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| Lieutenant-General Philip H. Sheridan, ca. 1876 (Photograph, C.D. Mosher) |
 General Sheridan in Command |
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Shortly before the fire, after Sheridan had been given command of the Army's Division of
the Missouri, he moved its headquarters from St. Louis to Chicago. His enormous
jurisdiction extended westward to the Rocky Mountains and from Canada to Mexico.
Earlier in 1871 he had both met with Bismarck in Versailles after viewing the entrance of
Prussian troops into Paris and hunted game in Kansas with a group of New York and
Chicago newspaper editors and businessmen. Their guide was William F. Cody, later
well-known as Buffalo Bill, whom Sheridan made chief of scouts for the Fifth Cavalry.
The general became a good friend of Chicago's business leaders, who helped him purchase
a house in Washington when he became commanding officer of the Army in 1883. And
when Chicago's elite successfully lobbied the federal government to build a fort north of
Chicago to guard against "internal insurrection," it was named after their favorite military
man. Sheridan died in 1888 at the age of fifty-seven.
The draft reads: "City of Chicago is almost utterly destroyed by fire. There is now reasonable hope of arresting it, if the wind does not change, which is yet blowing a gale. I have ordered on your authority Rations from St. Louis, tents from Jeffersonville and two companies of infantry from Omaha. There will be many homeless people and much distress." This photograph was one in the series, "Mosher's Memorial Offering to Chicago," prepared by the self-styled "National Historical Photographer to Posterity." The series was to be a gift to the city to be opened on the occasion of the nation's bicentennial. In the meantime, one could get a dozen copies for $3.00 and even better deals on larger quantities. |
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