"The Great Commanders Series" of D. Appleton and Company is enriched by a biography of _General Sherman_,[18] whom the author, General _Manning F. Force_, styles "the most picturesque figure in our civil war." He was more than this; he was its scholar and statesman--a man distinguished by the possession of high military combined with the best civil qualities. Further, as General Force well says, "his character was absolutely pure and spotless." In his dealings with the Vigilance Committee in San Francisco he assumed a position which it required courage of a much higher order than a soldier's to maintain. While comfortably situated as an honored professor in the State Military Academy of Louisiana when the Legislature passed the Ordinance of Secession, he had no hesitation in deciding what to do. He at once gave in his resignation in a letter that is a model of manliness, declaring his preference "to maintain allegiance to the Constitution of the United States as long as a fragment of it survives." His career as a general in the civil war is described at length. Through it all his foresight, seeking always to accomplish the most with the least expenditure and ultimate suffering, to which his strategy was adapted, is conspicuous. At this time and afterward his supreme thought appears to have been as to what would best conduce to the permanent good of the republic. To his military ability and self-effacing patriotism he added a far-seeing wisdom in council that could always be relied upon. "In his most unguarded words his principle was always clear, noble, and intensely patriotic, and his careless colloquial expressions often covered a practical wisdom and insight of a most striking kind." [Footnote 18: General Sherman. By General Manning F. Force. New York: D. Appleton and Company. Pp. 353.]