Sherman's Memoirs, Part Three

Reading San Francisco #17

The last time we left William T. Sherman and his Memoirs the year was 1848 and the young lieutenant had just been one of the first people in the world to know that gold had been discovered in California. In this week Reading San Francisco, we’ll look at Sherman’s book all the way up to 1857.

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Christmas 1849 found Sherman at the Presidio in San Francisco, waiting for new orders. He had missed his chance for glory during the Mexican-American War. He had missed his chance to get rich during the Gold Rush. Sherman was about to turn 30 and it was bleak. Finally, a ship arrived from Oregon bearing his new orders. He was to return to the East Coast to deliver a report on California to General Winfield “Fuss and Feathers” Scott in New York City. 

Reaching New York some months later, General Scott quizzed Sherman “pretty closely in regard to things on the Pacific coast, especially the politics, and startled me with the assertion that ‘our country was on the eve of a terrible civil war.’ He interested me by anecdotes of my old army comrades in his recent battles around the city of Mexico, and I felt deeply the fact that our country had passed through a foreign war, that my comrades had fought great battles, and yet I had not heard a hostile shot. Of course, I thought it the last and only chance in my day, and that my career as a soldier was at an end.”