FORT MOULTRIE, S.C., Jan. 19, 1844.
My Dear Brother:
It was about the middle of November, and on one of those mornings so peculiar
to your atmosphere, that I deposited my bones in the Chilicothe stage. I went
to Portsmouth, thence down the Ohio to Cincinnati, where I remained with Lamp a
couple of days, and then took my departure for St. Louis in the steamboat Manhattan,
loaded with every species of animal from men to Durham cattle. There were more
than 200 souls on board a second-class boat, from which circumstance you can
readily infer that the bodily comforts were not well cared for. Yet I was much
pleased. Louisville, at which we stopped several hours, is a beautiful place;
in fact, the whole river realized my wildest conceptions. In six days we
reached St. Louis, which, you know, is trying to rival our queen city; but,
although it has great merits and beauty beside a population of 30,000 people,
it has not that fixed and solid appearance that Cincinnati now wears as an
established city of business and manufacture. I spent ten days in and near St.
Louis, after which I embarked in a new and very fine boat, called the John Aull,
for New Orleans. . . . The trip cannot fail to interest one who has never been
in the South, but, as I was familiar there, it could not produce its full
effect. Imagine yourself, as I was, at the mouth of the Ohio in a heavy
snowstorm, the shores clothed in ghost-like garb; the following day the snow is
no longer seen, and before another day passes by the shores are clothed here and
there in green corn and grass. Soon the oak appears with its green leaves, then
the magnolia, orange, etc., and soon you find yourself down between the rich
sugar-fields of Louisiana, the stalks ungathered and waving beautifully and
luxuriantly in the breeze. . . . At Mobile I took a steamboat and ascended the
Alabama River to a town called Montgomery. There, on a vehicle called a car on
what was denominated a railroad to a town called Franklin, from which place I
staged it over roads such as you have about Mansfield, except the clay is
slipperier, the hills shorter and steeper, and the drivers such as can be had
nowhere else. Thus I went 120 miles to a town in Georgia called Griffin. Here I
waited twenty-four hours for the cars, which had as usual run off the track.
However, they came at last, and we started towards Macon, a distance of only
sixty miles, which it took us twelve hours to accomplish. However, at Macon I
found a well-finished railroad which led to Savannah, a distance of 190 miles,
over which we passed in exactly the same time that it took us the day before to
accomplish the sixty. From Savannah to Charleston I had the regular steamboat.
Thus it has taken me the whole sheet to give you an outline of my journey, the
details of which volumes would scarcely record. At last, on the 27th of
December, after an absence of five months and two days, I stood once more in my
old quarters at Ft. Moultrie. Since my return the weather has been so bright
and delightful that I have almost renounced all allegiance to Ohio, although it
contains all whom I love and regard as friends. I have been so busy of late
that I have not even been to Charleston to see my old acquaintances, and could
only steal time the other day to accept an invitation of some planters on an adjacent
island to participate in a fox hunt and the consequent dinner and frolic.
[W. T. Sherman]
SOURCE: Rachel
Sherman Thorndike, Editor, The Sherman Letters: Correspondence Between
General and Senator Sherman from 1837 to 1891, pp. 24-6
