My aides were Captain Christie and Lieutenant
Conine, as before, and I added to them my brother, Theodore Cox, who
served with me as volunteer aide without rank in the battles of
South Mountain and Antietam, and was then appointed lieutenant in
the Eleventh Ohio Infantry. He was my constant companion from this
time till peace was established. The medical department remained
under the care of Major Holmes, Brigade-Surgeon, who combined
scientific with administrative qualities in a rare measure.
There was no military movement during the winter of sufficient
importance to be told at length. Constant scouting and
reconnoissances were kept up, slight skirmishes were not infrequent,
but these did not prevent our sense of rest and of preparation for
the work of the next spring. General Crook, with a brigade, was
transferred temporarily to the command of Rosecrans in Tennessee,
and Kelley, Milroy, and Scammon divided the care of the three
hundred miles of mountain ranges which made our front. My own
leisure gave me the opportunity for some systematic and useful
reading in military history and art. An amusing interlude occurred
in a hot controversy which arose between General Milroy and one of
his subordinates which would not be worth mentioning except for the
fact that the subordinate had afterward a world-wide notoriety as
military chief of the Paris Commune in 1870.
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