Colonel Rosecrans and Matthews, having gone to Cincinnati,
and Colonel King to Dayton, I am left in command of camp, some twenty-five
hundred to three thousand men — an odd position for a novice, so ignorant of
all military things. All matters of discretion, of common judgment, I get along
with easily, but I was for an instant puzzled when a captain in the
Twenty-fourth, of West Point education, asked me formally, as I sat in tent,
for his orders for the day, he being officer of the day. Acting on my motto, “When
you don't know what to say, say nothing,” I merely remarked that I thought of
nothing requiring special attention; that if anything was wanted out of the
usual routine I would let him know.
SOURCE: Charles Richard Williams, editor, Diary and
Letters of Rutherford Birchard Hayes, Volume 2, p. 28
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