Tough General vs. Toughest Town

Tough General vs.

Sherman's 1882 Tombstone Visit Mingled Cheers, Hypocrisy And Danger Gen. William Tecumseh Sherman was famous for his scorched earth tactics during both the Civil and Indian wars. Ironically, his father named him after the famous Shawnee Indian chief, Tecumseh.

Toughest Town

He arrived in the young mine camp on Goose Flats to a hero's welcome: William Tecumseh Sherman. Everyone knew the name of the tough-as-steel general who broke the Confederacy's will on his brutal march from Atlanta to the sea during the Civil War.

Tombstone had never entertained anyone so famous, as many townspeople turned out in 1882 to watch as the grizzled Commander of the Army stood on the balcony of the Grand Hotel to accept their cheers.

Although just a footnote in historybooks, Sherman's visit provided a rousing and funny look at the workings of power, politics and local patriotism on the frontier. It also coincided with ongoing construction on the fancy new county courthouse, built for the then-lavish price of $50,000. That courthouse, now a state historic park, has become one of the key attractions in a place known for its vital-and violent-Western history.

Sherman's visit brushed against that Wild West history, not to mention that timeless underpinning of politics in any era-hypocrisy. Just eight years before, Sherman had described Arizona as “an immense, miserable country full of Apache Indians” that should be handed back to Mexico.

This wasn't an offhand remark in an unguarded moment. He said it in testimony before Congress.

But the hypocrisy was mutual. Arizonans pretended to like Sherman, too, hoping the publicity would encourage Eastern capitalists to invest in Arizona's mines, ranches and banks if they could only convince Sherman that the Territory had advanced beyond its reputation as a nest of cutthroat Indians and toothless outlaws.

Tough work, that. Sherman would find out the hard way that reputations are sometimes deserved.

He rode into a cauldron.

Calling....We have a standing gallows in our jail yard ready to carry out the law upon murderers, and the trap will be sprung whenever occasion demands.” Moreover, Arizona struggled with the so-called Apache problem. Due to lousy conditions on their reservation at San Carlos and a restless warrior spirit, the Apaches periodically broke out, murdering settlers and stealing horses as they fled into Mexico.

Sherman hoped to see both situations up close and report back to Washington. His Arizona tour began in early April at Fort Grant and Fort Thomas, near Safford, then moved north to the San Carlos Agency.

Tombstone's newspapers, the Daily drawn by six horses each, forced their way through the eager, cheering crowd, and halted in front of the hotel. The general and party alighted, and were immediately escorted to their apartments.” After making supper arrangements at the swank Maison Doree restaurant, Sherman appeared on the hotel veranda to great crowd applause. He thanked the crowd and said he was “much astonished and greatly pleased to find such a number of fine looking, intelligent citizens in this place so badly thought of outside,” according to the Epitaph.

Moments before, on the outskirts of town, Sherman glimpsed the source of Tombstone's reputation.

As his entourage approached the min-Consider the timing:

The O.K. Corral fight took place seven months prior to his arrival, and Morgan Earp's death by assassination only 30 days before. Such events in the infamous Cowboy War had battered Arizona's reputation.

By May 1882, Earp and his vengeance posse had left town for the final time and President Chester Arthur nearly sent federal troops to enforce the law as newspapers demanded an end to the “social smallpox” of the cowboy-gangsters.

“Let it be published...” wrote Prescott's Arizona Democrat, “that bad men will be hunted down like wild beasts if they come to Arizona to ply their nefarious Nugget and the Epitaph, closely tracked his every move. The rival Arizona Star of Tucson, fancying itself above such breath-lessness, cracked, “Half the male citizens of Tombstone have been placed on the committee of arrangements to receive General Sherman.” But that wasn't far from the truth. Flags and bunting decorated the Grand Hotel, where Sherman would stay, and Chinese lanterns hung from its veranda. Excited crowds lined Allen Street, “anxious to obtain even a momentary glimpse of the war-worn veteran,” according to the Nugget.

“Shortly after eight o'clock,” the paper continued, “three covered ambulances,ing camp, a cowboy rode up and asked if General Sherman was there. Hearing yes, the ruffian pulled a pistol and fired two shots in rapid succession.

“That was the signal for a volley,” reported the Star, “and for a few minutes the air vibrated with the sharp reports of pistol shots, bursting of anvils and Chinese rockets.” Reporters assured their readers that Sherman greatly enjoyed the performance, as did the wives of the officers accompanying him. One said she expected at least two or three men would be killed every day in the mine camp, and to her great disappointment, they “hadn't a man for breakfast while they were in Tombstone.” Sherman and his civic hangers-on, including Epitaph owner John Clum, prominent saloon man Milt Joyce and a beaming Mayor John Carr, crowded into the Maison Doree, then one of the West's best restaurants.

Its menu offered wild game, beef, lamb, poultry, even oysters, along with a wide selection of wines, all for 50 cents, according to Tombstone A.T.: A History of Early Mining, Milling and Mayhem, by William Shillingberg.

To the delight of Tombstone's honchos, the general expressed his pleasant surprise at seeing so many "evidences of American enterprise" in such a remote place.

The next day, April 8, he saw that enterprise up close. Officials of the Tombstone Mill and Mining Co. lowered their prized guest 300 feet into the Toughnut Mine, then he proceeded to descend 600 feet into the Grand Central. Later, he shook the hands of everyday citizens at a public reception at Schieffelin Hall.

Sherman then headed for Tucson, and in spite of its earlier pretensions, the city greeted Sherman with the same giddiness. Three thousand people met his train the night of April 10, along with a brass band playing "See the Conquering Hero Comes."

In his two-day stay, Sherman visited Fort Lowell and Mission San Xavier del Bac before attending a grand ball. In its coverage of the dance, the Star observed, "While watching him the idea forced itself that it would be a crime to retire him. The sound of the music seemed to act on him like the noise of the bugle on a warhorse."

But the majority of the coverage dealt with the women's magnificent dresses, the gold-laced uniforms of the officers and the "easy flow of satin" on the dance floor. Did this show of sophistication impress Tucson's guests?

"No doubt it will have a tendency to convince them," wrote the Star, "that we are not all savages in Arizona, and that culture and elegance can be found outside the sacred precincts of Boston."

Not savages. Those two words summarize everything that the citizens of the Territory wished to convey. And it seemed to work, with Sherman predicting great things for Arizona's future.

On the Indian question, he advocated a military reorganization of Arizona and opposed removal of Arizona's Apaches to the Indian Territory, saying they should be "civilized where they are."

He also praised the success of the San Carlos Agency and its head, Joseph Tiffany. Sherman said the Indians there wanted to settle down and own stock and land, and "appeared to understand individual responsibility for their acts."

On the cowboy lawlessness, the general said little for publication, but, in a private telegram to Washington, suggested either a federal posse or U.S. troops.

But shortly after Sherman's departure from Tucson, word began dribbling out that his open appreciation for Arizona wasn't entirely sincere.

When citizens from Globe pressed him to support establishment of a military post in San Carlos, Sherman instead blasted Arizona. As the Epitaph put it, Sherman said, "... the whole Territory ought to be turned over to the 'Injun', and expressed a profound sympathy for every white man in it, and the imbecility which induced anyone to stay here, once having been inveigled into it."

Then the paper added wryly, "He must have changed his views before arriving in Tombstone."

Sherman's hypocrisy drew the Epitaph's withering sarcasm. The paper remarked that the general might change his mind in time, adding that "the daintiest luxuries are often at first offensive to the senses."

It continued: "For instance, it requires a cultivated taste and smell to appreciate the ravishing excellence of Limburger cheese, but when one reaches the proper height of aesthetic culture in the direction of taste and smell, he often prefers this dainty to any other cheese in the world."

But Sherman's political game blew up entirely on April 19, when some 700 Apaches broke out of San Carlos. In their southward charge across Arizona, the hostiles killed 42 people and swept the region of stock, according to Federal Control of the Western Apaches, 1848-1886, by Ralph Hedrick Ogle.

The dead included San Carlos Chief of Police A.D. Sterling, whose body was mutilated and his head chopped off. Much as they disliked Sterling, the renegades hated Tiffany even more. Historians generally lay blame for this bloody outbreak on his corrupt and thieving management at San Carlos.

The whole mess badly tainted Sherman, who, on April 14, had sent a telegram to Washington praising Tiffany as a "man of character," describing his agency as wellorganized and well-conducted.

Then the general's disaster nearly turned fatal. Sherman, the savior of the Union, commander of the entire U.S. Army and advocate of total war against the West's hostile Indians, very nearly encountered total war himself, according to Dan Thrapp, author of The Conquest of Apacheria.

Traveling with a small escort group en route to Fort Grant, Sherman missed the escaping Apaches by the "narrowest of margins."

Thrapp relied on information provided by Will Barnes, who later became a wellknown author. Although Barnes badly mangled his dates, his intimate involvement makes the substance of his account believable.

Sitting in the telegraph office at Fort Apache at the time of the breakout, he said that military authorities at Prescott's Fort Whipple and Fort Grant spent "some mighty anxious hours until he [Sherman] was reported safe into Grant."

Thrapp commented that the "savages... had missed their biggest game."

If the Apaches had bagged the general, his tour would've been national news. As it turned out, most of the crazy events of April 1882 have fallen into history's shadows.

But we can assume that Sherman remembered them well, because they proved Arizona Territory to be wilder than even our toughest general realized. Always