Sherman, Grant, & Cigars

Sherman is an inveterate smoker. He smokes as he does every thing else, with an energy which it would be supposed would deprive him of all the pleasure of smoking. He is fully as great a smoker as Grant, but very unlike him in his style of smoking. Grant smokes as if he enjoyed his cigar. Sherman smokes as if it were a duty to be finished in the shortest imaginable time. Grant will smoke lying back in his chair, his body and mind evidently in repose, his countenance calm and settled. He blows the smoke slowly from his mouth, and builds his plans and thoughts in the clouds which are formed by it about his head. He smokes his tobacco as the Chinese do their opium, and with that certain sort of oblivious disregard for every thing else which it is said characterizes the opium smoker. He enjoys his mild Havana in quiet dignity, half-smoking, half-chewing it.
Sherman puffs furiously, as if his cigar was of the worst character of "penny grabs" and would not "draw." He snatches it frequently, and, one might say, furiously, from his mouth, brushing the ashes off with his forefinger. He continually paces the floor while smoking, generally deep in thought of important matters, doubtless; but a looker-on would imagine that he was endeavoring to solve the question of how to draw smoke through his cigar. He seldom or never finishes it, leaving at least one half of it a stump. When he used to frequent the Associated Press rooms at Louisville, in 1861, he would often accumulate and leave upon the agent's table as many as eight or ten of these stumps, which the porter of the rooms used to call "Sherman's old soldiers." - Harper's new monthly magazine, Volume 30, 1865.