“Answer.—­I could not proceed in that direction.  I think Gen. Hooker might have probably relieved me if he had made an attack at that time.  I think I had a much larger force of the enemy around me than Gen. Hooker had in front of him.  There were two divisions of the enemy on the heights of Fredericksburg, which was in my rear; and they would have attacked me the moment I undertook to proceed towards Chancellorsville.  About one A.M. of May 5, Gen. Hooker telegraphed me to cross the river, and take up the bridges.  This is the despatch:  ’Despatch this moment received.  Withdraw; cover the river, and prevent any force crossing.  Acknowledge receipt.’

“This was immediately done:  as the last of the column was crossing, between three and four o’clock, the orders to cross were countermanded, and I was directed to hold a position on the south bank.  The despatch was dated 1.20 A.M., and was received at 3.20, as follows:—­

“’Yours received, saying you could hold position.  Order to withdraw countermanded.  Acknowledge both.’

“In explanation of this I should say that I had telegraphed to Gen. Hooker that I could hold the position.  He received it after he had ordered me to cross over.  But, receiving his despatch to cross, I had commenced the movement; and, as I have said, I had very nearly taken my force over, when the order to cross was countermanded.  To return at that time was wholly impracticable, and I telegraphed that fact to Gen. Hooker.”

To place in juxtaposition Hooker’s testimony and Sedgwick’s, in no wise militates against the latter.

There is one broad criticism which may fairly he passed upon Sedgwick’s withdrawal across the Rappahannock.  It is that, with the knowledge that his remaining in position might be of some assistance to his chief, instead of exhibiting a perhaps undue anxiety to place himself beyond danger, he could with his nineteen thousand men, by dint of stubborn flghting, have held the intrenchments at Banks’s Ford, against even Lee with his twenty-four thousand.

But if he attempted this course, and was beaten, Lee could have destroyed his corps.  And this risk he was bound to weigh, as he did, with the advantages Hooker could probably derive from his holding on.  Moreover, to demand thus much of Sedgwick, is to hold him to a defence, which, in this campaign, no other officer of the Army of the Potomac was able to make.

Not but what, under equally pressing conditions, other generals have, or himself, if he had not received instructions to withdraw, might have, accomplished so much.  But if we assume, that having an eye to the numbers and losses of his corps, and to his instructions, as well as to the character and strength of the enemy opposed to him, Sedgwick was bound to dispute further the possession of Banks’s Ford, in order to lend a questionable aid to Hooker, how lamentable will appear by comparison the conduct of the other corps of the Army of the Potomac, under the general commanding, bottled up behind their defences at Chancellorsville!