e out in every other heart.
There is a letter in his Memoirs, written April 12, 1861,
which, as I remember the gloom and blackness of that time,
seems to me one of the sublimest utterances in our history.
The letter was written to his brother William, afterward the
General, who had been offered a place in the War Department,
which Mr. Chase urged him to accept, saying that he would
be virtually Secretary of War. The offer must have been a
dazzling temptation to the young soldier who had left his
profession and was engaged in civil duties as an instructor,
I think, in a college somewhere. But John earnestly dissuades
his brother from accepting it, urges him to take a position
in the field, and foretells his great military success. He
then adds the following prediction as to the future of the
country. It was written at midnight at the darkest single
hour of our history:

"'Let me now record a prediction. Whatever you may think
of the signs of the times, the Government will rise from the
strife greater, stronger and more prosperous than ever. It
will display every energy and military power. The men who
have confidence in it, and do their full duty by it, may reap
whatever there is of honor and profit in public life, while
those who look on merely as spectators in the storm will fail
to discharge the highest duty of a citizen, and suffer accordingly
in public estimation.'

"Mr. Sherman's great fame and the title to his countrymen's
remembrance which will most distinguish him from other men
of his time, will rest upon his service as a financier. He
bowed a little to the popular storm in the time of fiat money.
Perhaps if he had not bowed a little he would have been uprooted,
and the party which would have paid our national debt in fiat
money would have succeeded. But ever since that time he has
been an oak and not a willow. The resumption of specie payments
and the establishment of the gold standard, the two great
financial achievements of our time, are largely due to his
powerful, persistent and most effective advocacy.

"It is a little singular that two great measures that are
called by his name are measures, one of which he disapproved,
and with the other of which he had nothing to do. I mean
the bill for the purchase of silver, known as the Sherman
Law, and the bill in regard to trusts, known as the Sherman
Anti-Trust Law. The former was adopted against his protest,
by a committee of conference, altho