t least
equal to our own." The infliction of loss on the enemy has always been
understood by military men to be an incident rather than the object of
war.

The following reply in "The Boston Herald" of April 11, 1886, explains
itself:--

TO THE EDITOR OF THE HERALD.

In the call for the meeting of the Third Corps Gettysburg Re-union
Association, held at Music Hall on Fast Day, was the following clause:--

"Loyalty to the memory of our beloved commander, Major-Gen. Joseph
Hooker, makes it a duty, on this occasion, to protest against unjust and
uncalled-for criticisms on his military record as commander of the Army
of the Potomac."

It having been intimated to me by some old brother officers of the Third
Corps, that my late Lowell lecture on Chancellorsville was the occasion
of this proposed protest, I wrote to the chairman of the committee which
called the meeting, asking for an opportunity to reply to this protest,
within such bounds as even-handedness and the purposes of the meeting
would allow. The committee answered that it could not see the propriety
of turning the occasion into a public debate, and referred me to the
press. I do not object to their decision, made, no doubt, upon what
appeared to them sufficient grounds; but as the occasion was turned into
a public debate--one-sided, to be sure--I ask you for space, to reply in
your valued columns.

As an old Third-Corps man, I attended the meeting at Music Hall.
The treasurer did not object to selling me a ticket to the dinner. I
expected to hear some new facts about Hooker and Chancellorsville. I
expected to hear some new deductions from old facts. I do not consider
myself beyond making an occasional lapse even in a carefully prepared
piece of work, and am always open to correction. But, to my surprise
(with the exception of a conjecture that Lee's object in his march into
Pennsylvania was to wreck the anthracite-coal industry), there was not
one single fact or statement laid before the meeting, or the company at
dinner, which has not already been, in its minutest details, canvassed
and argued at a length covering hundreds of pages in the volumes on
Chancellorsville, by Hotchkiss and Allen, Swinton, Bates, the Comte de
Paris, Doubleday, and myself, not to speak of numberless and valuable
brochures by others. The bulk of the time devoted to talking on this
occasion was used in denunciation of the wretch--in other words,
myself--who alleged that Joseph Hoo