joined at
Charleston by two men representing influential Eastern journals, who
wished to know on what terms they could accompany the column. The
answer was that the quartermaster would furnish them with a tent and
transportation, and that their letters should be submitted to one of
the staff, to protect us from the publication of facts which might
aid the enemy. This seemed unsatisfactory, and they intimated that
they expected to be taken into my mess and to be announced as
volunteer aides with military rank. They were told that military
position or rank could only be given by authority much higher than
mine, and that they could be more honestly independent if free from
personal obligation and from temptation to repay favors with
flattery. My only purpose was to put the matter upon the foundation
of public right and of mutual self-respect. The day before we
reached Gauley Bridge they opened the subject again to Captain
McElroy, my adjutant-general, but were informed that I had decided
it upon a principle by which I meant to abide. Their reply was,
"Very well; General Cox thinks he can get along without us, and we
will show him. We will write him down."

They left the camp the same evening, and wrote letters to their
papers describing the army as demoralized, drunken, and without
discipline, in a state of insubordination, and the commander as
totally incompetent. As to the troops, more baseless slander was
never uttered. Their march had been orderly. No wilful injury had
been done to private property, and no case of personal violence to
any non-combatant, man or woman, had been even charged. Yet the
printing of such communications in widely read journals was likely
to be as damaging as if it all were true. My nomination as
Brigadier-General of U. S. Volunteers was then before the Senate for
confirmation, and "the pen" would probably have proved "mightier
than the sword" but for McClellan's knowledge of the nature of the
task we had accomplished, as he was then in the flood-tide of power
at Washington, and expressed his satisfaction at the performance of
our part of the campaign which he had planned. By good fortune also,
the injurious letters were printed at the same time with the
telegraphic news of our occupation of Gauley Bridge and the retreat
of the enemy out of the valley. [Footnote: As one of these
correspondents became a writer of history, it is made proper to say
that he was Mr. William Swinton, of whom Gener