COLUMBUS, Ohio — Adam Fleischer, a Columbus auctioneer, was searching through artifacts from Civil War Union General William T. Sherman's descendants' home, cataloguing them for potential sale, when an assistant called him into the other room.
The assistant, rare book specialist Danielle Linn, had discovered a handwritten inscription in the margins of another famous Ohioans' biography, where former President Ulysses S. Grant had described his decision to not pick Sherman for a particular command job because of Sherman's recent “failure” in another assignment.
“It was no failure at all,” Sherman had written, underlining the words for emphasis.
Fleischer had boxed up the memoir and other items, including Sherman's personal sword and military trunk, his family Bible and other mementos, driving them from a Sherman descendant's home in western Pennsylvania to to his office in Columbus. And next month, that's where he will auction them off, along with dozens of other Sherman-related artifacts.
“They've venerably preserved everything over the last 150 years,” Fleischer said. “It was literally sitting in their attic and in the family estate's library. It was just time for it to go.”
Sherman is one of Ohio's most famous historical figures, coming from a politically prominent family. His father, Charles, was a former Ohio Supreme Court justice. His older brother, Charles Taylor Sherman, became a federal…
