October 8, 1861 (Tuesday): Sherman Goes West

General Robert Anderson

GENERAL ORDERS,}     HDQRS. DEP’T OF THE CUMBERLAND,

           No. 6                                        Louisville, Ky., October 8, 1861.

   The following telegraph order was received yesterday at the headquarters:

                                                                        WASHINGTON, D.C., October 6, 1861

Brigadier-General Anderson:

   To give you rest necessary to restoration of health, call Brigadier-General Sherman to command the Department of the Cumberland.  Turn over to him your instructions, and report here in person as soon as you may without retarding your recovery.

                                                                                    WINFIELD SCOTT.

  

   In obedience to the above orders, I hereby relinquish the command of the department to Brigadier-General Sherman.

    Regretting deeply the necessity by which renders this step proper, I do it with less reluctance, because my successor, Brigadier-General Sherman, is the man I had selected for that purpose.  God grant that he may be the means of delivering this department from the marauding bands, who under the guise of relieving and benefiting Kentucky, are doing all the injury they can to those who will not join them in their accursed warfare.

                                                                                    ROBERT ANDERSON,

                                                            Brigadier-General, U. S. Army, Commanding

Official Records, Series I., Vol. 4, Page 296

Anderson, 56 and “The Hero of Fort Sumter” had taken the advent of war much to heart.  Assignment to command in his native Kentucky only added to the mental and physical strain he felt and he was agreeable to stepping aside in favor of Sherman.  He stayed in Washington until 1863 as a functionary, but even that was too stressful and he retired in 1863.  He received a brevet appointment to Major-General in 1865 in recognition of his services and was present when the American flag was again raised at Fort Sumter.  Moving to France to seek relief from his physical ailments, he died there in 1871.