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 Hooker failed at
early dawn so to dispose his forces as to sustain Sickles and Williams
if over-matched, or to broach some counter-manoeuvre to draw the enemy's
attention to his own safety.
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