Memoirs of General W. T. Sherman, Volume I., Part 1

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William Tecumseh Sherman. Memoirs of General W. T. Sherman, Volume I., Part 1

PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION

CHAPTER I. FROM 1820 TO THE MEXICAN WAR

CHAPTER II. EARLY RECOLLECTIONS of CALIFORNIA

CHAPTER III. EARLY RECOLLECTIONS OF CALIFORNIA—(CONTINUED)

CHAPTER IV. MISSOURI, LOUISIANA, AND CALIFORNIA

CHAPTER V. CALIFORNIA

CHAPTER VI. CALIFORNIA, NEW YORK, AND KANSAS

CHAPTER VII. LOUISIANA

CHAPTER VIII. MISSOURI

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Another ten years have passed since I ventured to publish my Memoirs, and, being once more at leisure, I have revised them in the light of the many criticisms public and private.

My habit has been to note in pencil the suggestions of critics, and to examine the substance of their differences; for critics must differ from the author, to manifest their superiority.

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Her sister was more demonstrative, and wailed as one lost to all hope and life. She appealed to us all to do miracles to save the struggling men in the waves, though two hours had already passed, and to have gone out then among those heavy breakers, with an inexperienced crew, would have been worse than suicide. All I could do was to reorganize the guard at the beach, take the two desolate females up to the fort, and give them the use of my own quarters. Very soon their anguish was quieted, and they began to look, for the return of their steamer with Ashlock and his rescued crew. The next day I went again to the beach with Lieutenant Ord, and we found that one or two bodies had been washed ashore, torn all to pieces by the sharks, which literally swarmed the inlet at every new tide. In a few days the weather moderated, and the steamer returned from the south, but the surf was so high that she anchored a mile off. I went out myself, in the whale or surf boat, over that terrible bar with a crew of, soldiers, boarded the steamer, and learned that none other of Ashlock's crew except the one before mentioned had been saved; but, on the contrary, the captain of the steamer had sent one of his own boats to their rescue, which was likewise upset in the surf, and, out of the three men in her, one had drifted back outside the breakers, clinging to the upturned boat, and was picked up. This sad and fatal catastrophe made us all afraid of that bar, and in returning to the shore I adopted the more prudent course of beaching the boat below the inlet, which insured us a good ducking, but was attended with less risk to life.

I had to return to the fort and bear to Mrs. Ashlock the absolute truth, that her husband was lost forever.

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