sition on the 1st of January, 1860,
when the mutterings of rebellion were already abroad; and just as he
had put the academy into good working order the war-cloud became so
black that Sherman, in a manly letter to Governor Moore, of Louisiana,
declared his intention of maintaining his allegiance to "the old
constitution as long as a fragment of it survives," resigned his
office, and returned to Ohio. In April, 1861, he accepted the
presidency of a St. Louis street railway company. Then Sumter was
fired on, the war fever filled the land, troops were hurried to the
front, and Sherman signified to the Secretary of War his desire to
serve his country "in the capacity for which I was trained." On May
14, 1861, he was appointed colonel of the Thirteenth United States
Infantry, and assigned to inspection duty in Washington under General
Scott, the commander-in-chief; and then the real story of his life
began.

At first fate seemed to be against him. He was too outspoken and
hard-headed to suit the reckless and effusive boasters of those early
days of the war, which he insisted would be long and bloody, unless
the whole military power of the Republic was put into the field to
crush the rebellion before it could grow into a revolution. He was as
disgusted as Washington had been in revolutionary times, with
short-service enlistments, and refused point-blank to go to Ohio to
enlist "three-months men," saying, in his blunt way, "You might as
well try to put out fire with a squirt gun as expect to put down this
rebellion with three-months troops." He was assigned to the command of
the Third Brigade of the First Division of McDowell's army, and had
his "baptism of fire" upon the disastrous field of Bull Run, which he
has characterized as "one of the best planned and worst fought battles
of the war." That famous "skedaddle," as it was the fashion to call
it, he frankly admitted, in his official report, began among the men
of his brigade, and the "disorderly retreat" speedily became a
humiliating rout, which only a few cool-headed officers, such as
Colonel Sherman, could check or control.

The chagrin over the stampede at Bull Run was so great, that the more
conscientious Union officers expected to be held responsible for it
and duly court-martialed; but to Colonel Sherman's surprise, his
superiors saw beyond the demoralization of the moment, and in August,
1861, he was made brigadier-general of volunteers and transferred to
the Dep