Sunday, April 30, 2023

Lieutenant-General William T. Sherman to Senator John Sherman, September 12, 1867

HEADQUARTERS, OMAHA, NEB., Sept. 12, 1867.
Dear Brother:

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As to politics, I hardly know if I should approach Grant, as I can hardly judge of the influences that have operated on him since we were together last November. In accepting the acting office of Secretary of War, I doubt not he realized the delicacy of his position, and was willing to risk the chances. It is not for the interest of the United States that in a temporary political office he should sink his character as a military officer. In the former he should be in harmony with the executive, but in the latter he should be simply a high sheriff to execute the process of the court. My belief is that Congress cannot qualify the President's right to command the army and navy. He is the Constitutional Commander-in-Chief. But Congress can make rules and laws for the government of the army and thereby control the President as such Commander-in-Chief. In trying to array the President and General Grant in antagonism, Congress did wrong, and reaction is sure to result. It damages all parties, because few people take the trouble to study out the right, yet time moves along so rapidly and the election of a new President will soon settle these and all kindred questions. Your course has been fair, and you cannot wish to alter or amend it. Our country ought not to be ruled by the extreme views of Sumner or Stevens any more than by the extreme views of Calhoun, Yancey, etc., that have produced our Civil War. There is some just middle course, and events will flow into it whether any one man or set of men is wise enough to foresee it and lay down its maxims. I think Chase is the ablest man of his school, and I would personally prefer him to Wade, Colfax, or any of the men whose names I notice in this connection. Whether the precedent of a Chief Justice being a political aspirant may not be bad, I don't know. This is the Mexican rule, and has resulted in anarchy.

I don't think Grant, Sheridan, Thomas, or any real military man wants to be President. All see that, however pure or exalted their past reputations may have been, it don't shield them from the lies and aspersions of a besotted press. . . . Grant writes me in the most unreserved confidence, and never has said a word that looks like wanting the office of President. His whole nature is to smooth over troubles, and he waits with the most seeming indifference, under false and unjust assertions, till the right time, when the truth peeps out, so as to defy contradiction. . . .

Affectionately,
W. T. SHERMAN.

SOURCE: Rachel Sherman Thorndike, Editor, The Sherman Letters: Correspondence Between General and Senator Sherman from 1837 to 1891, p. 294-5

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