e take away from them the character of
a calm and judicial correction of his first report. He was then a
general set aside from active service and a political aspirant to
the Presidency. His book was a controversial one, issued as an
argument to the public, and the earlier report must be regarded in a
military point of view as the more authoritative unless good grounds
are given for the changes. When he wrote his preliminary report he
certainly knew the hour and the condition of affairs on the field
when he gave the order to Burnside. To do so at eight o'clock would
not accord with his plan of battle. [Footnote: _Id_., pp. 30, 55.]
His purpose had been to move the Ninth Corps against the enemy "when
matters looked favorably" on our right, after an attack by Hooker,
Mansfield, and Sumner, supported, if necessary, by Franklin. But
Sumner's attack was not made till after nine, and Franklin's head of
column did not reach the field till ten. McClellan's book, indeed,
erroneously postpones Franklin's arrival till past noon, which, if
true, would tend to explain why the day wore away without any
further activity on the right; but the preliminary report better
agrees with Franklin's when it says that officer reached the field
about an hour after Sedgwick's disaster. [Footnote: Official
Records, vol. xix. pt. i. pp. 30, 61, 376.]

Still further, matters had at no time "looked favorably" on the
right up to ten o'clock. The condition, therefore, which was assumed
as precedent to Burnside's movement, never existed; and this was
better known to McClellan than to any one else, for he received the
first discouraging reports after Mansfield fell, and the subsequent
alarming ones when Sedgwick was routed. Burnside's report was dated
on the 30th of September, within two weeks of the battle, and at a
time when public discussion of the incomplete results of the battle
was animated. It was made after he had in his hands my own report as
his immediate subordinate, in which I had given about nine o'clock
as my remembrance of the time. [Footnote: _Id_., p. 424.] As I
directed the details of the action at the bridge in obedience to
this order, it would have been easy for him to have accepted the
hour named by me, for I should have been answerable for any delay in
execution after that time. But he then had in his possession the
order which came to him upon the hill-top overlooking the field, and
no officer in the whole army has a better establi