the close of a long series of disasters to the
Union arms, Garfield's victory had an unusual and extraneous
importance, and in the popular judgment elevated the young commander to
the rank of a military hero. With less than two thousand men in his
entire command, with a mobilized force of only eleven hundred, without
cannon, he had met an army of five thousand and defeated them, driving
Marshall's forces successively from two strongholds of their own
selection, fortified with abundant artillery. Major-General Buell,
commanding the Department of the Ohio, an experienced and able soldier
of the Regular Army, published an order of thanks and congratulation on
the brilliant result of the Big Sandy Campaign, which would have turned
the head of a less cool and sensible man than Garfield. Buell declared
that his services had called into action the highest qualities of a
soldier, and President Lincoln supplemented these words of praise by the
more substantial reward of a Brigadier-General's Commission, to bear
date from the day of his decisive victory over Marshall.

"The subsequent military career of Garfield fully sustained its
brilliant beginning. With his new commission he was assigned to the
command of a brigade in the Army of the Ohio, and took part in the
second and decisive day's fight on the bloody field of Shiloh. The
remainder of the year 1862 was not especially eventful to Garfield, as
it was not to the armies with which he was serving. His practical sense
was called into exercise in completing the task, assigned him by General
Buell, of reconstructing bridges and re-establishing lines of railway
communication for the army. His occupation in this useful but not
brilliant field was varied by service on courts-martial of importance,
in which department of duty he won a valuable reputation, attracting the
notice and securing the approval of the able and eminent Judge Advocate
General of the army. This of itself was warrant to honorable fame; for
among the great men who in those trying days gave themselves, with
entire devotion, to the service of their country, one who brought to
that service the ripest learning, the most fervid eloquence, the most
varied attainments, who labored with modesty and shunned applause, who,
in the day of triumph, sat reserved and silent and grateful--as Francis
Deak in the hour of Hungary's deliverance--was Joseph Holt, of Kentucky,
who, in his honorable retirement, enjoys the respect and ve