[Major General William Tecumseh Sherman Wearing Mourning Armband]

Among the first formal portraits to appear after President Lincoln’s assassination was this likeness of William Tecumseh Sherman, who sits stern-faced for a Mathew B. Brady carte de visite wearing a mourning armband. He may have worn the black ribbon while marching with his 65,000 soldiers on May 24 during the Grand Army Review. Sherman and his ragged but triumphant soldiers of the Army of Georgia and the Army of Tennessee marched for six hours through the streets of nation’s capital. According to news reports, he and his veterans from the exhausting two thousand mile “March to the Sea” were followed by a large entourage of freed African Americans, laborers with picks and axes, and scavengers who had accompanied the general and his armies up from Savannah. At the very end was a herd of cattle and other livestock that had been taken from Georgia and Carolina farms. Within a month, almost all of Sherman’s soldiers would begin mustering out of service and heading home to their families.