Life and Military Career of Major-General William Tecumseh ShermanHeadley, P. C. (Phineas Camp)
History
Life and Military Career of Major-General William Tecumseh Sherman
Headley, P. C. (Phineas Camp)
Sherman, William T. (William Tecumseh), 1820-1891
It is interesting to look over the sea and get a glimpse of the
impressions of our English _friends_ regarding the “wandering host.” The
organ of the army and navy said: “It is clear that, so long as he roams
about with his army inside the Confederate States, he is more deadly
than twenty Grants, and that _he must be destroyed if Richmond or any
thing is to be saved_. Lee will probably be forced by this condition of
affairs to assume the offensive, because he cannot afford to let Grant
hold his hands whilst Sherman is committing burglary in the Southern
mansion. If Sherman has really left his army in the air, and started off
without a base to march from Georgia into South Carolina, he has done
either one of the most brilliant or one of the most foolish things ever
performed by a military leader.”
The great leader and his intelligent troops must have enjoyed the
mystery in which both friends and foes were living; knowing well that in
public and private circles, in the periodical press and the national
councils, the speculations and theories about him, the fears and hopes,
were manifold and often ludicrous, while his battalions were having a
triumphal march over the proudest portion of the Confederacy. “The great
army, over the lands and into the dwellings of the poor and rich alike,
through towns and cities, like a roaring wave, swept, and paused,
revelled and surged on. In the day-time, the splendor, the toil, the
desolation of the march; in the night-time, the brilliance, the gloom,
the music, the joy and the slumber of the camp. Memorable the music
‘that mocked the moon’ of November of the soil of Georgia; sometimes a
triumphant march, sometimes a glorious waltz, again an old air stirring
the heart alike to recollection and to hope. Floating out from throats
of brass to the ears of soldiers in their blankets and generals within
their tents, these tunes hallowed the eves to all who listened.
“Sitting before his tent in the glow of a camp fire one evening, General
Sherman let his cigar go out to listen to an air that a distant band was
playing. The musicians ceased at last. The general turned to one of his
officers; ‘Send an orderly to ask that band to play that tune again.’
“A little while, and the band received the word. The tune was ‘The Blue
Juniata,’ with exquisite variations. The band played it again, even more
beautifully than before. Again it ceased, and then, off to the right,
nearly a quarter of a mile away, the voices of some soldiers took it up
with words. The band, and still another band, played a low
accompaniment; camp after camp began singing; the music of ‘The Blue
Juniata’ became, for a few minutes, the oratorio of half an army.
“Back along the whole wide pathway of this grand march from border to
coast, the eye catches glimpses of scenes whose savage and poetic images
an American, five years ago, would have thought never could have been
revived from the romantic past.”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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