Joseph Hooker, as against loyalty to the Army of the Potomac.
The recent course of lectures at the Lowell Institute was intended to be
a purely military one. There was no intention of bringing politics or
sectional pride into the discussion, and it was thought that the
lectures could to-day be delivered without rousing a breath of ancient
animosity. If there was any campaign during our civil war which was
especially, in a military sense, a glorious one for the rebels, and an
ignominious one for us, it was Chancellorsville. It is indeed a pity
that the skill of the one side and the errors of the other cannot be
once again pointed out, that the true and only possible explanation of
Hooker's one hundred and thirty thousand men being defeated by Lee's
sixty thousand cannot be once again stated, without eliciting from a
body of veterans of the old Third Corps a set of condemnatory
resolutions. There has been some very heated criticism of the recent
lectures, and not a little fault-finding with the lecturers. I presume
that none of the gentlemen who participated in the course would feel
like denying the inference, so often suggested, that the censors might
have done much better than they were able to do.
Pages:
326
327
328
329
330
331
332
333
334
335
336
337
338
339
340
341
342
343
344
345
346
347
348
349
350