I looked upon his situation as the not unnatural result of inexperience, and contented myself with informing General Rosecrans of the truth as to the affair.

Tyler was allowed to substitute a new report, and his unfortunate affair was treated as a lesson from which it was expected he would profit.
[Footnote: Rosecrans's dispatch, _Id_., p.

460.] It made trouble in the regiment, however, where the line officers did not conceal their opinion that he had failed in his duty as a commander, and he was never afterward quite comfortable among them.
The lieutenant-colonel, Creighton, was for a time in the abyss of self-reproach.

The very day they reached Gauley Bridge in their unceremonious retreat, he came to me, crying with shame, and said, "General, I have behaved like a miserable coward, I ought to be cashiered," and repeated many such expressions of remorse.

I comforted him by saying that the intensity of his own feeling was the best proof that he had only yielded to a surprise and that it was clear he was no coward.