[142] 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 matter again to 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. 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 a rabble of ruffians, burning houses, ravishing women, robbing and destroying property, and the commander as totally incompetent. As to the troops, more baseless slander was never uttered. Their march had been orderly, no willful 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 publication of such communications in widely read journals was likely to be as damaging as if it were true. My nomination as brigadier-general 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 had expressed his satisfaction at the performance of our part of the campaign which he had planned.
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[142] 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 matter again to 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. 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 a rabble of ruffians, burning houses, ravishing women, robbing and destroying property, and the commander as totally incompetent. As to the troops, more baseless slander was never uttered. Their march had been orderly, no willful 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 publication of such communications in widely read journals was likely to be as damaging as if it were true. My nomination as brigadier-general 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 had expressed his satisfaction at the performance of our part of the campaign which he had planned.
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