broke in confusion.
[Footnote: _Id_., pp. 458, 459, 461.] About 15 were killed and 50
wounded, the latter with some 30 others falling into the enemy's
hands. Tyler, with his lieutenant-colonel, Creighton, came into
Gauley Bridge with a few stragglers from the regiment. Others
followed until about 200 were present. His train had reached the
detachment I had sent to Peters Creek, and this covered its retreat
to camp, so that all his wagons came in safely. He reported all his
command cut to pieces and captured except the few that were with
him, and wrote an official report of the engagement, giving that
result.

On the 28th, however, we heard that Major Casement had carried 400
of the regiment safely into Charleston. He had rallied them on the
hills immediately after the rout, and finding the direct road to
Gauley Bridge intercepted, had led them by mountain paths over the
ridges to the valley of Elk River, and had then followed that stream
down to Charleston without being pursued. [Footnote: Official
Records, vol. li. pt. i. p. 462.] This put a new face on the
business, and Tyler in much confusion asked the return of his report
that he might re-write it. I looked upon his situation as the not
unnatural result of inexperience, and contented myself with
informing General Rosecrans of the truth as to the affair. Tyler was
allowed to substitute a new report, and his unfortunate affair was
treated as a lesson from which it was expected he would profit.
[Footnote: Rosecrans's dispatch, _Id_., p. 460.] It made trouble in
the regiment, however, where the line officers did not conceal their
opinion that he had failed in his duty as a commander, and he was
never afterward quite comfortable among them.

The lieutenant-colonel, Creighton, was for a time in the abyss of
self-reproach. The very day they reached Gauley Bridge in their
unceremonious retreat, he came to me, crying with shame, and said,
"General, I have behaved like a miserable coward, I ought to be
cashiered," and repeated many such expressions of remorse. I
comforted him by saying that the intensity of his own feeling was
the best proof that he had only yielded to a surprise and that it
was clear he was no coward. He died afterward at the head of his
regiment in the desperate charge up the hills at Ringgold, Georgia,
in the campaign following that of Chickamauga in the autumn of 1863,
having had the command for two years after Tyler became a brigadier.
During those