Fessenden's acknowledged ability and high character, and the financial knowledge which he had displayed as chairman of the Finance Committee of the Senate were a sufficient guaranty that under his direction the business of the Treasury Department would be honestly and wisely conducted. He accepted the office with extreme reluctance. His business had been to assist in making laws, not in executing them. He was distrustful of his executive ability. The duties which he was required to perform were distasteful to him from the start, and the longer he remained in office, the more distasteful they became to him. If Mr. Fessenden had been strong in health, if his duties had been congenial, and he had been content to remain at the head of the great department, he would have been equal to his duties, however difficult and onerous they might have been. But his health was not good, and his heart was not in executive but in legislative work. It was as a senator that he had achieved renown. It was in the Senate Chamber that he was at home. There, in extent of knowledge, in command of language, in readiness and force in debate, he had no equal. Mr. Douglas was frequently compared with him, but he was more learned than Mr. Douglas, closer in reasoning, more easily followed, more accurate in statements, and altogether safer as a leader.

Mr. Fessenden was one of the very few men of his day that merited the name of statesman. He must have been a hard student in early days (he was not subsequently), or, great as was his aptitude for learning, he would not have possessed that wealth of knowledge which he frequently displayed in the Senate Chamber. He was not an orator, but a debater of the highest order-lucid, cogent, incisive. He did not regard the halls of Congress as fit places for oratorical display, for the delivery of orations, and he listened impatiently, when he listened at all, to Mr. Sumner's, which had been prepared with care and committed to memory. He was disposed to underrate abilities which differed from his own, and he therefore underrated those of Mr. Sum

right, he was as inflexible as steel. This trait of character was exhibited in the impeachment trial of President Johnson. While this celebrated trial was going on, he received scores of letters threatening him with personal violence-some of them with death-if he voted for acquittal; but they did not disturb him in the least. No one knew how he would vote-he did not know himself until the testimony and the arguments on both sides had been heard; but it was well known that he had no sympathy with those who had determined how they would vote before the trial was commenced-who did not hesitate to pronounce the President guilty without waiting for the evidence. Therefore it was feared that his vote might not be unfavorable to the President, and hence the threats. Mr. Fessenden said to me as much, I am sure, as he said to anyone, which was simply this, that he would listen attentively to the testimony and to the arguments of counsel, and then, and not until then, make up his mind as to what his oath and his duty required of him. His vote and the votes of six others from the Republican side of the Senate, with the Democratic votes, saved the President from being adjudged a criminal, and the Republican party from disruption.

For some years before his death ill health prevented Mr. Fessenden from participating in Washington festivities, and on this account he was regarded by many as being of an unsocial disposition. In this he was misjudged. Before his health became impaired, he was eminently social; to those who were intimate with him he was always one of the most affable and agreeable of men. In appearance he was attractive; his face was handsome and strikingly intellectual; in deportment he was natural, in character upright, in all business transactions honorable. He was true to his principles and his friends, never unfaithful to the former or forgetful of the latter.

As a resident of Washington during the war and reconstruction periods, and as the occupant of an important official position, I met not only the most influential statesmen and financiers of the

country, but many of the most distinguished generals. At the Washington Scientific Club, of which I was a member, I became acquainted with General George H. Thomas. He was not a member, but he accepted invitations to its meetings, in which he seemed to be much interested. He frequently participated in the discussions, and always spoke with intelligence and to the point. I saw a good deal of him in the club and out of it, and the better I knew him the more highly I esteemed him. My acquaintance with him became close, and he spoke to me, I think, with as much freedom as he spoke to anyone, about his military services and the criticisms to which he was subjected just before the battle of Nashville. In the last conversation I ever had with him he referred to the annoying telegrams which he received from General Halleck at Washington and from General Grant at City Point. "I was on the ground," he said, "and hard at work in getting together and into fighting shape the scattered and undisciplined forces under my command, after General Sherman had commenced his march to the sea, in order that I might strike an effective blow against the superior forces of General Hood. I knew, or thought I knew, when the blow should be struck; and it was struck just as soon as it could be with reasonable prospects of success. Defeat at that time and at that place would have been a greater calamity than any which had befallen the Federal forces. It would have cleared the way for the triumphant march of Hood's army through Kentucky, and a successful invasion of Indiana and Illinois, in which there were no Federal troops. It was therefore of the last importance that the battle upon which so much depended should not be fought until I was ready for it. To one of General Grant's despatches, urging me to fight, I was strongly tempted (grossly improper as it would have been) to ask why he was not fighting himself."

The gallantry and military capacity of General Thomas were displayed in every one of the many battles in which he was engaged; and never was he charged with being slow, until he hesitated to strike at Hood before he was

prepared to make the battle of Nashville one of the most decisive battles of the war; but the complaint came from City Point, and hence the credence of its justice. In the history of the great Civil War, yet to be written by an impartial pen, no name will be more conspicuous, not for courage only, but for all the qualities required in a great commander, than that of George H. Thomas. Nor was it as a soldier only that he was renowned. He was no less distinguished by his modesty, his unselfishness, and his keen sense of justice. He was never his own trumpeter, nor with his approbation was anyone the trumpeter of his fame. Newspaper correspondents were never welcome in his camps. His supreme ambition was to do his duty, and he was content that his reputation should rest upon his acts. He declined honors when, by accepting them, he would have sanctioned injustice to others.

Having said so much about General Thomas, I cannot help giving the impressions made upon me by a few of the other distinguished generals and commanders with whom I became personally acquainted during the war, or soon after its close.

The evening of the day on which reports of General P. H. Sheridan's splendid victory in the Valley of Virginia were received in Washington I spent with the President at the Soldiers' Home. It was such a relief to have cheering news from that quarter that Mr. Lincoln threw off his cares and gave free rein to his humor. He had not been so happy, he said, since the capture of Vicksburg. I certainly never saw him during the war when he was so joyous. My desire to meet Sheridan was not gratified until I met him some years after in London, where we spent some pleasant hours together. Since then I have known him quite well, and he has grown steadily in my estimation and respect. To many of his countrymen General Sheridan has been known only as one of the bravest of the brave

the dashing cavalry commander, whose gallantry had been displayed on many battlefields; always foremost in the fight and seemingly courting danger

for the love of it. Such he had seemed to me until he was assigned to the command of the Army of the Shenandoah, in August, 1864. It was there that he found opportunity to display his qualities as a commander. It was the first command of an army that he had been entrusted with, and he had opposed to him one of the most skilful generals of the Confederacy. That the right man had at last been assigned to the command of the Union forces in that fertile valley, from which General Lee was obtaining a large part of his supplies in the defence of Richmond, was speedily proved by his great but dearly bought victory at Opequan Creek. It was the first battle in which he had led an army, and in his elation he indited the despatch, "We have sent the enemy whirling through Winchester. We are after them to-morrow." The battle at Fisher's Hill, which soon followed, in which the Confederate fortifications, well built and on a commanding position, were skilfully flanked and carried by storm, was scarcely less important than that of Opequan in the effect which it had upon both sections of the country. It was, however, in the battle of Cedar Creek that Sheridan obtained his greatest reWhen Sheridan reached the field from Winchester, about 11 o'clock, the largest part of the Union army was in retreat, some of it in utter confusion. To stop the retreat, to reform the broken lines, to compel the fugitives to face the enemy, and to win a great victory, was possible only to a general of great ability, who could inspire his troops with his own gallant spirit. In a few hours the lost ground was recovered, and before night the Confederates, beaten at all points, were flying for their lives. The annals of war reveal nothing grander than the conduct of Sheridan in this, the last great battle in the Shenandoah. Like General Thomas, he was the idol of the men whom he commanded. Since the war he has displayed executive ability and sound judgment in the performance of various important duties, and there are none to deny that he fills with credit the highest place in the army.

nown.

No other general in the army of the Civil War is known by as many peo

ple as William Tecumseh Sherman, and none has warmer friends. Of great versatility of character, he has been soldier, teacher, banker, and again soldier. He has travelled much and been a close and accurate observer. His perception is rapid, and his comprehension of the topography of a country through which he merely travels is so extraordinary that he understands its general features better than they are understood by its residents. This faculty gave him great advantage in his Tennessee and Georgia campaign, and in his march from Savannah to Raleigh. He had been over a considerable part of these sections before, not as a student of their topography, but as a young lieutenant in the Seminole War, and he knew more about them than the Southern Generals seemed to know.

In the conduct of the Atlanta campaign, Sherman exhibited military genius of the highest order, supplemented by courage, hardihood, endurance; but the crowning victory was yet to be attained. His march to the sea was as grand in design as it was splendid in execution. To Sherman alone belongs the honor of the design; to him and to his army the honor of the achievement. It was in conception and accomplishment one of the grandest enterprises of which there is a record.

I met General Hancock for the first time a few days after the battle of Gettysburg. I had known something of his early history-that two years after he graduated at West Point he had been breveted first lieutenant for his bravery in the war with Mexico; and I was quite familiar with his military history from the commencement of the civil war. I knew that he had won distinguished honors on the Peninsula, at South Mountain and Antietam, and that his praise was in everybody's mouth for the excellent judgment and gallantry that he had displayed at Gettysburg. I was therefore desirous to know him personally, and I met him with the most favorable impressions of his merit as a soldier. From that time my acquaintance with him was as intimate as the difference in our pursuits and our places of abode would permit; and the

better I knew him, the higher did he rise in my estimation. In uprightness, in a keen sense of honor, in kindness of heart, in generosity, in genuine manliness, he had no superior in the army. To jealousy he was a stranger. If he thought, as many of his friends did, that his services were not properly appreciated, he never expressed or indicated it. In the field, in the management of the troops under his command, wherever valor came into full exercise, he was, in the language of one who fought with him and under him, "simply magnificent." Of his qualifications to command an army and conduct a campaign, there must have been some doubt in the mind of Mr. Lincoln, or he would have been tried in that capacity. It is not unlikely that these doubts were created by Secretary Stanton, with whom Hancock was not a favorite. There was apparently no good grounds for them. In all the battles in which he was engaged and that were unfavorable to the Union armies, his position was a subordinate one, and he was in no manner responsible for their results. On the contrary, his conduct in each was such as to justify the opinion that he possessed the qualities for absolute command; that if he had succeeded McClellan in command, the battle of Fredericksburg would not have been fought, and no such disasters as those at Chancellorsville and Bull Run would have befallen the Grand Army of the Potomac, or of Virginia, as it was for a short time called. Burnside had rendered good service in North Carolina; Hooker was distinguished for his bravery, and Pope had won a high reputation in the West; but neither, outside of the War Department, was considered the equal, as a soldier or commander, of Hancock. Their preference to him was a surprise to me, as I think it was to others who were acquainted with their respective histories. It was by Hancock's advice that Lee was met at Gettysburg, and although General Meade was in command, to him more than to any other man, the nation was indebted for the most important victory of the war.

Next to being elected President, the worst thing that can happen to a suc

VOL. IV.-29

cessful military general is to be a candidate for that high office. A stranger to the freedom of the press and the unfairness of politicians, in reading Republican newspapers and listening to Republican orators, when Hancock was a candidate for the Presidency, would have supposed that he was destitute of both intelligence and patriotism. Nothing could have been wider from the truth. Of his patriotism there could be no question. In general intelligence he was not inferior to any of the welleducated men of the army, except perhaps McClellan and Sherman and Thomas and Canby. He was a good deal ridiculed for speaking of the tariff as a local question. That the tariff, which had been specially the apple of discord from the foundation of the Government, and which at one time threatened the integrity of the Union, should be spoken of by a candidate for the Presidency as a local question, did seem to be absurd. But was it? The tariff was then, as it is now, one of the most interesting questions before the country; but it had always been to a considerable extent a sectional, and consequently a local, question.

It was well for Hancock that he was defeated. As President he might have been a failure. His fame now rests upon his military services, and there it rests securely. His record as a soldier is without a blemish. A gallant soldier he was, without fear and without reproach.

Upon General McClellan's career I have only space here for some brief reflections."

When McClellan was retired, what happened to the Army of the Potomac ? Terrible slaughter under Burnside at Fredericksburg; crushing defeat at Chancellorsville under Hooker. The hold which McClellan had upon his men, their love for him and the confidence which they had in him, were displayed when he took his leave of them and turned over the command to Burnside, when it was difficult to say which predominated-sorrow or indignation; sorrow that they were to be separated from their beloved commander, indignation at the injustice with which he had been treated.

The prevalent opinion in regard to McClellan was that it was his habit to overrate the strength of the enemy and underrate his own; that he was too much of an engineer, too cautious, too prudent, for an efficient commander; that he was wanting in that self-confidence which, united with a clear head and military knowledge, has been a characteristic of successful generals. His position from the time he took command of the Army of the Potomac up to the close of his military career was such as to make him cautious and prudent, but I have looked in vain in his military history for the evidence of such defects as have been attributed to him. It is certainly not found in his first campaign in West Virginia; not in the Peninsula, where he had everything to contend with which was calculated to discourage him and his army, with no word of cheer from the headquarters in Washington; not in his willingness to take again the command of the army after it had been shattered and demoralized; not in the rapidity with which its discipline was restored and its spirit revived, so that it was able to meet and overcome the same foes by which it had been defeated a few days before. The evidence of General McClellan's deficiencies is found not in a correct history of his military career, but in the press and the despatches of the War Department. He was unfortunate in not comprehending the true cause of the Rebellion, and in his views upon the question of slavery. He was unfortunate in the use of his name by his political friends in connection with the Presidency while he was in the field. He was still more unfortunate in permitting his temper to get the better of his judgment, in attributing to the War Department indifference in regard to the result of the Peninsula campaign, in writing to the President a letter which would have been well enough in a political contest, but which was grossly improper when addressed by a general in the field to his superior. All this and more can be admitted without derogation to his merits as a soldier. He was permanently retired under a cloud within little more than a month from the time when with a recently beaten army he had achieved a

very important victory ;-retired under circumstances that seemingly justified the opinion that there were influences at work in Washington which demanded his retirement as a political necessity. To doubt that the cloud that rested upon him when he was ordered to Trenton will be cleared away, that his high military character will be vindicated, would be to doubt the triumph of truth over jealousy and misrepresentation.

It is enough to say of General McClellan, in his private and social life, that he was in the truest sense a Christian gentleman. I had no sympathy with him in politics; I did what I could to prevent his election to the Presidency. What I have said about him has been prompted only by a sense of duty to one who imperilled his life in his country's service, and who merited lasting honor, instead of the ignominy to which he was subjected and the disrepute which still, to some extent, attaches to his name.

That fact is stranger than fiction, is illustrated in the life of General Ulysses S. Grant. Few men were ever subject to so great vicissitudes; none ever rose so rapidly from obscurity to fame, from a very low estate to the highest. In the spring of 1861 he was utterly unknown outside of a very limited circle. In 1868 he was elected President of the United States by an overwhelming majority over one of the most distinguished men of the day.

There have been and there will continue to be great differences of opinion in regard to General Grant's character and merits as a soldier. While many, and perhaps a majority, regard him as having been a great military genius, whose name will go down in history along with the names of the most renowned soldiers of modern times, others regard him as having been destitute of genius, entitled to no credit except for stubborn courage and unyielding resolution; as one whose rise was a chapter of accidents and luck. Neither of these opinions is correct. It was not by accident or luck that Donelson was taken, that the Mississippi was opened by the capture of Vicksburg, and that the misfortunes at Chickamauga were offset by