Page:Memoirs of Henry Villard, volume 1.djvu/239

1861] appalled him. He found himself in command of raw troops, not exceeding twenty thousand in number. He believed that they should be multiplied many times. He feared the rebel forces in the State largely outnumbered his own, and he could not rid himself of the apprehension that, if he should be attacked, he would have no chance of success. It was not really want of confidence in himself that brought him to this state of mind, but, as it seemed to me, his intense patriotism and despair of the preservation of the Union in view of the fanatical, blood thirsty hostility to it throughout the South. This dread took such hold of him that, as I was informed by those who were in hourly official intercourse with him, he literally brooded over it day and night. It made him lapse into long, silent moods even outside his headquarters. He lived at the Galt House, occupying rooms on the ground floor. He paced by the hour up and down the corridor leading to them, smoking and obviously absorbed in oppressive thoughts. He did this to such an extent that it was generally noticed and remarked upon by the guests and employees of the hotel. His strange ways led to gossip, and it was soon whispered about that he was suffering from mental depression.

Such was his condition when Secretary Cameron arrived in Louisville for a conference with him. The Secretary had been to St. Louis to remonstrate with General Frémont about his extravagances and arbitrary assumption of power, and came to see General Sherman, who seemed to the Washington authorities to stand very much in need of being brought to reason, in view of his highly exaggerated theories as to the forces required for the extinction of the Rebellion in the Mississippi Valley. Secretary Cameron had with him Samuel Wilkeson, the Washington correspondent of the New York Tribune — afterwards for nearly twenty years secretary of the Northern Pacific Railroad Company — whom he allowed to listen to his official and confidential conversations with