accepted the position of manager of the branch banking-house of Messrs. Lucas, Turner & Company, at San Francisco, California, and accordingly went a second time to the Pacific, intending now to establish his home there.

During all this time the seeds of discord had been ripening in the hot soil of slavery. The Southern statesmen, accustomed to rule, began to perceive that the country would not always submit to be ruled by them; that hostility to slavery was a sentiment deeply rooted in the minds of the people of the Free States, and daily spreading its influence; and that the accession of men holding these opinions to power in the national councils and the national executive, meant nothing less than such a limitation of the further extension of slavery as would be fatal to its existence, even where it was already established. Slavery, they believed, could not thrive in contact with freedom; and they had come to regard slavery as essential to their political and social existence. Without a slave caste, they could have no aristocratic caste. No class can enjoy exclusive rights except at the expense of another, whose rights are curtailed or extinguished. They began to isolate themselves from the North, as they termed the Free States; from its dangerous opinions, by refusing to read or hear them; from its society, by withdrawing their sons and daughters from Northern schools and colleges, and by declining to associate with Northern men and women who were not well known to be free from the pernicious doctrines; and finally, they prepared to throw off their political allegiance to the Government of the United States the moment it should have passed beyond their control. The Northern politicians, accustomed to follow the lead of their Southern associates, generally believed that the defeat of Fremont, in 1856, as the Republican candidate for the presidency, had insured the perpetuity of the Union; the Southern politicians, generally, believed that the date of its dissolution was postponed during the next presidential term, and that four years and a facile President were given them to prepare for it. And they began to do so.

The pro-slavery leaders were well aware that the attempted overthrow of the National Government would be likely, even in the disguise of peaceable secession, to be resisted by force. They accordingly got every thing in readiness to carry out their plans by force. The wiser heads among them hoped, if they did not altogether expect, to be allowed to secede in peace, but they were as determined as the rest to appeal to war in the last resort. Accordingly, during Mr. Buchanan's Administration, there was set on foot throughout the slaveholding States a movement embodying the reorganization of the militia, the establishment and enlargement of State military academies, and the collection of arms, ammunition, and warlike materials of all kinds. The federal Secretary of War, Mr. Floyd, thoroughly in the interests of the pro-slavery conspirators, aided them by sending to the arsenals in the Slave States large quantities of the national arms and military supplies; the quotas of the Southern States under the militia laws were anticipated, in some cases by several years; and he caused large sales of arms to be secretly made, at low prices, to the agents of those States. The pro-slavery leaders then began, quietly, to select and gather round them the men whom they needed, and upon whom they thought they could rely. Unable always to explain to these men their purposes, they were often compelled to trust to circumstances and the force of association to complete the work; and in doing so, they occasionally, though not often, made mistakes.

Among the men they fixed upon was Captain Sherman. Recognizing his aptitude in military art and science, the leaders in Louisiana determined to place him at the head of the new State Military Academy at Alexandria. It was explained to him that the object of establishing the school was to aid in suppressing negro insurrections, to enable the State to protect her borders from the Indian incursions, then giving trouble in Arkansas and Texas, and to form a nucleus for defence, in case of an attack by a foreign enemy.

It is rare, indeed, that a man whose youth has been spent in the army does not, in his maturer years, retain a lurking de

sire for the old life, the old companions, the old ways. Let the temptation be offered in a moment when the cares and details of civil life look more than ordinarily dull, when the future seems clouded, and the warm memories of former days may present a contrast too vivid for most men to resist. Cincinnatus leaves the plough and returns with the senators to the camp. So it was with Captain Sherman. Messrs. Lucas Turner & Company had broken up their branch-house at San Francisco. The offer was in a line with his associations, his tastes, and his ambition. He accordingly accepted the office, and entered upon his duties as Superintendent of the Louisiana State Military Academy, early in the year 1860. The liberal salary of five thousand dollars a year was attached to the office.

The efficiency which Captain Sherman here displayed confirmed the leaders in that State in the correctness of their choice, and satisfied them that he was a man to be kept at any price. They were met at the outset by a deep-seated loyalty, by a deep-rooted attachment and fidelity to the Union, upon which they had by no means calculated. Every effort was expended to convert him to their way of thinking, but in vain. Surface opinions change with the wind, but it is useless to argue against fundamental beliefs. And such was the charac

ter of Sherman's attachment to the Union.

As events ripened, he saw clearly that the election of Mr. Lincoln to the presidency would be followed by the general secession of the Southern States, and that secession meant war. When, at length, after using his influence to its fullest extent in favor of the Union, he perceived that the result could no longer be avoided, he decided upon his own course, and communicated his decision to the Governor of the State in this clear and straightforward letter, dated January 18, 1861:

"SIR-AS I occupy a quasi-military position under this State, I deem it proper to acquaint you that I accepted such position when Louisiana was a State in the Union, and when the motto of the seminary, inserted in marble over the main door, was:

By the liberality of the General Government of the United States: The Union-Esto Perpetua.'

"Recent events foreshadow a great change, and it becomes all men to choose. If Louisiana withdraws from the Federal Union, I prefer to maintain my allegiance to the old Constitution as long as a fragment of it survives, and my longer stay here would be wrong in every sense of the word. In that event, I beg you will send or appoint some authorized agent to take charge of the arms and munitions of war here belonging to the State, or direct me what disposition should be made of them.

"And furthermore, as President of the Board of Supervisors, I beg you to take immediate steps to relieve me as superintendent the moment the State determines 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, of course, promptly accepted, and he at once returned to St. Louis. In consequence of the uncertain aspect of political affairs, he had deemed it most prudent that his family should not accompany him to the South.

He was not destined to remain long inactive. The crisis for which the pro-slavery leaders had been so long preparing was precipitated by the rashness of the more incautious among themselves, and hurried forward by the frenzy of the people. The far-sighted conspirators had proposed to themselves to capture Washington before the North should be able to organize resistance, and to proclaim themselves the true and lawful Government of the United States. They would have declared Mr. Lincoln's election, with the avowed purpose, among others, of disregarding what they considered as their constitutional right of holding slaves in the Territories, as unconstitutional, and therefore null, and would have based their assumption of power on the right of self-preservation. From their knowledge of the disposition of most of the foreign ministers resident at the Federal capital, they expected their recognition by the leading European powers to follow closely upon the act. They counted

upon the trade-loving and the peace-loving instincts of the people of the Free States to keep the North inert. The great Central and Western States would probably be with them, and New England they would gladly leave, as they were accustomed to say, out in the cold." But while the cool-headed conspirators plotted thus skilfully, one element of their calculation failed. It had been necessary to their plans to fire the Southern heart to the point of rebellion: the Southern brain took fire as well. Events took the bit in their teeth. On the 12th of April, 1861, Mr. Davis gave the order to open upon Fort Sumter. At noon the first gun was fired, and the war was begun.

Sherman had gone to Washington about the time of Mr. Lincoln's inauguration, and had talked of the state of affairs with characteristic freedom. He believed that war was inevitable; that it would be no pantomime of wooden swords, but a long and bitter struggle. He endeavored in vain, in earnest nervous language, to impress his convictions upon the Administration. Nobody listened to him except the President, who listened to everybody. Sherman went to him to offer his services in any capacity. His strong words and strong thoughts elicited a smile from Mr. Lincoln. "We shall not need many men like you," he said; "the affair will soon blow over." Some of Sherman's friends in the army, who knew his talents, and, like him, believed there would be a war, urged his appointment to the chief clerkship of the War Department, a position which at that time was always held by a confidential adviser of the Secretary of War; and somewhat later he was strongly recommended for the position of quartermastergeneral of the army, made vacant by the resignation of Brigadier-General Joseph E. Johnston. Neither application was successful.

Sherman knew the Southern people; the Administration did not, nor did the people of the North in general. In his own words, we were sleeping upon a volcano.

On the 15th of April, 1861, the President called for seventyfive thousand men to serve for three months, to be employed for the purpose of enforcing the laws of the United States, and