Sherman’s grief for his loss was open and passionate. He wept over his dead face, and in the report of his loss to headquarters he said, “Those whom he commanded loved him even to idolatry; and I, his associate and commander, fail in words adequate to express my opinion of his great worth.” Grant wrote to McPherson’s aged grandmother: “The nation had more to expect from him than from almost any one living.” He wished to express the grief of personal love for the departed, and he testified to “his zeal, his great, almost unequaled ability, his amiability, and all the manly virtues that can adorn a commander.” Such were the greatest of the great Ohio soldiers. To say that they were, each in his different way, the first soldiers of the war, is to keep well within the modest truth. They believed in one another, they trusted one another, for they knew one another. The love between them, impassioned in Sherman, frank and hearty in Sheridan, tender in McPherson, deep and constant in Grant, is one of the most beautiful facts of our history, or of any history, a feeling without one ungenerous quality. It was indeed, “A goodly fellowship of noble knights,” such as has not been since that of King Arthur’s Table Round. XXIV. OHIO STATESMEN The men who have given distinction to our state in politics could hardly be more than named in a record like this; and I shall not try to speak of them all or try to keep any order in my mention of them except the alphabetical order of the counties where they were born, or where they lived.