The Fateful Lightning (75 page)

FRANKLIN

Purchasing his way aboard a steamer, Franklin leaves the camp of the 113th Ohio and makes the journey back to Savannah. Within weeks, he and Clara are married by his friend, the Baptist preacher Garrison Frazier.

Franklin attempts to interview with Georgia’s former governor, and Franklin’s former master, Howell Cobb, primarily to discover the welfare of Franklin’s aged father. But Cobb still holds tightly to the principles he supported during the war, most especially slavery, and only provides Franklin with the information that Henry is deceased. Convinced by Clara that his former master’s reluctance to acknowledge any of his abuses is a blessing in disguise, ensuring that Franklin will never seek further employment from Cobb, Franklin instead accepts
the opportunity of a parcel of land offered him by the Freedmen’s Bureau, and he and Clara settle south of Savannah. But Franklin’s innate curiosity makes for restlessness, and he cannot settle for life on a farm, even one that he owns. In 1868, with their two young children in tow, he and Clara move north, arriving in Washington City, where he witnesses the inauguration of Ulysses Grant as president. He accepts a job with a printing firm, but he is drawn by tales of life in other exotic cities, and so, in 1875, he and Clara move to New York City, settling in Harlem.

He seeks and finds a job at the Lenox Library, discovering the world of the written word, which he embraces with a level of enthusiasm that seriously impresses his colleagues. In 1895, the New York Public Library is founded, absorbing New York’s smaller libraries, and Franklin accepts a position as assistant to the librarian, a position he holds until his retirement in 1917. But he and Clara do not enjoy a lengthy period of retirement. Clara becomes a victim of the influenza epidemic of 1918, and dies. Franklin continues a listless existence, visited frequently by his children and grandchildren, until his death in 1928. His family’s best estimate is that he is eighty-two years old. He and Clara are buried in Harlem.

His oldest son, whom Clara names Sherman, serves in the all-Negro 10th Cavalry Regiment in the mid-1890s, the former “Buffalo Soldiers,” made famous not only by their segregation from the rest of the army, but by their commander, John J. Pershing. It is here that Pershing receives the moniker “Black Jack.”

As Franklin sought employment in the cities of the North, it became even more imperative that he present himself with a first and last name. After 1870, he was known to all as Abraham Lincoln Franklin.

OLIVER O. HOWARD

Immediately after the war, Howard is instrumental in assisting to assimilate newly freed slaves into American political and social culture, serving as the first commissioner of the Freedmen’s Bureau. In 1867, his work contributes to the founding of Howard University, in Washington, D.C., where he serves as president for the institution’s first six years.

In 1874 he returns to military service, is named commander of the Department of the Columbia, and is stationed at Fort Vancouver, in Washington Territory, where he leads the government’s campaign against the Nez Percé Indians, which results in the capture of Chief Joseph. He returns to the East and in 1881 serves as superintendent of the United States Military Academy for two years. Returning to the field, he commands the Department of the Platte, and the Military Division of the Pacific. In 1888, he returns east once more, assumes command of the Department of the East, at Governor’s Island, New York, until his retirement in 1894.

He is awarded the Medal of Honor in 1893 for his actions at the Battle of Fair Oaks, on the Virginia peninsula.

Though Howard is faulted for his Eleventh Corps’s collapse at both Chancellorsville and Gettysburg, his service to his nation both in and out of the service elevates his reputation as one of the most accomplished officers from the Civil War, and long after.

He dies in 1909, at age seventy-eight, and is buried in Burlington, Vermont.

HENRY SLOCUM

Slocum resigns from the army in the fall of 1865, becomes active in Democratic Party politics. He runs unsuccessfully for secretary of state for New York, and for a time returns to the practice of law. Finally elected to Congress in 1869, Slocum serves two terms, but fails to win reelection and returns to his law practice in Syracuse, New York.

Active in civic affairs, Slocum is appointed to head New York City’s Department of City Works, and is instrumental in the approval for construction of the Brooklyn Bridge.

He returns to politics, and in 1882 is elected to Congress for a third term.

Always active in the concerns for aging and disabled veterans, Slocum heads the New York State Soldiers and Sailors Home in Bath, New York, and actively participates in the commission overseeing the construction and placement of the monuments on the battlefield at Gettysburg.

He dies in 1894, at age sixty-six, and is buried at Greenwood Cemetery, in Brooklyn, New York.

HENRY HITCHCOCK

Sherman’s most educated adjutant resigns from the army in June 1865, and after a four-month journey through Europe, he returns to his law practice in St. Louis, Missouri. A fierce devotee of the law, he founds the St. Louis Law School in 1867, serves as its president until 1881. In 1878, he is a cofounder of the American Bar Association, and serves as that body’s president in 1889.

Hitchcock’s memoirs and collections of letters are assembled and published in 1927, long after his death. The accounts are a deeply revealing examination of Hitchcock’s own concerns with and reservations about the campaigns of his commander, and especially his personal evolution as Hitchcock becomes more accepting of military realities. By the end of his service to Sherman, and in the years beyond, Hitchcock is an ardent supporter of Sherman’s tactics, and is unfailing in his loyalty and devotion to Sherman and his career, writing, “To the casual observer, Sherman’s quick and nervous manner, the flash of his eagle eye, the brusque command, might give token of hasty conclusions, of disregard of detail, of eager and impatient habits of thought. There could be no greater error. The atmosphere of his mind was lucidity itself. What he saw was pictured there, once for all.”

He dies in 1902, at age seventy-two. Upon his death, Washington University in St. Louis salutes Hitchcock with this resolution: “His inimitable charm of conversation, his literary attainments, his broad grasp of political information, his profound learning and marked success in his own profession, and his zealous support of every educational interest, all found their origin in his undivided devotion to common welfare.”

LEWIS M. DAYTON

Sherman’s chief adjutant general serves his commander from as far back as the Shiloh campaign in 1862. Dayton is promoted to colonel in summer 1865. After the war, Dayton settles in Cincinnati, remains
active in veterans’ affairs, attending and organizing many reunions, almost always alongside Sherman.

He dies in 1891, at age fifty-five.

JAMES McCOY

McCoy serves as adjutant to Sherman from the Battle of Shiloh, promoted to lieutenant colonel by order of the president after the war. McCoy continues to serve on Sherman’s staff until his death, in 1875, at age forty-eight. His funeral is attended by Sherman, along with all of Sherman’s remaining staff. McCoy is buried in his family’s plot at Greenlawn Cemetery, in Columbus, Ohio.

HUGH JUDSON KILPATRICK

Nicknamed “Kill Cavalry” for his impetuous and misguided assaults, which often result in casualty counts far worse for his own men, Kilpatrick nonetheless attracts respectful attention, and he pens two plays, which are thinly veiled references to his own heroism. He lectures frequently and is considered an entertaining, if not self-aggrandizing, speaker.

Kilpatrick resigns from the army in December 1865 and attempts a career in politics. He is named minister to Chile by President Andrew Johnson and remains in that post until 1870, when his utter inability to perform with any level of diplomacy causes controversy with nearly everyone he serves. He nearly starts a war with Spain, forcing then-president Grant to remove Kilpatrick from the post.

While in Chile, he marries Louisa Valdivieso, whose father is an influential Chilean political figure. They have two daughters, Julia and Laura. Laura’s lineage leads eventually to her granddaughter, the famed socialite Gloria Vanderbilt, and subsequently, Kilpatrick’s great-great-grandson, CNN anchorman Anderson Cooper.

Angry at Grant, Kilpatrick changes party affiliations, and supports Horace Greeley in the 1872 election, which Greeley loses. Always seeking the opportunity to align himself with the winner, Kilpatrick changes parties again, and in 1876 supports a successful Rutherford B. Hayes, who succeeds in defeating the former Federal army commander Winfield Hancock. In 1881 his reward for loyalty to the Republican administration is a second appointment to Chile, but
Kilpatrick’s health fails, and he dies shortly thereafter, in Santiago. He is forty-five.

He is eventually interred at West Point.

WILLIAM T. SHERMAN

Perhaps no military leader in American history is as polarizing a figure. To many, he is the finest battlefield commander of the Civil War, and perhaps ranks above any other similar figure from American military history, including George Patton and Douglas MacArthur. But to others, notably those whose ancestry lies in the deep South, Sherman is often regarded as a savage and brutal martinet, whose disregard for human suffering and destruction of private property in his campaigns in Mississippi, Georgia, and the Carolinas makes his very name a profanity.

There is no definitive argument either way, though to this day, those arguments continue.

In May 1865, the same month as his troops make their indelible impression upon the nation during the grand review, Sherman writes,

I confess, without shame, that I am sick and tired of fighting—its glory is all moonshine; even success the most brilliant is over dead and mangled bodies, with the anguish and lamentations of distant families, appealing to me for sons, husbands and fathers….Tis only those who have never heard a shot, never heard the shriek and groans of the wounded or lacerated…that cry aloud for more blood, more vengeance, more desolation
.

In June 1865, Sherman accepts command of the Military Division of the Mississippi, which eventually includes all territory from the Mississippi River to the Rocky Mountains. As such, he oversees the expansion of the West, and is charged with protecting the migration of white settlers, and extending the various railroad lines that make that settlement more feasible. He supervises various bloody conflicts with Indian tribes, though his greatest achievement with the Native Americans involves peaceful treaties, some of which assist Native
Americans to regain their lost lands. Much of Sherman’s reputation for brutality comes from the actions of his subordinates, notably Phil Sheridan, who, as he had done throughout the Civil War, is a far more reckless and brutal adversary to anyone who stands in Sheridan’s way. Though Sherman supports Sheridan, he recognizes that the
total war
tactic both men had used during the war is not always the most appropriate when dealing with Indian tribes.

In 1866, Sherman is promoted to lieutenant general, and in 1869, when Ulysses Grant is elected president, Sherman is named by Grant as commanding general of the United States Army, and promoted to full general (four stars).

But Sherman’s reign is not without controversy, and he clashes frequently with Secretaries of War John Rawlins and William Belknap. Escaping official Washington as much as his rank allows, Sherman relocates his headquarters to St. Louis.

To the modern eye, one of Sherman’s most regrettable decisions involves the obliteration of the free-roaming herds of western buffalo, the loss of which Sherman believes will force the Indian tribes to submit to government control.

He is outraged by the massacre at the Little Big Horn, and the death of George Armstrong Custer emboldens Sherman to increase the army’s aggressive violence against warring tribes. But through it all, Sherman continues to offer moderate views on the expansion of white settlers into Indian lands. It is yet another distinct contradiction that rivals the reputation he had established during the Civil War.

In 1880, Sherman addresses a public forum in Columbus, Ohio, where he states, “There is many a boy here today who looks on war as all glory, but boys, it is all hell.” Thus is his most famous quote given birth.

In 1881, Sherman recognizes the need for properly trained and educated military officers, and he establishes what is now the Command and General Staff College, at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas.

He retires in 1884, and lives out his remaining years in New York City. But he cannot escape the public eye, and is a highly regarded public speaker, so much so that he is pressed to run for national office. To those who insist on including his name as a presidential candidate
in 1884, he replies, “I will not accept if nominated and will not serve if elected.” His negative view of politics most certainly is a reflection of the bitter conflicts he endured with official Washington, most notably Edwin Stanton, throughout the final weeks of the war.

His wife, Ellen, remains a devout Catholic, and his son Thomas seeks the priesthood, a decision Sherman angrily dismisses. The friction this causes is a stain on his family bond that is never reconciled.

Sherman dies in New York City in 1891, at age seventy-one. He is buried in Calvary Cemetery in St. Louis, Missouri.

I
n 1875, Sherman’s memoir was published, which provided ample ammunition to those who supported him and those who despised him. Regardless of which side one takes (and few are in the middle), there is one indisputable fact: Through the first two years of the Civil War, the South and its generals gained advantages that could have won them the war. After the combined disasters of Gettysburg and Vicksburg, in July 1863, a Northern victory became inevitable. Though the Southern armies might have continued to fight, it was by the overwhelming superiority of Northern resources that the end came as it did. But in this author’s opinion, two men, Ulysses Grant and William T. Sherman, brought the war to an end far more quickly, and far more decisively, than any other Federal commander could have done. William T. Sherman understood that war causes pain, and that the greater pain one inflicts, the more rapidly a war can be brought to a close. In that, he succeeded brilliantly.