the two days' fighting at Shiloh, or as we used to call it, Pittsburgh Landing, and his re- marks on the subject are full of instruction. That Grant was greatly ill-used on this occasion becomes plainer than ever from the narrative of Sherman, who, we are bound to say, at the time, keenly vindicated his friend and chief. Halleck took command in person, and no doubt did compel Beauregard to evacuate Corinth.

"The advance on Corinth had occupied all the month of May, the most beautiful and valuable month of the year for campaigning in this latitude. There had been little fighting, save on General Pope's left flank about Farnington ; and on our right I esteemed it a magnificent drill, as it served for the instruction of our men in guard and picket duty, and in habituating them to an out-door life; and by the time we had reached Corinth I believe the army was the best on this continent, and could have gone where it pleased. The four Bab-divisions were well commanded, as well as the divisions and brigades of the whole army. General Halleck was a man of great capacity, of large acquirements, and at the time possessed the confidence of the country, and of most of the army. I held him in high estimation, and gave him credit for the combinations which had resulted in placing this magnificent army of a hundred thousand men, well equipped and provided, with a good base, at Corinth, from which he could move in' any direction. Had he held his force as a unit, he could have gone to Mobile, or Vicksburg, or any- where in that region, which would by one move have solved the whole Mississippi problem ; and from what he then told me, I believe he in- tended such a campaign, but was overruled from Washington. Be that as it may, the army had no sooner settled down at Corinth before it was scattered."

About this time, Grant, feeling his position unbearable, applied for and readily obtained leave of absence ; but Sherman, hearing of it, hastened to see his friend, and implored him to stay, "illus- trating." he says, " his case by my own. Before the battle of Shiloh I had been cast down by a mere newspaper assertion of crazy,' but that single battle had given me new life, and now I was in high feather. And I argued with him that, if he went away, events would go right along, and he would be left out; whereas, if he remained, some happy accident might restore him to favour, and his true place." The disconsolate General staid, with what prolific results we all know.

At this period the Southerners made great efforts to gain equiva- lents for their lost advantages in the West. "Beauregard," we read, "was replaced by Bragg, a man of more ability," and he "had a hard task to bring into, order and discipline that mass of men to whose command he succeeded at Tupelo, with which be afterwards fairly outmanoeuvred General Buell, and forced him back from Chattanooga to Louisville. It is a fatal mistake," Sherman goes on to say, "which halted General Halleck at Corinth, and led him to disperse and scatter the best materials for a fighting army which up to that date had been assembled in the West." Halleck himself, on the morrow of McClellan's disasters, was called to Washington ; Grant, who succeeded him in Mississippi, found his position "precarious," and indeed it was not until Van Dbrn had been defeated in his bold attempt to reconquer Corinth that the Union cause in that quarter was settled on solid foundations. Useful, rather than showy, the subsequent operations of Grant and Sherman towards the end of 1862 have never been fully recognised, yet in December of that year they conjointly established the national power on a basis so firm between the Tennessee and Mississippi, that although a daring partisan, like Forrest, was able, at a later period, to push his cavalry through and infest the Tennessee shores, yet no serious lodgment was ever again effected in that region. Having driven Pemberton, who succeeded Van Dorn, from his fortified lines on the Tallahatchie, Grant projected an attack on Vicksburg. He sent Sherman down the river and moved himself to Oxford. The design was to outgeneral Pemberton, while Sherman entered the Yazoo, and either capture Vicksburg, then slightly garrisoned, or, failing that, to effect a junction with Grant near the river stronghold and take it. The scheme was not executed, except in part. Sherman assaulted the heights north of Vicksburg, and failed, as he thinks, through the slow- ness and timidity of some division-leader ; while Grant's cavalry carelessly watched his depot at Holly Springs, which Van Dorn captured, and thus induced him to retreat upon the Corinth line. When the war had ended, Grant told his faithful com- rade that had he possessed in December, 1862, the ex- perience of marching and maintaining armies subsequently acquired, " he would have gone on from Oxford, as at first contemplated, and would not have turned back because of the destruction of his depot at Holly Springs.. The distance from Oxford to the rear of Vicksburg is little greater than by the circuit- ous route we afterwards followed from Bruinburg to Jackson and Vicksburg, during which we had neither depot nor train of supplies. I have never criticised General Grant's strategy on, this or any other occasion, but I thought then that we had lost

an opportunity, which cost him and us six months extra hardwork ; for we might have captured Vicksburg from the direction of Oxford in January, quite as easily as was afterwards done in July, 1863." Nevertheless, it must be remembered that if Grant lost a chance, he found a means of retrieving his loss, when he devised and executed the measures which led to the capture, not only of the coveted fortress, but of an army and its commander. While encamped on the Big Black, a Southern officer, Captain B—, arrived with a flag of truce. Sherman directed that he should be brought direct to his camp, made him "at home," and sent the Confederate escort to be entertained with his own. He then tells this characteristic anecdote :-

"In the evening we had a good supper, with wine and cigars, as we sat talking, B— spoke of his mother and father in Louisville [B. was a Kentuckian], got leave to write a long letter without its being road, and then we talked of the war. He said, 'What is the use of your per- severing? it is simply impossible to subdue eight millions of people; asserting that 'the feeling in the South had become so embittered that a reconciliation was impossible.' I answered that 'sitting as we then were we appeared very comfortable, and surely there was no trouble in oar becoming friends.'—' Yes,' said he, 'that is very true of us, but we are gentlemen of education, and can easily adapt ourselves to any con- dition of things; but this would not apply equally well to the common people, or to the common soldiers.' I took him out to the camp-fires behind the tent, and there were the men of his escort and mine, drink- ing their coffee, and as happy as soldiers always seem. I asked B what he thought of that, and he admitted that I had the best of the argument."

Though often severe and hard when duty commanded, Sherman repeatedly showed during his campaigns the kindly, human spirit which peeps through this little story.

During the remainder of the year the services of Sherman were conspicuous enough. Few of those who took an interest in the great war are likely to have forgotten his arduous march to rein- force Grant at Chattanooga, or his spirited rush upon Knoxville to relieve General Burnside. It will be remembered, doubtless, that when Rosecrans allowed himself to be worsted in the battle of Chickamauga, Grant was sent to supersede him, while Hooker brought up a reinforcement from Virginia, and Sherman was summoned from Vicksburg. Both arrived in time to defeat Bragg, who had weakened himself by detaching Longstreet to capture Knoxville ; and when the Confederates had been driven to Dalton, Grant, dissatisfied with the slowness of Granger, re- quested Sherman to push his tired command upon the besieged city. How all these trying enterprises were performed, and what a fine spirit and thorough soldiership they displayed, we recorded in these pages at the time. Yet it seems that the alarming reports sent by Burnside to Chattanooga were somewhat exaggerated. When the relief was effected, Sherman, having gone over the works, says :—

" Returning to Burnside's quarters, we all sat down to a good dinner, embracing roast turkey. There was a regular dining-table, with clean table-cloth, dishes, knives. forks, spoons, &c., &c. ehad seen nothing of this kind in my field experience and could not help exclaiming that I thought that they were starving.' &c.; but Burnside explained that Longstreet had at no time completely invested the place, and that he had kept open communication with the country on the south side of the River Holston, more especially with the French Broad Settlements, from whose Union inhabitants ho had received a good supply of beef, bacon, and corn-meal. Had I known of this, I should not have hurried my men so fast, but until I reached Knoxville I thought our troops there were actually in danger of starvation."

These operations had been conducted in mid-winter, and in the spring, after a rest, Sherman was sent to make a point on Meridian, a town in Mississippi State, east of Vicksburg, solely by way of a diversion. Ile completely effected his purpose, but, his cavalry, under an incompetent General, who started from Memphis. fell into the hands of Forrest, and then the entire design was imperfectly executed. The only fact worthy of note which occurred to Sherman was that he narrowly escaped capture,—for the second time. But we may also remark that during this expedition he learned how to subsist an army out of the resources found in the country. In March, 1864, General Grant was called to Washing- ton, and finally transferred to the Eastern theatre of war, leaving Sherman, yet still under his old leader, supreme commander in the West.