of the treasury, and financed the country during its most trying period in a way that compelled the admiration even of his enemies.  He served afterwards as Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, dying in 1873.  He was another man whose life was embittered by failure to attain the prize of the presidency.  Three times he tried for it, in 1860, in 1864, and in 1868, but he never came within measurable distance of it.  For he lacked the capacity for making friends, and repelled rather than attracted by a studiously impressive demeanor, a painful decorousness, and an unbending dignity, which was, of course, no true dignity at all, but merely a bad imitation of it.  In a word, he lacked the saving sense of humor—­the quality which endeared Abraham Lincoln to the whole nation.

Another Ohioan who loomed large in the history of the time was John Sherman, a lawyer like all the rest, a member of Congress since 1855, not at first a great opponent of slavery, but drawn into the battle by his allegiance to the Republican party, forming an alliance with Thaddeus Stevens, and collaborating with him in the production of the reconstruction act.  He was appointed secretary of the treasury by President Hayes, in 1876, and his great work for the country was done in that office, in re-establishing the credit which the Civil War had shaken.  He, also, was bitten by the presidential bacillus, and was a candidate for the nomination at three conventions, but each time fell short of the goal—­once when he had it seemingly within his grasp.  A stern, forceful, capable man, he left his impress upon the times.

* * * * *

Of the men who guided the fortunes of the Confederacy, only two need be mentioned here—­Jefferson Davis and Alexander H. Stephens; for, rich as the Confederacy was in generals, it was undeniably poor in statesmen.  The golden age of the South had departed; with John C. Calhoun passed away the last really commanding figure among Dixie’s statesmen, and from him to Jefferson Davis is a long step downward.

Davis’s early life was romantic enough.  Born in 1808 in Kentucky, of a father who had served in the Revolution, appointed to the National Military Academy by President Monroe; graduating there in 1828 and serving through the Black Hawk war; then abruptly resigning from the army to elope with the daughter of Colonel Zachary Taylor, and settling near Vicksburg, Mississippi, to embark in cotton planting; drawn irresistibly into politics and sent to Congress, but resigning to accept command of the First Mississippi Rifles and serving with great distinction through the war with Mexico; and, finally, in 1847, sent to the Senate—­such was Davis’s history up to the time he became involved in the maelstrom of the slavery question.