pring. McClellan
learned nothing. Will it be possible to find among our Potomac
generals one in whom revelation will supply experience?

The more I learn about that affair the more thoroughly I am
convinced that Hooker's misfortune had the same cause and source as
the misfortunes of those before him. No military scientific staff
and chief-of-staff. Butterfield was not even with Hooker, but at
Falmouth at the telegraph. If it is so, then no words can
sufficiently condemn them all.

If Kepler, or Herschel, or Fulton, or Ericcson had violated axioms
and laws of mathematics and dynamics, their labors would have been
as so much chaff and dust. War is mechanism and science, inspiration
and rule; a genuine staff for an army is a scientific law, and if
this law is not recognized and is violated, then the disasters
become a mathematically certain result.

_May 8._--The defenders of Hooker call the result a drawn battle.
Mr. Lincoln calls it a lost battle. I call it a miscarried, if not
altogether lost, campaign.

_May 9._--The poorest defence of Hooker is that the terrain was
such that he could not manoeuvre. If the terrain was so bad, Hooker
ought to have known it beforehand, and not brought his army there.
The rebels have not been prevented from marching and manoeuvring on
the same ground, and not prevented from attacking Hooker, all of
which ought to have been done by our army.

_May 9._--All is again in unspeakable confusion. All seems to crack.
This time, more than ever, a powerful mind is necessary to
disentangle the country. If all is confirmed concerning Hooker's
incapacity, then it is a crime to keep him in command; but who after
him? It becomes now only a guess, a lottery.

The acting Chief-of Staff on the battle-field was General Van Alen.
Brave and devoted; but Van Alen saw the fire for the first time, and
makes no claims to be a scientific soldier.

_May 10._--I wrote to Stanton to call his attention to, and explain
the reasons of Hooker's so-called miscarriage. The insufficiency,
the inadequacy of his staff and of chief-of-staff. Hooker attempted
what not even Napoleon would have dared to attempt, to fight an army
of more than one hundred thousand men, literally without a staff, or
without a thorough, scientific and experienced chief-of-staff. I
directed Stanton's attention to evidences from military history.
Persons interested in such questions read Battle of Ligny and
Waterloo, by Thiers.

Cobden, Cob