In three years of active warfare Tom Wood won honor from every action, from Shiloh to Nashville. The disasters of his corps were not disasters for him. He came out of the crucibles refined and sparkling with renewed glory. Whether proving, as he did at Shiloh, that he had made by his discipline veterans out of men who had never seen a battle--whether stemming the adverse current of battle at Chickamauga--whether scaling with irresistible power the heights of Mission Ridge, and carrying at the point of the bayonet the strongly-manned position, which looked strong enough to hold itself--whether repulsing the charge at Franklin, or making it at Nashville, he stands forth prominent as one of the coolest, self-possessed, and gallant spirits of the day. I was glad to see him at the close of the war joining hands with his noble friend Rousseau for the redemption of Kentucky from slavery, and uniting with that band of progressive spirits to whom she will in a few years acknowledge that she owes her prosperity and welfare. [Illustration: OLIVER O. HOWARD.] Among the many original characters whom I met, and who had been developed by the war, and by no means the least remarkable of them, was Major General Oliver Otis Howard. In many respects he was not unlike General George H. Thomas, possessing the same quiet, dignified, and reserved demeanor, the same methodical turn of mind, and the same earnest, industrious habits; but Howard was Thomas with the addition of several peculiarities, not to say eccentricities. He had none of General Thomas's cold-bloodedness, and though, like him, a statue in dignity of demeanor, Howard, unlike Thomas, had blood in him that often flowed warm with sympathy, and pulses that sometimes beat quicker with excitement. General Thomas guided himself in his course through life by his immediate surroundings, adapting himself, without sycophancy, however, to present circumstances without regard to past consistency, and was in power and favor at all times, because content to obey as long as he remained a subordinate. Howard began life with certain aims in view, and sailed a straight course, remaining always constant to his principles, and consequently finding himself, like all men with either firm principles or advanced ideas, at times unpopular. He had little of General Thomas's practicability, and General Thomas had little of Howard's faith in the strength and final triumph of great principles. One trusted in the physical strength, the other in the innate power of the principles of a great cause. Thomas believed the late war the triumph of good soldiers over their inferiors--the triumph of numbers, skill, and strength; Howard will tell you, with a flush of feeling and a slight touch of the extravagance of an enthusiast, that it was the triumph of right over wrong. Thomas thinks, with Napoleon, that God sides with the force that has the most cannon; Howard believes,