People's Pilot, Volume 3, Number 11, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 1 September 1893 — How John Sherman Financiers. [ARTICLE]

How John Sherman Financiers.

Coin. General Paul Vandervoort, exgrand commander of the Grand Army of the Republic, tells a characteristic story of John Sherman that aptly illustrates the cupidity and pusillanimity of the Ohio senator. In conversation with General Vandervoort, one day, Sherman was speaking of General John A. Logan, and lamenting the fact that he died poor. “There was no necessity of his dying a poor man,” he said. “There was plenty of ways for him to have made money when he was in the senate. I, myself, have frequently pointed out the way to him, but he always re fused to take advantage of his opportunities. ” In other words, General Logan, being an honest man,

would not, like Sherman, take advantage of pending legislation to make investments which would enrich him by pushing such legislation to a successful issue. It so iiappened that General Vandervoort while calling upon Mrs. Logan mentioned this conversation, when the widow of the Black Eagle of Illinois took him to a window of her residence and pointed to an adjoining lot, inclosed by a neat fence and under cultivation as a garden tract. “That piece of property,” she said, “belongs to John Sherman. A short time ago it was vacant, uninclosed and covered with rubbish and debris. Mr. Sherman had no use for it, and I asked him one day to let me have the use of it until such time as he could make use of it himself, telling him that I would inclose it and make it attractive. He willingly consented, and I put some colored men to work and

soon had a garden planted. When my vegetables came up and were growing nicely, Mr. Sherman used to drive up in his t> u ggy and admire the garden. He always said how valuable such ground was, and what a great benefit it was to me to have it for a garden. I could not fail to notice that he seemed to regret letting me have the ground, and by innuendo he gave me to understand that I ought to pay something for the use of it. “The second time he gave me such intimation I asked him frankly if he was not sorry he gave me the use of the ground, and if he did not want me to pay rent.

“He replied that such ground in Mansfield ought to be worth three dollars an acre. “There was an acre and a half in the tract and I tendered him four dollars and fifty cents as my first year’s rental. He put the money in his pocket; smiled in a gratified w r ay, took a last, lingering look at the garden, got into his buggy and drove away.” No comment is necessary further than to say that John A. Logan, the gallant Union soldier, hero of a dozen battles, and John Sherman, the frigid, grasping financier, were colleagues in the United States Senate. The former died almost in poverty; the latter is accounted a millionaire. The one is loved, and his memory cherished by a grateful people for his gallant deeds in the tented field and his honorable career in the forum. His life was never even tainted with suspicion. The latter will go down to posterity as a libel on what man should be.