takes the hour
of the urgent order; and it is difficult to see why he was summoned
before the Committee, unless as a partisan.

"My object" (continues Hooker) "in ordering Gen. Sedgwick forward at the
time named, was to relieve me from the position in which I found myself
at Chancellorsville on the night of the 2d of May." This statement is
not only characteristic of Hooker's illogical method, but disingenuous
to the degree of mockery. For this position, it will be remembered, was
a strongly intrenched line, held by eighty thousand men, well armed
and equipped, having in their front less than half their number of
Confederates. In view of Hooker's above-quoted opinion about rifle-pits;
of the fact that in his testimony he says: "Throughout the Rebellion I
have acted on the principle that if I had as large a force as the enemy,
I had no apprehensions of the result of an encounter;" of the fact that
the enemy in his front had been cut in two, and would so remain if he
only kept the salient, just seized by Sickles and Pleasonton, at the
angle south-west of Fairview, well manned; and of the fact that he
had unused reserves greater in number than the entire force of the
enemy,--is it not remarkable that, in Hooker's opinion, nothing short
of a countermarch of three miles by the Sixth Corps, the capture of
formidable and sufficiently manned intrenchments, (the work of the Army
of Northern Virginia during an entire half year,) and an advance of
nearly twelve miles,--all of which was to be accomplished between eleven
and daylight of a day in May,--could operate to "relieve him from the
position in which he found himself on the night of the 2d of May"?

"I was of the opinion, that if a portion of the army advanced on Lee's
rear, sooner than allow his troops to remain between me and Sedgwick,
Lee would take the road Jackson had marched over on the morning of the
2d, and thus open for me a short road to Richmond, while the enemy,
severed from his depot, would have to retire by way of Gordonsville."
Well enough, but was Sedgwick's corps the only one to accomplish this?
Where were Reynolds, and Meade, and Howard, forsooth?

There is no particular criticism by Hooker upon Sedgwick's authority to
withdraw to the north side of the river, or upon the necessity for his
so doing. And we have seen how hard-pressed and overmatched Sedgwick
had really been, and that he only withdrew when good military reasons
existed, and the latest-receive