Читать книгу Life and Military Career of Major-General William Tecumseh Sherman - P. C. Headley - Страница 4

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The Boyhood of Heroes—The ancestry of William Teeumseh Sherman—The death of his Father—Why the name of the Indian Chief was given him—The Birth-place of William Tecumseh.

Y youthful reader, you have heard the adage, “the boy is father of the man;” which means clearly, that the principles and habits of early years form the character and destiny of after life. And you will find in the history of nearly all great and good men, in this country certainly, that they began, in humble circumstances, their career. Not that poverty is necessary to success, but the struggle to carve one’s own way in the world, the almost unaided effort to secure an education for a profession or business, develops and strengthens character.

Another thing is true of deservedly eminent men; they were obedient and dutiful while under the parental roof. A selfish, rebellious boy, never made an honored member of society and of the State. You will find illustrations of these truths in the lives of Washington, Adams, Lincoln, Grant, Mitchel, Sherman, and many others, whose fame is lasting as our institutions.

In the year 1634 the Hon. Samuel Sherman, his brother, Rev. John Sherman, and their cousin, Captain John Sherman, who were residents of Dedham, England, came to this country. This was only thirteen years after the May Flower, with its pilgrim company, rocked in Massachusetts Bay. There were no ocean steamers then proudly ploughing the broad Atlantic. In a ship like the plain bark which bore the first colony, whose free principles, civil and religious, lie at the foundation of this Republic, they embarked for the wilderness of the New World.

You can see, in imagination, the white-winged vessel glide from its haven into the “wide, wide sea,” and float like a speck over the waste of waters. The winds blow, the crested billows toss the Shermans, with the rest of the ship’s company, about for weeks; they little dreaming of quite a different storm, in which a descendant would figure so conspicuously, just two hundred and thirty years later. At length the ship reached Boston harbor.

The Rev. John Sherman; a graduate of Immanuel College, “and a Puritan,” went at once to his work. The Sabbath dawned, and under an ancient tree in the present town of Watertown, three miles from Boston, you might have seen a quiet and attentive congregation listening to his first sermon in America. Here he settled, after receiving a call to Milford, Conn. Some of his descendants were excellent and popular divines. The captain also settled there; and from his branch of the family came Roger Sherman, the signer of the Declaration of Independence.

The Hon. Samuel Sherman pushed on to Wethersfield, Conn. Soon after he removed to Stamford, and finally settled down in Stratford. The “coat of arms,” that is to say, the family escutcheon or badge, bears a lion rampant, and a sea lion on the crest. The motto is: “Conquer death by virtue.” From him descended the “hero of our story,” whose grandfather, Taylor Sherman, for many years judge, died May 4th, 1815, in the ripeness of his manhood, at the age of fifty-eight.

The widow, like the families of Generals Grant and Mitchel, and of our most worthy President, turned her face toward the far West; for it was then a long and weary way to the rich valleys of the Mississippi and its tributaries. The beautiful State of Ohio—the empire State of the western world—became her home. The prospects, for her sons especially, on the cheap, rich soil, and in the rising towns of that vast and new territory, were much better than in New England.

The pleasant settlement of Lancaster was their first residence. Subsequently she removed to Mansfield, in the same State, where she died in 1848. Her children were Charles Robert, who was born September 26th, 1788, Daniel and Betsey. Charles married Mary Hoyt, May 8th, 1810, and settled in Lancaster. His profession was law, in which he excelled particularly as an advocate; he was very eloquent and successful in pleading the cause of his clients before the judge and jury.

In the year 1823 he was elected judge of the Superior Court of Ohio. He continued in this high position till June 20th, 1829. Could you have stood in the court room on that early summer day, you would have seen the fine intelligent face of the judge suddenly grow pale, followed by an expression of suffering. The eyes of the “gentlemen of the bar,” and of citizens present, are turned with anxious interest toward him. Soon after, he is compelled to leave the bench and remove to his private apartment, where he rapidly sinks into the embrace of death. His disease was supposed to be that fatal scourge of eastern lands and our own—the cholera. Probably my young reader was not born when it spread terror through nearly all the cities of our Union. In 1840 his remains were removed to Lancaster, Ohio. Should you become a western lawyer, you may have occasion to consult his decisions, contained in the first three volumes of the Ohio Reports.

This gifted, highly educated and popular judge left a widow with eleven children. She was a devoted wife and mother, and a communicant in the Presbyterian Church. Charles T., the eldest, is now a successful lawyer in Washington, D. C.; the next in order was Mary Elizabeth; the third, James; the fourth, Amelia; the fifth, Julia; and the sixth, William Tecumseh, our hero. After him were L. Parker, John, the able and loyal senator from Ohio, who was born May 10th, 1823; and after him were Susan D. Hoyt and Frances B.

William Tecumseh was born February 8th, 1820. It was quite difficult to decide upon a name for the boy. “What shall we call him?” was the topic of much domestic chat. Two or three favorite names were suggested and discussed, but still the child was nameless.

One day the father, who had seen the Indian chieftain Tecumseh, and admired that really great man, came in and said, “I have the name of a better man than either we have mentioned.” The eye and ear of those around the cradle were turned to know whom he could be. The bright boy only seemed to have no interest in the matter. “Tecumseh, we will name him,” was the almost startling announcement. It was softened down to the tone of civilized life by the addition of William. The further reason for the selection of a warrior’s name who fought for the English, I will tell you, as I did the story of “Ulysses S. Grant,” now his lieutenant-general, in the language of another who wrote me on the subject: “Tecumseh, the celebrated chief and warrior of the Shawanoese tribe, who was killed at the battle of the Thames, October 5th, 1813, was for a long time kept in rather fond remembrance in this immediate vicinity, by those who were engaged in that conflict, of whom Captain Sanderson is still a resident here; because they knew that several times he prevented the shedding of innocent blood. This fact, with the desire of Mr. Sherman to have one son educated for military life, led him to choose Tecumseh for the boy, he being born not long after the death of that chieftain.”

Tecumthé, or as it is written Tecumseh, a Shawanoese Indian, was born in Piqua, since called West Boston, on Mad River, in Clarke County, Ohio. Tecumseh’s grandmother was the daughter of a Southern English colonial governor, who fancied the handsome young Creek, and married him. Their only son took for his wife a Shawanese woman, who gave birth to Tecumseh while on a journey from the southern to the western hunting grounds. A few years later three more sons were born at the same time, one of whom, Tenskwautawaw, became the famous prophet who was the artful and unprincipled instrument of his brother, Tecumseh, in his great lifework, which was to arouse and unite the western tribes in the last determined effort to drive and keep their white neighbors from the valley of the Mississippi. While a boy, his splendid genius gave him the leadership among his playmates, and he “was in the habit of arranging them in parties for the purpose of fighting sham battles.”

When about fifteen years old, he was so shocked at the scene then common among the Indians—burning prisoners at the stake—that he determined to give his voice against the horrid custom. The young reformer first displayed his commanding eloquence in his bold condemnation of the practice, which through his powerful influence gradually disappeared. He advocated total abstinence from ardent spirits, the principal source of savage degradation and destruction, and urged his people to drop all superfluous ornaments, and abstain from the use of articles sold by the traders. Like his illustrious namesake, our hero, he was mighty in speech as well as in the battle-field. I will give in illustration a brief address made August 12th, 1810, to Governor Harrison, whom he met in council at Vincennes, on the Wabash River. The fine words and grand views of the warrior, will make you think of our own Tecumseh marching over the very country from which the ancestors of the Shawanoese came:

“I have made myself what I am; and I would that I could make the red people as great as the conceptions of my mind, when I think of the Great Spirit that rules over all. I would not then come to Governor Harrison to ask him to tear the treaty; but I would say to him, Brother, you have liberty to return to your own country. Once there was no white man in all this country; then it belonged to red men, children of the same parents, placed on it by the Great Spirit to keep it, to travel over it, to eat its fruits, and fill it with the same race—once a happy race, but now made miserable by the white people, who are never contented, but always encroaching. They have driven us from the great salt water, forced us over the mountains, and would shortly push us into the lakes; but we are determined to go no further. The only way to stop this evil is for all the red men to unite in claiming a common and equal right in the land, as it was at first and should be now—for it never was divided, and belongs to all. No tribe has a right to sell, even to each other, much less to strangers, who demand all, and will take no less. The white people have no right to take the land from the Indians, who had it first—it is theirs. They may sell, but all must join. Any sale not made by all is not good. The late sale is bad; it was made by a part only. Part do not know how to sell. It requires all to make a bargain for all.”

This upright, humane, and unequalled warrior, after struggling in vain to save his declining race, fell gloriously during the last war with England, in the battle of the Thames, not many miles from Detroit, on the Canada side.

His American namesake, by a singular course of providential events, as you know and will read in the record of his life more fully, became the greatest military commander of the age, in the very region from which, with his people, he emigrated to the West.

I will now take you to the place of William Tecumseh’s birth. Lancaster is in Fairfield County, Ohio, on the Hockhocking River, twenty-eight miles east of Columbus, the capital of the State. The valley is very beautiful. It was the home of the Wyandots less than a century ago, and was called Tarh or Crowtown, from the name of the principal chief. His wigwam was on the bank-border of a prairie, near a clear and living spring, from whose gushing waters he slaked his thirst for many years.

In 1800 a Mr. Fane laid out Lancaster on Mount Pleasant, called by the Indians, who at that time still lingered there, “Standing-Stone,” because the summit was formed of masses of sandstone. It was a place of popular resort on account of the extensive and magnificent views of the surrounding country. Duke Saxe Weimar, who travelled in this country about forty years since, carved his name on its rock.

For several years after Lancaster was settled, the people had a curious regulation, of which I must tell you, and something like which would not be a bad arrangement at the present day. Stumps of the forest trees so lately there, were scattered along the streets; and when a man was caught intoxicated, the penalty was, the removal of a stump. The drunkards and the stumps both were thinned out; for whenever a citizen went staggering among the remnants of the primeval woods, he was watched till sober enough to go to work, then set to digging at the roots. Tipplers were careful to walk abroad in straight lines; and if one failed to keep within the limits of temperate drinking, he must take good exercise at the stump, which was both a public exposure and a blessing to the village.

Lancaster is now a handsome city, full of western activity, and keeping step to the music—

“Westward the star of empire takes its way.”

Such was and is the birthplace of William Tecumseh Sherman.

WILLIAM TECUMSEH IN THE SAND BANK.