When appointed brigadier-general I at once thought it proper that one of my aides should come from the regiment I had been commanding, and so selected Lieutenant C. B. Lagow.  While living in St. Louis, I had had a desk in the law office of McClellan, Moody and Hillyer.  Difference in views between the members of the firm on the questions of the day, and general hard times in the border cities, had broken up this firm.  Hillyer was quite a young man, then in his twenties, and very brilliant.  I asked him to accept a place on my staff.  I also wanted to take one man from my new home, Galena.  The canvass in the Presidential campaign the fall before had brought out a young lawyer by the name of John A. Rawlins, who proved himself one of the ablest speakers in the State.  He was also a candidate for elector on the Douglas ticket.  When Sumter was fired upon and the integrity of the Union threatened, there was no man more ready to serve his country than he.  I wrote at once asking him to accept the position of assistant adjutant-general with the rank of captain, on my staff.  He was about entering the service as major of a new regiment then organizing in the north-western part of the State; but he threw this up and accepted my offer.

Neither Hillyer nor Lagow proved to have any particular taste or special qualifications for the duties of the soldier, and the former resigned during the Vicksburg campaign; the latter I relieved after the battle of Chattanooga.  Rawlins remained with me as long as he lived, and rose to the rank of brigadier general and chief-of-staff to the General of the Army—­an office created for him—­before the war closed.  He was an able man, possessed of great firmness, and could say “no” so emphatically to a request which he thought should not be granted that the person he was addressing would understand at once that there was no use of pressing the matter.  General Rawlins was a very useful officer in other ways than this.  I became very much attached to him.

Shortly after my promotion I was ordered to Ironton, Missouri, to command a district in that part of the State, and took the 21st Illinois, my old regiment, with me.  Several other regiments were ordered to the same destination about the same time.  Ironton is on the Iron Mountain railroad, about seventy miles south of St. Louis, and situated among hills rising almost to the dignity of mountains.  When I reached there, about the 8th of August, Colonel B. Gratz Brown —­afterwards Governor of Missouri and in 1872 Vice-Presidential candidate —­was in command.  Some of his troops were ninety days’ men and their time had expired some time before.  The men had no clothing but what they had volunteered in, and much of this was so worn that it would hardly stay on.  General Hardee—­the author of the tactics I did not study—­was at Greenville some twenty-five miles further south, it was said, with five thousand Confederate troops.  Under these circumstances Colonel Brown’s command was very much demoralized.  A squadron of cavalry could have ridden into the valley and captured the entire force.  Brown himself was gladder to see me on that occasion than he ever has been since.  I relieved him and sent all his men home within a day or two, to be mustered out of service.