fight,
fight!'"

I might here say that the only attempt, on Fast Day, to exculpate Hooker
for the disaster of Chancellorsville was not of an order which can be
answered. When one speaker asks, "If Gen. Hooker tells us that it was
wise to withdraw across the river, is not that enough for you and me,
my comrades?" I can only say that history is not so easily satisfied.
To another speaker, who states that when Hooker had planted himself in
Lee's flank by crossing the river, Lee ought, by all the rules of
war, to have retreated, but when he didn't he upset all Hooker's
calculations; that when Jackson made his "extra hazardous" march around
Hooker's flank, he ought, by all rules of war, to have been destroyed,
but when he was not he upset all Hooker's calculations, and that
therefore Hooker was forced to retreat,--it is quite beyond my ability
to reply. When Gen. Sickles throws the blame upon Howard for the defeat
of the Eleventh Corps, by reading the 9.30 A.M. order, without saying
one word about Hooker's actions, change of plans, and despatches from
that hour till the attack at 6 P.M., he makes any thinking man question
seriously the sincerity of what he calls history. When Gen. Butterfield
indulges in innuendoes against Gen. Meade, whose chief of staff he was,
and insults his memory in the effort to exculpate the Third Corps from
a charge no one has ever made, or thought of making, against it, the
fair-minded can only wonder why he goes out of his way to call any one
to task for criticising Hooker. Not one word was spoken on Fast Day
which does not find its full and entire answer in the already published
works on Chancellorsville. It was all a mere re-hash, and poorly cooked
at that. To rely on the four reasons given by the Committee on the
Conduct of the War as a purgation of Hooker from responsibility for our
defeat at Chancellorsville, simply deserves no notice. It is all of a
piece with the discussion of the Third-Corps fight at Gettysburg on July
2. No one ever doubted that the Third Corps fought, as they always did,
like heroes that day. What has been alleged is merely that Sickles did
not occupy and protect Little Round Top, as he would have done if he had
had the military coup d'oeil.

Now, I desire to compare with Hooker's recorded words, and the
utterances of Fast Day, the actual performance, and see what "loyalty to
Hooker," as voted in Music Hall, means. Chancellorsville bristles
with points of criticism, an