by a force of nineteen
thousand, while the rest turned upon and demolished Sedgwick. If
loyalty to Hooker requires us to believe that this was even respectable
generalship, it follows that the Army of the Potomac, well led, could be
defeated by the Army of Northern Virginia, four to one. Shall we accept
this as an explanation of our defeat?

If there is in the world's military history a parallel to this
extraordinary generalship, for which any one who has even pretended to
study the art of war is able to find an excuse, I have failed to find
such an instance in the course of many years' reading, and shall be
happy to have it pointed out to me. Hooker's wound cannot be alleged in
extenuation. If he was disabled, his duty was to turn the command over
to Couch, the next in rank. If he did not do this, he was responsible
for what followed. And he retained the command himself, only using Couch
as his mouthpiece.

I have always maintained, that, man for man, the Army of the Potomac was
at any time the equal of the Army of Northern Virginia, and that, man
for man, the old Third Corps has proved itself good for Jackson's in its
palmiest days. When, therefore, the Army of the Potomac was, as here,
defeated or bottled up by one-half, one-third, or one-quarter its force
of the enemy, my loyalty to that army demands that I seek a reason other
than Hooker's alleged lack of heart of his subordinate officers. And
this reason is only to be found in Hooker's inability to handle so
many men. All the resolutions in the world, passed under a furore of
misstatement and misconception, even by such a noble body of men as
Third-Corps veterans, will not re-habilitate Joseph Hooker's military
character during these five days, nor make him other than a morally
and intellectually impotent man from May 1 to May 5, 1863. Loyalty to
Hooker, so-called, is disloyalty to the grand old army, disloyalty to
the seventeen thousand men who fell, disloyalty to every comrade who
fought at Chancellorsville. I begrudge no man the desire to blanket
facts and smother truth in order to turn a galling defeat into a
respectable campaign; I begrudge no man his acceptance of Hooker's
theory that Chancellorsville was not a disaster; I begrudge no one his
faith in Hooker as a successful battle-field commander of the Army of
the Potomac. But let it be well understood that this faith of necessity
implies the fact that the Army of the Potomac was unable or unwilling to
fi