I could wish. The incident could not have occurred in the brigade
which had been under my command at Camp Dennison, and was a not
unnatural result of the sudden assembling of inexperienced men under
a brigade commander of whom they knew nothing except that at the
beginning of the war he was a civilian like themselves. These very
men afterward became devoted followers, and some of them life-long
friends. It was part of their military education as well as mine. If
I had been noisy and blustering in my intercourse with them at the
beginning, and had done what seemed to be regarded as the
"regulation" amount of cursing and swearing, they would probably
have given me credit for military aptitude at least; but a
systematic adherence to a quiet and undemonstrative manner evidently
told against me, at first, in their opinion. Through my army life I
met more or less of the same conduct when assigned to a new command;
but when men learned that discipline would be inevitably enforced,
and that it was as necessary to obey a quiet order as one emphasized
by expletives, and especially when they had been a little under
fire, there was no more trouble. Indeed, I was impressed with the
fact that after this acquaintance was once made, my chief
embarrassment in discipline was that an intimation of
dissatisfaction on my part would cause deeper chagrin and more
evident pain than I intended or wished.

The same march enabled me to make the acquaintance of another army
"institution,"--the newspaper correspondent. We were joined at
Charleston by two men representing influential Eastern journals, who
wished to know on what terms they could accompany the column. The
answer was that the quartermaster would furnish them with a tent and
transportation, and that their letters should be submitted to one of
the staff, to protect us from the publication of facts which might