[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, indeed so
necessary a part of the organization, that he was retained in it
against his wishes, to the end of the war, each commander of the
Army of the Potomac in turn finding that he was indispensable.
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