“I lost a thousand men in less than ten minutes time in taking the heights of Fredericksburg.”

Sedgwick did “shoulder arms and advance” as soon as he received the order; but the reports show plainly enough that he encountered annoying opposition so soon as he struck the outskirts of the town; that he threw forward assaulting columns at once; and that these fought as well as the conditions warranted, but were repulsed.

It is not intended to convey the impression that there was no loss of time on Sedgwick’s part.  On the contrary, he might certainly have been more active in some of his movements.  No doubt there were other general officers who would have been.  But it is no exaggeration to insist that his dispositions were fully as speedy as those of any other portion of the army in this campaign.

Hooker not only alleges that “in his judgment, Gen. Sedgwick did not obey the spirit of his order, and made no sufficient effort to obey it,” but quotes Warren as saying that Sedgwick “would not have moved at all if he [Warren] had not been there; and that, when he did move, it was not with sufficient confidence or ability on his part to manoeuvre his troops.”  It is very doubtful whether Warren ever put his opinion in so strong a way as thus quoted by Hooker from memory.  His report does speak of Gibbon’s slowness in coming up, and of his thus losing the chance of crossing the canals and taking the breastworks before the Confederates filed into them.  But beyond a word to the effect that giving the advance to Brooks’s division, after the capture of the heights, “necessarily consumed a considerable time,” Warren does not in his report particularly criticise Sedgwick’s movements.  And in another place he does speak of the order of ten P.M. as an “impossible” one.

Gen. Warren’s testimony on this subject is of the highest importance, as representing Gen. Hooker in person.  As before stated, he carried a duplicate of Hooker’s order of ten P.M., to Sedgwick, with instructions from the general to urge upon Sedgwick the importance of the utmost celerity.  Moreover, Warren knew the country better than any one else, and was more generally conversant with Hooker’s plans, ideas, and methods, being constantly at his side.  “Gen. Sedgwick was ordered to be in his position by daylight:  of course that implied, if he could be there.”

“If Sedgwick had got to Chancellorsville by daylight, I think we ought to have destroyed Lee’s army.  But it would depend a great deal upon how hard the other part of the army fought; for Gen. Sedgwick, with his twenty thousand men, was in great danger of being destroyed if he became isolated.”

Moreover, Hooker in this testimony says:  “Early in the campaign I had come to the conclusion that with the arms now in use it would be impossible to carry works by an assault in front, provided they were properly constructed and properly manned;” and refers to the Fredericksburg assault of Dec. 13, to illustrate this position, saying that they (the enemy) “could destroy men faster than I could throw them on the works;” and, “I do not know of an instance when rifle-pits, properly constructed and properly manned, have been taken by front assaults alone.”