, 1861: "They cannot fail to appreciate the manliness of
character which has always marked the actions of Colonel Sherman."
Long before this Louisiana had seceded, and Sherman had gone north
to Lancaster, Ohio, where he arrived about the time of Lincoln's
inauguration.

Meanwhile, on the eighteenth of February, the greatest of all surrenders
had taken place in Texas, where nineteen army posts were handed
over to the State by General Twiggs. San Antonio was swarming with
Secessionist rangers. Unionist companies were marching up and down.
The Federal garrison was leaving the town on parole, with the band
playing Union airs and Union colors flying. The whole place was
at sixes and sevens, and anything might have happened.

In the midst of this confusion the colonel commanding the Second
Regiment of United States Cavalry arrived from Fort Mason. He was
on his way to Washington, where Winfield Scott, the veteran
General-in-Chief, was anxiously waiting to see him; for this colonel
was no ordinary man. He had been Scott's Chief of Staff in Mexico,
where he had twice won promotion for service in the field. He had
been a model Superintendent at West Point and an exceedingly good
officer of engineers before he left them, on promotion, for the
cavalry. Very tall and handsome, magnificently fit in body and in
mind, genial but of commanding presence, this flower of Southern
chivalry was not only every inch a soldier but a leader born and
bred. Though still unknown to public fame he was the one man to
whom the most insightful leaders of both sides turned, and rightly
turned; for this was Robert Lee, Lee of Virginia, soon to become
one of the very few really great commanders of the world.

As Lee came up to the hotel at San Antonio he was warmly greeted
by Mrs. Darrow, the anxious wife of the confidential clerk to Major
Vinton, the staunch Union officer in charge of the pay and quartermaster
services. "Who are those men?" he asked, pointing to the rangers,
who wore red flannel shoulder straps. "They are McCulloch's," she
answered; "General Twiggs surrendered everything to the State this
morning." Years after, when she and her husband and Vinton had
suffered for one side and Lee had suffered for the other, she wrote
her recollection of that memorable day in these few, telling words:
"I shall never forget his look of astonishment, as, with his lips
trembling and his eyes full of tears, he exclaimed, 'Has it come
so soon as this?' In