 | Saratoga in 1901 |  |
GENERAL SHERMAN TALKS.
Congress Hall, July 20.
General Sherman,
all sun-burnt
and dusty, and
fresh from the
plains, got in
unannounced on
the late train to-night.
As he came
up to the Congress
Hall office to register,
he did look
like the homeliest
man (except General
Spinner) in
America. His
straggling red
beard radiated in
a thousand directions,
his soiled
duster was buttoned
to his neck,
and his old slouched
army-hat looked too seedy for anything. Marching straight
to the office, carrying his own carpet-bag, he seized a pen and
scrawled:—
“Any room, sir?” he asked of Southgate, who, with the rest
in the office, didn't recognize the General of the United States
army.
“Got a fourth-story rear,” said Southgate. “All right,” said the
your humble, and several others who had recognized the General
stepped up to shake hands.
“What, General Sherman!” exclaimed the clerk. “Here—
here, General, we've got a ground floor front—Vanderbilt's room;”
and Southgate hustled up a half dozen porters, who besieged the
General with brush-brooms and negro politeness, till he reached
his room.
I knew the General in Memphis in war time, and as he started
for his room, “All right,” said he; “we'll have a talk in the
morning.”
SHERMAN'S STORY.
Once, while dining with the General at a little Italian
woman's restaurant in Front street, in Memphis, in 1864, after
General Veatch and General Chetlain—now our Consul at
Brussels—had told several army stories, the General's chief of staff
told the chicken story. Said he: “While at Bowling Green,
the rebel women bothered us to death. It was always the same
old complaint—`the soldiers have milked our cows, or stolen
our chickens, or busted into the smoke-house. Always the same
story too all through Kentucky and Tennessee; at Chattanooga
we were bored to death with these women.”
One morning a tall giant woman
in a faded sun bonnet besieged
the General's headquarters.
“Well, my good lady, what can
I do for you?” inquired the General
as she hesitated at the tent
entrance.
“My Chickens—”
“Sh—! Madam,” broke in the
General—” I have made up my
mind solemnly that the integrity of
the Constitution and the unity of
the Republic shall be maintained
if it—takes every chicken in Tennessee!”
July 21st.
This morning I met the General early, and strolled down to
Congress Spring, and then around the Park. He was vivacious
and sparkling as Hathorn water, and walked and talked like a
boy.
As George Alfred Townsend said of Miles O'Riley,
“there's a splendid boyishness” always about Sherman. He is
always ready with a pun, a sarcastic repartee, or a strong
thought—a very David with the tongue and pen too.
“Do you remember how I managed those Charleston rebels
when they wanted to pray for Jeff. Davis in the churches?” asked
the General, as we strolled along.
“No. How?” I asked.
“Why, I said, yes! pray away—he needs it!—and d-n it if
they didn't get mad and go right away and pray for Lincoln.”
“Been killing a good many Injuns out West, General?” I
asked.
“No; the papers kill more Injuns than we do. Why, if we
killed half as many Injuns as the Herald does, we'd be `short' of
Injuns!”
PRESIDENTIAL.
“Your friends were a little disappointed when you refused to
have your name used Presidentially,” I remarked.
“No, not my friends. They want me to stay where I am.
General of the army for life is better than President for four
years. Grant regrets that he ever left the army now, and so do
I, except that he has done a good work as President.”
“Do you think it policy to elect Grant again?”
“Of course I do. Why not? He knows the ropes now—he
has become acquainted with the duties—acquainted with thousands
of public men, and ten thousand good-for-nothing White
House bummers who would do nothing but harass a new
President for the first year. He has just got where he can tell a
good man at sight. Humbug men always get the best credentials;
every Congressman signs their recommendation at sight,
and many of them deceive a new President. These party frauds
are now pretty much played out, and Grant is enabled to deal
squarely with true men. Experience and acquaintance is the
`stock in trade' of a good President.”
“Who will win in 72?”
“There is no question in my mind,” said the General, enthusiastically.
“I'll bet on Grant against the field—two to one.”
“Who will run against him?”
“There won't any body run; but, not being a politician, I
can't guess for a moment who will be nominated.”
“Hancock?”
“Well, he may be tempted to run. Hancock, you know,
dislikes Grant personally, and it would be an immense triumph
for him to get where he could rank him. Grant never showed
any dislike to Hancock. He went more than half-way to
conciliate him a year ago; but there is a clique in Washington,
a social clique, which manipulates Hancock and keeps up the
feud. Women have more to do with it than men.”
EMPEROR GRANT.
“What do you think of the Ku-Klux bill?”
“Good bill, sir! It has already stopped a good many
outrages. The fact that the President has power to send troops
into any State to quell disturbances, in itself is enough to
frighten the disturbers of the public peace.”
“But John Quincy Adams says the bill `is an absolute
surrender of the principle of free government—placing in the
President's hands the power, through that and the `Election
bill,' to raise himself to the Empire.”'
“All stuff! How ridiculous to talk about a `man raising
himself to the Empire' in this country! Such a man, after
declaring for the Empire, might hold a regiment of soldiers in
the White House yard for just one day, and then the people
would put him in the Potomac River.
“A set of Imperialists
bivouacking around the
statue of Jackson? Why
the old Roman would give
one shake of his old cock
hat and their traitor
cavalry would execute a
steeple - chase over the
picket fences and out of
the White House yard.
The silly French had sense enough to shut up Napoleon at
Strasbourg and duck him in the sea at Boulogne for just such
nonsense.”
“But in '52 he did ride to the top, after all.”
“Yes, but France was not composed of States—sovereign
States, as far as each State controlling its own troops—and every
Governor, Democratic and Republican, watching jealously his
own State militia.”
“We are not France. Let some crazy President declare himself
Emperor, and intrench himself in the White House yard with
the whole regular army—about 18,000 fighting men—around
him, and how long would it take Governors Hoffman, Jewett,
Randolph, Geary, and Claflin, and the rest, to surround and
capture the whole concern? Why! your loyal governors
backed by your grand old Goddess of Liberty on the dome of
the capitol, and
forty millions of
people behind her,
would push an
army of Imperialists
out of sight of
the White House
in forty minutes.”
“No, sir,” said
the General indignantly;
“when a
President declares
Imperialism, every
Governor will have
to be in the mess
too, and when that
shall be the case,
the country will be
too rotten to be
worth preserving.”
“Adams calls
the Ku-Klux bill
Grant's negro policy,”
I remarked.
“All humbug
again! It is simply
a law making it
possible to arrest
and disperse unlawful
gangs of
rascals, black or
white, in any of
the Southern
States—to imprison
them, and try and
punish them. Grant
don't have any
negro, nor German,
nor Irish policy.
His policy is to
protect all citizens;
remain at peace,
economize and try
and pay the debt.
All this stuff and
talk about Imperialism
in America
is a libel on the
good sense of the people, and Adams ought to have too much
good sense to talk such foolishness.”
We now brought up at Congress Hall, and the General went
in to an early breakfast. He was surrounded by a charming
family of children, and looked the picture of a good, quiet,
honest, sensible citizen, as he is. Always radical, but pretty sure
to be right, the General is a hater of humbugs—a hater of impossible
theories—a hater of long, empty talkers. He puts more
sense into one sentence than some men will get into ten. He
spent most of the forenoon talking with Mr. Larz Anderson,
brother of Major Anderson, of Cincinnati. General Sherman
left at three P. M. to-day for Lake George and the White
Mountains.
| Saratoga in 1901 | |