Produced by Ed Ferris
Transcriber's note:
The dieresis is transcribed by a preceding hyphen. "Employe" is replaced by "employee". The author's capitalization and spelling are followed when consistent, but probable mistakes of the typesetter have been corrected.
The right brackets (}) in the heading of quoted letters represent a single bracket grouping those lines in the book, which indicates a typeset heading on the stationery used.
LoC call number: E664.S57 1968
Copyright, 1895, By John Sherman
First Greenwood reprinting, 1968
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS catalogue card number: 68-28647
Printed in the United States of America
These Recollections grew out of a long deferred purpose to publisha selection of my speeches on public questions, but in collectingthem it became manifest that they should be accompanied or precededby a statement of the circumstances that attended their delivery.The attempt to furnish such a statement led to a review of thechief events of my public life, which covers the period extendingfrom 1854 to the present time. The sectional trouble that precededthe Civil War, the war itself with all its attendant horrors andsacrifices, the abolition of slavery, the reconstruction measures,and the vast and unexampled progress of the republic in growth anddevelopment since the war, presented a topic worthy of a betterhistorian than I am. Still, as my life was interwoven with theseevents, I concluded that it was better that I state my recollectionof what I saw or heard or did in those stirring times rather thanwhat I said. Whether this conclusion was a wise one the reader mustjudge. Egotism is a natural trait of mankind. If it is exhibitedin a moderate degree we pardon it with a smile; if it is excessivewe condemn it as a weakness. The life of one man is but an atom,but if it is connected with great events it shares in their dignityand importance. Influenced by this reasoning I concluded to postponethe publication of my speeches except so far as they are quoted ordescribed in these memoirs.
When I entered upon their preparation the question arose whetherthe book to be written was to be of my life, including ancestryand boyhood, or to be confined to the financial history of theUnited States with which I was mainly identified. This was settledby the publishers, who were more interested in the number of copiesthey could sell than in the finances of the United States.
Every man has a theory of finance of his own, and is indifferentto any other. At best the subject is a dry one. Still, the problemof providing money to carry on the expensive operations of a greatwar, and to provide for the payment of the vast debt created duringthe war, was next in importance to the conduct of armies, and thosewho were engaged in solving this problem were as much soldiers asthe men who were carrying muskets or commanding armies. As one ofthese I feel it my duty to present the measures adopted and toclaim for them such merit as they deserve.
These volumes do contain the true history of the chief financ