each wrote a personal letter to General Corbin certifying to the esteem with which he was held in the official family of the president, and Secretary Root, at a dinner given to the General Staff of the Army at the Country club of Washington, August 15, 1903, addressing General Young and the members of the army staff, among other complimentary remarks said: "When I reflect on the disinterested and unselfish course of Major General Corbin the adjutant-general of the army who practically occupied the position of chief of staff of the President throughout the war with Spain, who wielded a greater power in the control of the American army than any soldier of his day, and who put the whole force and weight of his great influence and his intimate knowledge of the army and of the legislative branch of our government at the service of this new movement which was to put over him a chief to exercise the power that he had exercised while he cheerfully and with self devotion takes the position of assistant to the chief of staff where he had been practically chief," etc.
He was married September 6, 1865, to Frances, daughter of Abraham E. and Caroline Goodwin Strickle of Wilmington, Ohio. She died October 1, 1894, and he was married a second time November 6, 1902, to Edythe Agnes Patton. He was a companion of the first-class of the Military Order of the Loyal Legion of the United States; comrade of the Grand Army of the Republic; member of the Society of the Sons of the Revolution and of the Army and Navy, and Chevy Chase and Country clubs of Washington, District of Columbia, and of the Union League, University and Manhattan clubs of New York city. He voted with the Republican party; and from his boyhood was associated with the Methodist church. He gives as the aim of his ambition in life, "to be thought fair and square in his dealings with his fellows," and feels that he has demonstrated in his own experience that in America all things are possible to all men. His advice to young men is to have persistent determination to do well whatever they may be called upon to do. His youthful record in the army is : Lieutenant of volunteers at nineteen, major at twenty-one, colonel at twenty-three and captain in the regular army in his twenty-fourth year. His time of service in the army from second lieutenant to major general was thirty-eight years.
