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[41]
festive air. The main difficulty lay with those great officers whose functions Sheridan was about to seize.
The mission was unusual, the method of it irregular.
If Emory is not strong enough for his place, a firmer hand might be sent down, without calling Philip Sheridan from the shores of Lake Michigan.
If unity of command is needed, General McDowell is the officer in charge of the South.
If the situation is thought so serious that a higher officer than McDowell should be on the spot, General Sherman is that higher officer.
It is no great secret that General Sherman notes these doings of Belknap and the War Office with alarm.
Sherman has no taint of Caesarism.
A patriot first, a soldier afterwards, he values military prowess mainly as the shield of liberty and safeguard of the Commonwealth.
Unable to support a personal policy, even by his silence, he has broken with the presidents, secretaries, and adjutants, and shifted his Headquarters from Washington to St. Louis, where he stands apart, an American Achilles, disgusted by the passing phase of public affairs.
Sherman is too great a man to slight; and Belknap, on receiving Sheridan's answer, sent a confidential
1875.
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