GEN. W. T. SHERMAN.

M. TECUMSEH SHERMAN was born in Lancaster, Fairfield county, Ohio, on the 8th day of February, 1820, and was but nine years of age when his father died, leaving eleven children to the care of the mother. For six years previous to his death he held the position of Judge of the Superior Court of Ohio. After Mr. Sherman's death his friend, the Hon. Thomas Ewing, proposed to adopt Tecumseh, and as the mother wisely looked more to the child's interest than her own feelings, he was at once given up and placed by his adopted father at school and kept there until he was sixteen, when he was sent to West Point. Four years later he graduated in the class of 1840, and stood sixth in the examination. He at once entered into the regular service, and was ordered to Florida with the rank of Second Lieutenant of the Third Artillery. At the end of the year he was made First Lieutenant and stationed at Fort Moultrie, South Carolina. In 1846 he was sent to California, and during the Mexican War was promoted to the rank of captain.

In 1850 he married the eldest daughter of Mr. Ewing, between whom and himself there had been a strong attachment since his childhood. Wearying of a profession that in time of peace consisted of a monotonous round of mechanical duties, he resigned his commission and was made president of a banking house in San Francisco, where he remained several years. In 1860 he was offered the Presidency of the Louisiana State Military Academy, where he remained until the gathering of the war clouds black with their pent up volumes of wrath, warned him that the storm was near, when he resigned his position, only three months before the attack upon Fort Sumter. In his letter to the Board of Supervisors, he says: "I beg you to take immediate steps to relieve me the moment this State resolves to secede; for on no earthly account will I do any act, or think any thought hostile to, or in

defiance of, the old government of the United States." His resignation was accepted and he went to St. Louis to make preparations to enter into the combat the notes of which were already sounding far and near through the land.

The history of General Sherman for the next four years is the history of our country's struggle to maintain and defend the constitution. His success is the old, old story of the triumph of those who loved better than life the principles on which our government was founded-who were ready to give life and more, if more was theirs to give, for the triumph of right. His brother officers and those who were his superiors in command speak of him in unmeasured terms of admiration; and when a division of the army was placed in his charge, when he came to be only second in command in all our army, his skill, courage and lion-hearted bravery saved our troops from destruction and our cause from disaster. O, noblest of the noble men who rallied under our banner, who with heart breaking under wrong and injustice, under the calumny and misinterpretation which it met, had yet the inward strength that was born of patriotism in that dark hour, to forget self, to bear the pain until such time as your country should vindicate your honor!

Of his conduct at the bloody battle of Pittsburg Landing his historian says: "Through all that fearful Sabbath day he seemed omnipotent, and to bear a charmed life. Horse after horse sunk under him, and though struck several times, he was not wounded so as to give up the command, and from the first to the last, where the fight was fiercest and the leaden hail fell thick around him, he blazed like a meteor here and there over the field. His intrepidity saved Rosecrans at Stone River, and Thomas at Chickamauga, and Grant at Shiloh. Of this last battle Rosseau says: No living man could surpass him;" and just a few days before his death the lamented Nelson said: "For eight hours the fate of the army on the field of Shiloh depended on the life of one man-if Sherman had fallen the army would have been captured or destroyed;" and Halleck comes up and generously declares in his dispatches: "He was a strong man in the high places of the field, and hope shone in him as a pillar of fire when it had gone out in all other men." It is useless to write what the world already knows so well; but it is pleasant to linger over these grand deeds and to

think from what source came the inspiration under which they were enacted.

Do you remember, oh, grateful country, the long march from the "River to the Sea?" Do you remember the storming of Fort McAllister, and the dispatch which, meaning so much, yet only modestly said, to the president, "I make you a Christmas present of the city of Savannah"?

A critic says: "Personally, General Sherman is anything but heroic in appearance, a plain looking man, six feet high, slender, brawny, like a vast bundle of muscles. He is abrupt and rapid in conversation; a man whose temperament will keep him forever busy."

You all know what his face is like; stern, yet kindly, lighted by a pleasant smile sometimes, and a pair of glorious eyes always.

GEN. ROBERT E. LEE.

R

OBERT E. LEE was born at Stratford, Westmoreland county, Virginia, January 19th, 1807. His father died while he was yet a child, and at the age of eighteen he entered the Military Academy at West Point, from which he graduated in four years. He stood second in a class of eighteen, many of whom have since risen to distinction. Some of them fought at his side and shared the brilliant conquest of Mexico—. and in the sharper and sudden conflict where, on southern battlefields, brothers stood face to face as foemen, they met again. It was no war for conquest now, but a war for principles-no war for glory, but a war for that which was dearer than life to each-the rights of the land they loved, and though divided in opinion and in action, they were brothers still, and equally honorable.

When he left college he was at once appointed to a lieutenancy in the corps of topographical engineers. When the Mexican war

opened, Lee was appointed chief engineer of the army, under General Wool, and it was to his skill that General Scott was always pleased to admit that he owed the victory of Vera Cruz. He was placed on the general's staff, and the skill and bravery of the young officer was often referred to by his seniors in command. He received two promotions in the campaign. For his noble conduct at Cerro Gordo he was breveted major, and the laurels thickened in his wreath of glory at Contreras, and at the terrible battle of Chepultepec. He was appointed to the rank of lieutenant colonel, and at the end of the war was made Superintendent at West Point, still retaining his military rank. While he was yet at the head of the academy, two regiments were ordered by Congress to be raised, equipped, and sent to the Texas frontier. Of the second regiment Colonel Lee was appointed Lieutenant Colonel, and remained four years in the southwest fighting the Indians and performing general garrison duty. Upon his return from Texas he went to Europe, where he studied army tactics closely, storing away in his mind many a suggestion which came to be of use to him in after years.

He was a man of pleasing appearance, fascinating manners, and possessed a high type of physical beauty. He soon became a general favorite in the old world, where he had relatives among the nobility, having descended from the Lees of Ditchley, one of whom married a daughter of Charles II. and the Duchess of 'Cleveland.

Up to the time of the breaking out of the war between the North and South, General Lee had taken no part in politics; indeed, had little taste for it. With all his heart he loved the Union, but with all his soul he loved the State that gave him birththat had been the home of his fathers, far back beyond the Revolutionary War, and he believed that he owed a stronger allegiance to Virginia in particular than to the United States at large. There was much in the character of General Lee that was noble, and now all that was strongest and best was roused into action. The struggle was long and severe. He was not prepared for neither did he desire secession. General Scott, who may be said to have been the foster-father of Lee's military talents, appreciated him very highly, and when he resigned his commission in the Union army remonstrated most earnestly with him; but Lee