John Harrison Wilson, The life of Charles Henry Dana

[242] in nearly equal parts. While one has become a national hero whose fame will never die, the other unnecessarily effaced himself, and is now scarcely known beyond the acquaintance of his surviving comrades or the limits of the community from which both took up arms for the cause of the Union.

But to return to the staff-officers and generals whom Dana described in his letters to Stanton.

The next officer mentioned was Major Theodore S. Bowers, who became Rawlins's principal assistant early in the war and remained with him to the day of his unfortunate death in a railroad accident at Garrisons, near West Point. He was a man in every way after Rawlins's own heart. By profession a printer and the editor of a country newspaper, he entered the army from southern Illinois as a private soldier, and was detailed for duty as a clerk at Grant's headquarters. By his unselfish devotion to duty, no less than by his personal gallantry at the capture of Fort Donelson, he rose steadily from one position to another as vacancies occurred or as Rawlins himself was promoted. He was one of the most modest, unselfish, and devoted officers that ever served in the Union army. Mr. Dana says of him in the Cairo letter:

... Major Bowers, judge-advocate of Grant's staff, is an excellent man, and always finds work to do.

The next men mentioned with approval and commendation were Lieutenant-Colonel Bingham, chief quartermaster, and Lieutenant-Colonel Macfeeley, chief commissary, both of the regular army and both officers of the highest merit. This was attested by the fact that no army was ever better transported, equipped, and subsisted than Grant's Army of the Tennessee. Each of these officers became head of his department, and throughout a long and useful life sustained the high character Dana had given him.