When I returned from Chancellorsville,
I felt that I had fought no battle; in fact, I had more men than I could
use, and I fought no general battle, for the reason that I could not get
my men in position to do so."
To speak thus of a passage of arms lasting a week and costing seventeen
thousand men is, to say the least, abnormal.
In trying to shift the onus of failure from his own shoulders he said:
"Some of our corps commanders, and also officers of other rank, appear
to be unwilling to go into a fight. . . . So far as my experience
extends, there are in all armies officers more valiant after the fight
than while it is pending, and when a truthful history of the Rebellion
shall be written, it will be found that the Army of the Potomac is not
an exception."
This slur is cast upon men like Reynolds, Meade, Couch, Sedgwick, Slocum,
Howard, Hancock, Humphreys, Sykes, Warren, Birney, Whipple, Wright,
Griffin, and many others equally gallant. To call it ungenerous,
is a mild phrase. It certainly does open the door to unsparing
criticism. Hooker also concisely stated his military rule of action:
"Throughout the Rebellion I have acted on the principle that if I had as
large a force as the enemy, I had no apprehensions of the result of an
encounter.
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