the limits of military forethought that a general who
has occupied a position for two days and three nights should have
discovered the very key to that position, when it lay within a mile
of his own headquarters. The disabling of Hooker could not, indeed,
have been foreseen; but such an accident might happen to any
commander upon any field; and there should have been somewhere some
man with authority to have, within the space of three hours, brought
into action some of the more than 30,000 men within sound, and
almost within sight, of the battle then raging. How the hours from
Sunday noon till Monday night were wasted has been shown. Hooker,
indeed, reiterates that he could not assail the Confederate lines
through the dense forests. But Lee broke through those very woods
on Sunday, and was minded to attempt it again on Wednesday, when
he found that the enemy had disappeared. The golden opportunity
was lost, never to be recovered, and the Confederate Army of Northern
Virginia gained a new lease of life."

It may not be out of place, as indicating the kind of service in
which we were engaged, to quote the following letter, written after
the retreat:

"I am so cut, scratched, and bruised that I can hardly hold a pen
in my hand. My limbs are covered with swellings from the bites of
insects and torn from forcing my way through briers and thorny
bushes; my eyes close involuntarily from lack of sleep and excessive
fatigue. My legs are cramped from so much riding, and I have not
yet succeeded in getting rid of the chill caused by sleeping on
the wet ground in the cold rain. My clothes, up to last night,
had not been taken off for a week. As I lay down every night with
my boots and spurs on, my feet are very much swollen. I ought to
be in bed at this moment instead of attempting to write."

The others must have suffered in the same way. Warren, especially,
as a medium of communication between Hooker and Sedgwick, made
almost superhuman exertions to do without sleep and perform the
important duties assigned him.

Each army now felt the need of rest and recuperation, and no military
movements of importance took place for several weeks. Soon after
the battle of Chancellorsville, Longstreet's two divisions, which
had been operating in front of Suffolk, rejoined Lee at Fredericksburg.
That portion of Stoneman's cavalry which had taken refuge at
Gloucester Point also succeeded, by great boldness and skilful
manoeuvr