WILLIAM TECUMSEH SHERMAN 357 victory ; and the successes at Averysboro and Burtonville culminated on April 26, 1865, in the surrender, near Raleigh, of Johnston, and the last organized army of the Confederacy. The war was over. Sherman's army marched northward to Washington, where, on May 24, 1865, on the second day of the famous Grand Review, General Sherman and his victorious army marched past the presidential reviewing stand " sixty-five thousand men," says General Sherman, " in splendid physique, who had just completed a march of nearly two thousand miles in a hostile country." Then came the disbandment ; Sherman bade his " boys " good-by in a ringing farewell order ; the men departed to their waiting homes, and the splendid " Army of the West " was a thing of the past. After the conclusion of the war General Sherman was, for four years, sta- tioned at St. Louis, as Commander of the Military Division of the Mississippi. He was a notable public character, with a reputation for bravery that none dare assail, and a record as a soldier that made him one of the nation's heroes. He stood next to Grant in position, merit, and popularity ; and when, in 1869, Gen- eral Grant was elected to the presidency, Sherman, who had been named lieuten- ant-general in 1866, was promoted to the vacant post as general of the army, with headquarters at Washington. He visited Europe in 1871-72 and, both because of his own brilliant record, and his official position as head of the American army, he was everywhere re- ceived with honor and distinction. Returning home he wrote his "Memoirs;" they were published in 1875, and stamped him, in the opinion of critics, as "by far the ablest writer among America's military men." On February 8, 1884, he was placed upon the retired list "turned out to grass," as he expressed it, " and told I could spend the rest of my days in peace and retirement." As an especial mark of the nation's pride in his record, he was, as the order stated, " placed upon the retired list of the army, without reduction in his current pay and allowances," and the President in the same order publicly put on record the gratitude of the American people " for the services of incalculable value rendered by General Sherman in the War for the Union, which his great military genius and daring did so much to end." It was a fitting tribute to the man who had worn the uniform of his country for forty years, faithful to every trust and equal to every emergency, and who had risen through every grade from a cadctship and a lieutenancy, to the proud eminence of General of the Armies of the United States. The twenty-six years that were his after the close of the great struggle in which he had been one of the central figures, were filled with a quiet enjoyment of life and a wide personal popularity. Wherever he went he was a living hero, welcomed and honored as such by the people who owed so much to his wise brain and his unsheathed sword. He could have been President of the United States, had he been willing to accept the nomination that was offered him ; in- stead, he declined with peremptory and characteristic bluntness, and he is, it is believed, the only man who ever did refuse that high office.
