ker was drunk at Chancellorsville,
or at any other time. This denunciation began with a devout curse in the
chaplain's prayer, culminated in a set of fierce resolutions, and ended
with the last after-dinner speech.

One thing particularly struck me. There was no one, of all who spoke,
who began to say as many things in favor of Joseph Hooker as I for years
have done; and not in fleeting words, but printed chapters. There was
plenty of eulogy, in nine-tenths of which I joined with all my heart.
But it was of the soldiers'-talk order,--cheering and honest and loyal,
appealing to the sentiments rather than the intelligence. What I have
said of Hooker has been solid praise of his soldierly worth, shown to be
borne out by the facts. Barring, in all I say, the five fighting days
at Chancellorsville, I have yet to find the man who has publicly, and
in print, eulogized Hooker as I have done; and no one among the veterans
gathered together Fast Day applauded with more sincerity than I, all
the tributes to his memory. For though, as some one remarked, it is true
that I "fought mit Sigel," and decamped from Chancellorsville with the
Eleventh Corps; it is also true that I passed through the fiery ordeal
of the Seven Days, and fought my way across the railroad-cutting at
Manassas, side by side with Joseph Hooker, under the gallant leadership
of that other hero Philip Kearney. It was very evident that but few of
the speakers, as well as auditors, had themselves heard or read what
I actually said. The result of "coaching" for the occasion by some
wire-puller was painfully apparent. Let us see what was said. I give the
entire paragraph from my Lowell lecture:--

"It has been surmised that Hooker, during this campaign, was
incapacitated by a habit of which, at times, he had been the victim.
There is, rather, evidence that he was prostrated by too much
abstemiousness, when a reasonable use of stimulants might have kept his
nervous system at its normal tension. It was certainly not the use of
alcohol, during this time, which lay at the root of his indecision."

If that is an accusation that Hooker was then drunk, if it does not
rather lean toward an exculpation from the charge of drunkenness, then
I can neither write nor read the English language. As is well known, the
question of Hooker's sudden and unaccountable loss of power, during
the fighting half of this campaign, coupled with the question of
drunkenness, has been bandied to and