< 352 SOLDIERS AND SAILORS his friends in death. The wliole nation was present in spirit at his obsequies. His remains were interred at Riverside Park, New York, and only await the imposing monument which the metropolis of the nation he saved is to rear above his tomb. His character can never be as prominent as the victories he won for his im- perilled country ; but his honesty, his unsullied honor, and his self-abnegation entitle him to another crown of glory. Ji^^^^-^^-^?^ WILLIAM TECUMSEH SHERMAN* By Elbridge S. Brooks (1820-1891) ACHIEVEMENT wins applausc. And when the steps toward achievement are tinged with mystery, romance, or dar- ing, the applause is irresistible and con- tinuous. So it has come to pass that by the side of Xenophon's masterly " retreat of the Ten Thousand," of Cortes's burn- ing his ships at Vera Cruz, and of Marl- borough's bold march through the heart of Germany to the victory at Blenheim, stands Sherman's March to the Sea and his " Christmas Gift " of captured Savan- nah. And yet this brilliant leader of men had never seen a hostile shot fired until he was forty-one, and his first battle was the defeat at Bull Run. The March to the Sea, upon which Sherman's fame as a soldier so largely rests, was by no means the greatest or most significant of his many achievements. His record as a soldier is filled with examples of his courage, his shrewdness, and his tenacity, while his mingling of gentle ways and grim determination, of restlessness and calm, of forethought, fearlessness, and frankness, make him at once a unique and central figure in the decade of war and reconstruction that forms so important a chapter in the story of the United States of America. William Tecumseh Sherman was born on February 8, 1820, in the town of Copyright, 1894, by Selmar Hess.
