Civil War
In March 1862, Patrick was appointed as a brigadier general of volunteers. His brigade was assigned to the division of Brig. Gen. Rufus King in the army of Maj. Gen. Irvin McDowell and sent to the Shenandoah Valley in northern Virginia, where Patrick's men occasionally fought against Confederates under Stonewall Jackson. He was subsequently appointed military governor of Fredericksburg, Virginia, in April 1862. Transferred later in the year to the Army of the Potomac under Maj. Gen. George B. McClellan, he commanded the 2nd Brigade, 3rd Division, I Corps in the defenses of Washington, D.C.. Patrick's brigade (renumbered as the 3rd Brigade) suffered hundreds of casualties in the Maryland Campaign, seeing action at the battles of South Mountain and Antietam.
In the reorganization of the command structure following Antietam, Patrick was named as the provost marshal for the Army of the Potomac on October 6, 1862. To support his efforts, he had the equivalent of a brigade of troops. Patrick tried vainly to stop vengeful Union soldiers from sacking and looting Fredericksburg in November, and had to fend off political officials who placed the blame on him, including numerous inquiries from Secretary of War Edwin M. Stanton. Nevertheless, Patrick continued in the role of provost marshal throughout 1863. New army commander Maj. Gen. Joseph Hooker had Patrick create the Bureau of Military Information, a network of intelligence agents. At the Battle of Gettysburg, Patrick oversaw the processing of thousands of Confederate prisoners of war. In early 1864, when Ulysses S. Grant arrived in the Eastern Theater and assumed authority over multiple armies, Patrick was elevated to provost marshal for the combined forces operating against Richmond, Virginia.
Read more about this topic: Marsena R. Patrick
Famous quotes by civil war:
“He was high and mighty. But the kindest creature to his slaves—and the unfortunate results of his bad ways were not sold, had not to jump over ice blocks. They were kept in full view and provided for handsomely in his will. His wife and daughters in the might of their purity and innocence are supposed never to dream of what is as plain before their eyes as the sunlight, and they play their parts of unsuspecting angels to the letter.”
—Anonymous Antebellum Confederate Women. Previously quoted by Mary Boykin Chesnut in Mary Chesnut’s Civil War, edited by C. Vann Woodward (1981)