But he was connected both by ties of friendship and consanguinity with the hitherto Commander of the Army of the Potomac. His Adjutant-General was related to the same personage. The position of the latter, for which he was totally unfitted by his habits, was perhaps a condition precedent to the appointment of the General of Division.
The fifth of November, a day destined to become celebrated hereafter in American as in English history, dawned not less inauspiciously upon the Head-quarters of the Corps. They too could not appreciate the dry humor of the order that commanded Little Mac to report at Trenton. They thought alone of the unwelcome reality—that it was but an American way of sending him to Coventry. The Commander of the Corps had been a great favorite at the Head-quarters of the army—perhaps because in this old West Point instructor the haughty dignity and prejudice against volunteers which characterized too many Regular officers, had its fullest personification. His Corps embraced the largest number of Regular officers. In some Regiments they were ridiculously, and for Uncle Sam expensively, plentiful,—some Companies having two or three Captains, two or three First or Second Lieutenants,—while perhaps the enlisted men in the Regiment did not number two hundred. But these supernumeraries were Fitz John's favorites, and whether they performed any other labor than sporting shoulder straps, regularly visiting the Paymasters, adjusting paper collars and cultivating moustaches, was a matter of seemingly small consequence, though during depressed national finances.
The little patriotism that animated many of the officers attached to both of these Head-quarters, did not restrain curses deep if not loud. Pay and position
kept them in the army at the outbreak of the Rebellion; and pay and position alone prevented their taking the same train from Warrenton that carried away their favorite Commander. A telegram of the Associated Press stated a few days later that a list of eighty had been prepared for dismissal. What evil genius averted this benefit to the country, the War Department best knows. It required no vision of the night, nor gift of soothsaying, to foretell the trouble that would result from allowing officers in important positions to remain in the army, who were under the strongest obligations to the General removed, devotedly attached to him, and completely identified with, and subservient to, his interests. It might at least be supposed that his policy would be persevered in, and that his interests would not suffer. So far the reform was not radical.
"Colonel," said one of these martinets who occupied a prominent position upon the Staff of Prince Fitz John, as with a look of mingled contempt and astonishment he pointed to a Lieutenant who stood a few rods distant engaged in conversation with two privates of his command, "do you allow commissioned officers to converse with privates?"
"Why not, sir? Those three men were intimate acquaintances at home. In fact, the Lieutenant was a clerk in a dry-goods establishment in which one of the privates was a junior partner."
"All wrong, sir," replied the martinet. "They should approach a commissioned officer through a Sergeant. The Inspecting Officer will report you for laxity of discipline in case it continues, and place you under arrest."
The Brigadier, when he heard of this conversation, intimated that should the Inspecting Officer attempt
it, he would leave the Brigade limits under guard; and it was not attempted.