makes up
an honorable and lovable personal character he had no superior. I
shall have occasion to speak frequently of his peculiarities and his
special traits, but shall never have need to say a word in
derogation of the solid virtues I have attributed to him. His
chief-of-staff, General Parke, was an officer of the Engineers, and
one of the best instructed of that corps. He had served with
distinction under Burnside in North Carolina, in command of a
brigade and division. I always thought that he preferred staff duty,
especially with Burnside, whose confidence in him was complete, and
who would leave to him almost untrammelled control of the
administrative work of the command.

On September 7th I was ordered to take the advance of the Ninth
Corps in the march to Leesboro, following Hooker's corps. It was my
first march with troops of this army, and I was shocked at the
straggling I witnessed. The "roadside brigade," as we called it, was
often as numerous, by careful estimate, as our own column moving in
the middle of the road. I could say of the men of the Kanawha
division, as Richard Taylor said of his Louisiana brigade with
Stonewall Jackson, that they had not yet _learned_ to straggle.
[Footnote: See Taylor's "Destruction and Reconstruction," p. 50, for
a curious interview with Jackson.] I tried to prevent their learning
it. We had a roll-call immediately upon halting after the march, and
another half an hour later, with prompt reports of the result. I
also assigned a field officer and medical officer to duty at the
rear of the column, with ambulances for those who became ill and
with punishments for the rest. The result was that, in spite of the
example of others, the division had no stragglers, the first
roll-call rarely showing more than twenty or thirty not answering to
their names, and the second often proving every man to be present.
[Footnote: See letters of General R. B. Hayes and General George
Crook, Appendix B.] In both the Army of the Potomac and the Army of
Northern Virginia the evil had become a most serious one. After the
battle of Antietam, for the express purpose of remedying it,
McClellan appointed General Patrick Provost-Marshal with a strong
provost-guard, giving him very extended powers, and permitting
nobody, of whatever rank, to interfere with him. Patrick was a man
of vigor, of conscience, and of system, and though he was greatly
desirous of keeping a field command, proved so useful, indee