r to wipe off the stain with which its flight
from Dowdall's had blotted its new and cherished colors. But, if Hooker
was apprehensive of trusting these men so soon again, he could scarcely
deem them incapable of holding the intrenchments; and this left Meade
available for the work proposed.

Instead, then, of relying upon the material ready to his hand, Hooker
conceived that his salvation lay in the efforts of his flying wing
under Sedgwick, some fifteen miles away. He fain would call on Hercules
instead of putting his own shoulder to the wheel. His calculations
were that Sedgwick, whom he supposed to be at Franklin's and Pollock's
crossings, three or four miles below Fredericksburg, could mobilize
his corps, pass the river, capture the heights, where in December a few
Southern brigades had held the entire Army of the Potomac at bay, march
a dozen miles, and fall upon Lee's rear, all in the brief space of four
or five hours. And it was this plan he chose to put into execution,
deeming others equal to the performance of impossibilities, while
himself could not compass the easiest problems under his own eye.

To measure the work thus cut out for Sedgwick, by the rule of the
performances of the wing immediately commanded by Gen. Hooker, would be
but fair. But Sedgwick's execution of his orders must stand on its own
merits. And his movements are fully detailed elsewhere.

An excuse often urged in palliation of Hooker's sluggishness, is that
he was on Sunday morning severely disabled. Hooker was standing, between
nine and ten A.M., on the porch of the Chancellor House, listening
to the heavy firing at the Fairview crest, when a shell struck and
dislodged one of the pillars beside him, which toppled over, struck and
stunned him; and he was doubtless for a couple of hours incapacitated
for work.

But the accident was of no great moment. Hooker does not appear to have
entirely turned over the command to Couch, his superior corps-commander,
but to have merely used him as his mouthpiece, retaining the general
direction of affairs himself.

And this furnishes no real apology. Hooker's thorough inability to grasp
the situation, and handle the conditions arising from the responsibility
of so large a command, dates from Thursday noon, or at latest Friday
morning. And from this time his enervation was steadily on the increase.
For the defeat of the Army of the Potomac in Sunday morning's conflict
was already a settled fact, when