on the fifteenth of November. The army marched by four roads,
as nearly parallel as could be found, starting at seven o'clock every
morning and covering fifteen miles every day. All railroads and other
property that might aid the Confederates were destroyed, the soldiers
were allowed to forage freely, and in consequence a swath of destruction
sixty miles wide and three hundred miles long was cut right across the
Confederacy. A locust would have had difficulty in finding anything to
eat after the army had passed. It encountered no effective resistance,
and by the middle of December, came within sight of the sea.

On December 21, Sherman entered Savannah, and wired Lincoln that he
presented him the city as a Christmas gift. Then he turned northward to
join Grant, taking Columbia, Fayetteville, Goldsboro and Raleigh, and
destroying Confederate arsenals, foundries, railroads and public works
of all descriptions. Lee had surrendered four days before Sherman
marched into Raleigh, and the next day a flag of truce from General
Joseph E. Johnston opened negotiations for the surrender of his army.

This, the virtual close of the Civil War, ended Sherman's career in the
field. In 1866, he was made lieutenant-general, and three years later
succeeded Grant as commander-in-chief of the army, retiring from the
service in 1884, at the age of sixty-four.

Whatever may have been the relative merits of Grant and Sherman as
commanders, there can be no question as to the greatest cavalry leader
in the Union armies, and one of the greatest in any army, Philip Henry
Sheridan. Above any cavalry leader, North or South, except "Stonewall"
Jackson, Sheridan possessed the power of rousing his men to the utmost
pitch of enthusiastic devotion; young, dashing and intrepid himself, his
men were ready to follow him anywhere--and it was usually to victory
that he led them.

Sheridan was a West Pointer, graduating in 1853, and was appointed
captain at the outbreak of the war. It was not until May of 1862 that he
found his real place as colonel of cavalry, and not until the first days
of the following year that he had the opportunity to distinguish
himself. Then, at the battle of Murfreesboro, he broke through the
advancing Confederate line which was crumpling up the right of the Union
army, and turned the tide of battle from defeat to victory. As a reward,
he was appointed major-general of volunteers. In April, 1864, he became
commander of the cavalr