poverty he
was born to. But his family was of historical distinction, while Grant's
had always been obscure, and his father died a judge of the Supreme
Court of Ohio. As he died poor, his large family of children were left
to their mother, whose means were not equal to their maintenance and
education. Thomas Ewing, the great man of the place, had been the
father's friend, and he wished to adopt "the smartest of the children."
It is not known how his choice fell upon Sherman, who was playing with
some other boys on a sand bank near Ewing's house when it was made, and
had apparently nothing to do with it.

His father had called him Tecumseh because he admired the Indian chief's
noble character and his merciful treatment of prisoners, and because
he wished the boy to be a soldier. Ewing fulfilled the father's wish
by appointing the son to a West Point cadetship at sixteen. Sherman had
meantime fallen in love with Miss Ellen Ewing, and he married her in
1850. Then he left the army and tried banking and the law, but liked
neither, and he was President of the Louisiana state military academy
when the Civil War began. With his frank, bold, impetuous nature, he
forewarned the governor that he should side with the Union, and he asked
to be notified in time before the state seceded.

He received the surrender of the last great Confederate army, after a
series of the most splendid strokes of generalship. His March to the
Sea will be forever famous. The highest British military criticism
pronounced his attempt "the most brilliant or the most foolish thing
ever attempted by a military leader," and we all know how it turned
out. Grant called him "the best field officer the war had produced,"
and there has been nothing in history more sweet and beautiful than the
friendship between these two great men. They were unlike in everything
but their unselfishness and single-hearted patriotism, and they trusted
as wholly as they loved each other.

Irvin McDowell, born at Franklinton, Franklin County, in 1818, was the
brave and gifted officer who lost the first battle of Bull Run, where he
failed less ruinously than any other general of that moment of the war
would have done. His name and fame have outlived that disaster, though
the people did not then know enough to forgive him for his army's
defeat. He was again of that tough Scotch-Irish breed that so many
Ohioans are of; like our other great generals, he was a West Pointer,
and he was o