SHERMAN'S SENTIMENTS APPROVED, 578 CHAPTER I. THE SHERMAN FAMILY. HONORABLE RANK IN THE MOTHER COUNTRY--EARLY MIGRATION TO NEW ENGLAND--SETTLING IN THE CONNECTICUT VALLEY--PLAYING AN IMPORTANT PART AT WOODBURY--LONG TERM OF PUBLIC SERVICE--THE STODDARDS--A MILITARY MINISTER--SEEKING NEW FORTUNES IN THE WEST--AN EARLY OHIO JUDGE--THE MOTHER OF GREAT MEN. The artificial law of primogeniture has little effect upon the natural law of heredity. In nations where the family descent outranks all other personal or social considerations, degenerate sons--even first sons--of noble sires are often found, and famous families become extinct, or worse. In other nations, where descent is scorned, and the proud individualism of democracy prevails, hereditary genius appears, and families contribute to the service of society and of the State generation after generation of great men. Thus human nature vindicates its disregard of time and places, and establishes itself as the one immutable factor in the life of the world, albeit changeful, capricious, and kaleidoscopic. In the United States no laws of entail or descent prevail. Yet scarcely elsewhere in the world, within two centuries and a-half, have there appeared so many striking instances of worth and greatness made hereditary. The names that lived at Plymouth and at Massachusetts Bay in the early sixteen hundreds, live now in the late eighteen hundreds, in old plantations, or in the greater and newer England that has risen beyond the Appalachian ranges. With such a name this memoir has to deal.