SKETCHES OF LEADING UNION GENERALS.

CHAPTER XXII.

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THE LEADING GENERALS IN THE CAMPAIGN.

Sketches of Major-General William Tecumseh Sherman.—Major-General George H. Thomas.-Major-General Hugh Judson Kilpatrick.-Major-General Oliver O. Howard.-Major-General James Birdseye McPherson.

NEXT in extent of command, and its importance in the vast field of strife, was the Department of the Mississippi, under the command of that gifted and splendid officer, Major-General Sherman, in whose rare company of subordinate chiefs were Thomas, Howard, Schofield, McPherson, and Kilpatrick.

Brief biographies of these brave men, at this period of rest and yet of preparation for the decisive campaign of the war, will gratify a rational curiosity, and add a personal interest to the narrative of the momentous times.

WILLIAM TECUMSEH SHERMAN,

Whose ancestors came from England and settled in Stratford, Connecticut, in 1634, was born in Lancaster, Ohio, February 8, 1820. His father, an eminent jurist of that State, died in 1848, leaving the widow, an intelligent and devout woman, with eleven children. Honorable John Sherman, of the United States Senate, is a younger brother of William Tecumseh, whose Indian name was given him by his father, because he knew and admired the celebrated warrior after whom he called his son.

The Honorable Thomas Ewing, a resident of Lancaster, knew that his gifted and departed friend had not left the large family a fortune. It would therefore be no easy task to educate and start them in the world. And his errand then was to ask the mother to commit one of the boys to his home and care.

He said, with a playful earnestness, "I must have the