30 A.M. order, without saying
one word about Hooker's actions, change of plans, and despatches from
that hour till the attack at 6 P.M., he makes any thinking man question
seriously the sincerity of what he calls history. When Gen. Butterfield
indulges in innuendoes against Gen. Meade, whose chief of staff he was,
and insults his memory in the effort to exculpate the Third Corps from a
charge no one has ever made, or thought of making, against it, the
fair-minded can only wonder why he goes out of his way to call any one
to task for criticising Hooker. Not one word was spoken on Fast Day
which does not find its full and entire answer in the already published
works on Chancellorsville. It was all a mere re-hash, and poorly cooked
at that. To rely on the four reasons given by the Committee on the
Conduct of the War as a purgation of Hooker from responsibility for our
defeat at Chancellorsville, simply deserves no notice. It is all of a
piece with the discussion of the Third-Corps fight at Gettysburg on July
2. No one ever doubted that the Third Corps fought, as they always did,
like heroes that day. What has been alleged is merely that Sickles did
not occupy and protect Little Round Top, as he would have done if he had
had the military coup d'oeil.
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