k, probably about ten, [Footnote: The
reports on the Confederate side fix ten o'clock as the time McLaws
and Walker reached the field, and corroborate the conclusion I draw
from all other available evidence.] when Sumner entered the West
Wood, and in fifteen minutes or a little more the one-sided combat
was over.

Sumner's principal attack was made, as I have already indicated, at
right angles to that of Hooker. He had thus crossed the line of
Hooker's movement in both the advance and the retreat of the latter.
This led to some misconceptions on Sumner's part. Crawford's
division had retired to the right and rear to make way for Sedgwick
as he came up. It thus happened that Greene's division was the only
part of the Twelfth Corps troops Sumner saw, and he led Sedgwick's
men to the right of these. Ignorant as he necessarily was of what
had occurred before, he assumed that he formed on the extreme right
of the Twelfth Corps, and that he fronted in the same direction as
Hooker had done. This misconception of the situation led him into
another error. He had seen only stragglers and wounded men on the
line of his own advance, and hence concluded that Hooker's Corps was
completely dispersed and its division and brigade organizations
broken up. He not only gave this report to McClellan at the time,
but reiterated it later in his statement before the Committee on the
Conduct of the War. [Footnote: C. W., vol. i. p. 368.] The truth was
that he had marched westward more than a mile south of the
Poffenberger hill where Meade was with the sadly diminished but
still organized First Corps, and half that distance south of the
Miller farm buildings, near which Goodrich's brigade had entered the
north end of the West Wood, and in front of which part of Williams's
men had held the ground along the turnpike till they were relieved
by Sedgwick's advance. Sedgwick had gone in, therefore, between
Greene and Crawford, and the four divisions of the two corps
alternated in their order from left to right, thus: French, Greene,
Sedgwick, Crawford, the last being Williams's, of which Crawford was
in command.

It was not Sumner's fault that he was so ill-informed of the actual
situation on our right; but it is plain that in the absence of
McClellan from that part of the field he should have left the
personal leadership of the men to the division commanders, and
should himself have found out by rapid examination the positions of
all the troops o