"To such as remain in the service, your General need only remind you that success in the past was due to hard work and discipline, and that the same work and discipline are equally important in the future. To such as go home, he will only say that our favored country is so grand, so extensive, so diversified in climate, soil, and productions that every man may find a home and occupation suited to his taste; none should yield to the natural impatience sure to result from our past life of excitement and adventure. You will be invited to seek new adventures abroad; do not yield to the temptation, for it will lead only to death and disappointment. "Your General now bids you farewell, with the full belief that, as in war you have been good soldiers, so in peace you will make good citizens; and if, unfortunately, new war should arise in our country, 'Sherman's Army' will be the first to buckle on its old armor, and come forth to defend and maintain the Government of our inheritance." CHAPTER XXVIII. THE DUTIES OF PEACE. AIDING THE PACIFIC RAILROAD--A FOOL'S ERRAND TO MEXICO--POLITICAL INTRIGUES AT WASHINGTON--THE TENURE OF OFFICE AFFAIR--WORK AMONG THE INDIANS--A TRIP TO EUROPE--THE BELKNAP SCANDAL-- SHERMAN'S SPEECH ON MILITARY HONOR--TRAVELS IN THE NORTHWEST-- YELLOWSTONE PARK--WRITING HIS MEMOIRS--LIFE IN NEW YORK--DEATH OF MRS. SHERMAN. Soon after the "Grand Review" and his farewell to his faithful followers, Sherman went with his family to Chicago, to assist at a large fair held for the benefit of impoverished soldiers' families; thence to Lancaster, Louisville and Nashville, visiting old friends. He was then, on June 27, 1865, put in command of the Military Division of the Mississippi, afterward changed to the Missouri, with headquarters at St. Louis. Immediately his attention was turned to the Pacific Railroad, then in course of construction. Many years before, when that great enterprise was scarcely dreamed of as a possibility, he had written of it to his brother, urging that such a road should be built, for the unification of the country, and saying that he would gladly give his life to see it successfully carried through. It was with much satisfaction that he witnessed the opening of the first division of sixteen and a half miles of the Union Pacific, westward from Omaha. He admired the energy with which the road was pushed forward, and looked upon its completion, on July 15, 1869, as "one of the greatest and most beneficent achievements" of the human race. It was to facilitate the building of the road by protecting it from the Indians that Sherman persuaded the President, in March, 1866, to establish the new Military Department of the Platte and to place strong bodies of troops at various points along the line.