but I am satisfied there was not a
man in the crowd that would have gone back if the chance had been
offered. The attack did not come, and during the night we began the
backward march again, which had come to be almost a matter of course.
Hooker had twice as many men as Lee, and the movement seemed to open
encouragingly. While Doubleday and Walker and Alden do not in so many
words say that Hooker was drunk, I think that is the clear inference. If
he was, shooting would be too good for him, he ought to have been burned
at the stake.

Saturday morning, the second day of May, Col. Miles was put in command
of the picket line to our front. His own regiment was not in this
advance line, but was in the first main line behind the works that I
have mentioned. Our Colonel here made a great reputation for himself. I
quote from Swinton, "Amid much that is dastardly at Chancellorsville,
the conduct of this young, but gallant and skillful officer, shines
forth with a brilliant lustre." Walker says of him, "So delighted was
Hancock at the splendid behavior of his skirmish line that, after one
repulse of the enemy, he exclaimed, 'Capt. Parker, ride down and tell
Col. Miles he's worth his weight in gold!'" While Couch, turning to the
Major-Generals who commanded his two divisions, said, in his quiet but
emphatic way, "I tell you what it is, gentlemen, I shall not be
surprised to find myself, some day serving under that young man."
Shortly after he was dangerously wounded through the body. Walker says
(page 240) "Hancock strengthens the skirmish line held by Miles, and
instructs that officer not to yield one foot, except on actual
necessity; and well is that trust discharged. The troops under Miles's
command consist of the 61st, 64th and 66th New York, with detachments
from the 53d Pa, 2d Delaware, and 140th, 145th and 148th Pa. and 27th
Conn." The historian of the Second Corps is in error when he writes that
the 61st was placed on the skirmish line. As I have before stated, it
remained behind the works it built, until the position was enfladed by
the enemy's artillery, and then it, with the rest of that line, fell
back.

He is again in error when he says, (page 244) speaking of the disaster
of the 3d, "Hancock's division was no longer intact. Caldwell, with the
61st, 52d and 57th N. Y., and four companies of the 148th Pa., had, at a
sudden call, marched to the United States Ford road, with a view to the
anticipated breaking through o