Born on March 11, 1811, in Watertown, in northwestern New York, Marsena Rudolph was the tenth child of John and Miriam Patrick. The Patricks were a farming family, and Marsena would one day pursue this vocation, but during his childhood the young boy sought an escape from the hard and sometimes unprofitable labors of agriculture and from what has been described as the “domineering Puritanism of his mother.” At the age of ten, he ran away from home and for the next decade found work first as a boat driver on the Erie Canal and then as a schoolteacher. Attempting to make a life for himself, Patrick came to befriend the aging Stephen van Rensselaer, a one time lieutenant-governor of New York and general in the War of 1812. Through his offices, Rensselaer was able to secure an appointment for Patrick to attend the United States Military Academy. Entering West Point at the age of twenty in 1831, Patrick struggled academically but was able to graduate four years later, ranked forty-eighth in a class of fifty-six. Future Union Generals George Meade and George Morell graduated alongside Patrick in 1835.
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Two and a half weeks after the battle of Antietam, General McClellan named Marsena Patrick as the army’s Provost Marshal General. Although he would never identify exactly why he chose Patrick for such a position, McClellan was, no doubt, well aware of Patrick’s reputation as a strict but thoroughly fair disciplinarian. He had done well as military governor of Fredericksburg earlier in the war, and, perhaps more importantly, he shared many of the same views as McClellan in regards to how the army should treat the white Southern population. And although competent in brigade command, McClellan possibly did not have confidence in Patrick as a battlefield general. Regardless of the reason, or reasons, behind his appointment, Patrick quickly proved to be ideally suited for the role although his responsibilities were vast and tremendous. General Orders Number 161, issued on October 6, 1862, officially made Patrick the army’s chief of law enforcement and outlined his many duties. He was, for example, charged with preserving good order in the army both in camp and on the march, preventing straggling and skulking, carrying out the sentences of courts-martial, caring for Confederate deserters and prisoners-of-war, dealing with the complaints of citizens, preventing looting and marauding, and suppressing gambling houses and brothels. A tall order, to be sure, but Patrick performed so well in his position that he retained the trust and confidence of not only General McClellan, but of his successors to army command as well.
From October 1862 until April 1865, Patrick served under Generals McClellan, Burnside, Hooker, Meade, and Grant as the army’s provost general. In the spring of 1863, he helped create the Bureau of Military Intelligence, or B.M.I, which served the Army of the Potomac well in gathering intelligence. Following the surrender of Robert E. Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia in April 1865, Patrick was given command of the District of Henrico, Department of Virginia, with his headquarters in Richmond, but he soon ran afoul of the Republican controlled United States Congress. While Patrick’s political persuasion and support for George McClellan were well-known, many felt that he was far too lenient in dealing with former Confederate soldiers and the white population in his district. General Grant himself wrote that Patrick’s “well-known kindness of heart might interfere with the proper governance of [Richmond],” and on June 9, 1865, Patrick was relieved. He tendered his resignation from the army three days later. Historian David Sparks, who edited Patrick’s wartime diary for publication, may have said it best when he wrote: “It would appear that Patrick was too kind, too civilized, too much the Christian gentleman to hold an important position in the Confederate capital after Lincoln’s assassination had loosed the Northern desire for vengeance.”
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Following his resignation, General Patrick returned to his home and family in New York, and in the summer and fall of 1865 attempted to enter the political arena by running as a Democrat for state treasurer. He was defeated. Once again engaging himself in agriculture, Patrick served for a number of years as president of the New York State Agricultural Society. Patrick was plagued throughout his life by a host of physical maladies, especially by intestinal disorders. Throughout the late 1860s and into the 1870s, it became impossible for him to continue working on his farm. Even during the war, in 1864, Patrick suffered from the partial paralysis of his left arm and shoulder, and by 1872, the sixty-one-year-old former general was unable to walk even a short distance. After his wife, Mary, passed away in 1880, Marsena Patrick left his native New York behind and accepted the position of Governor of the Central Branch, National Home for Disabled Soldiers, in Dayton, Ohio. Here he remained until his death eight years later, on July 27, 1888. Marsena Patrick’s remains were buried in the National Soldiers’ Home Cemetery in Dayton.
Marsena Patrick's Grave in Dayton (www.findagrave.com)
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 Marsena Patrick, Inside the Army of the Potomac, edited by David Sparks (New York: Thomas Yaseloff, 1964): 12.
 Marsena Patrick, Inside the Army of the Potomac, 151.
 Patrick, Inside Lincoln’s Army, 19.