If that is an accusation that Hooker was then drunk, if it does not rather lean toward an exculpation from the charge of drunkenness, then I can neither write nor read the English language.  As is well known, the question of Hooker’s sudden and unaccountable loss of power, during the fighting half of this campaign, coupled with the question of drunkenness, has been bandied to and fro for years.  The mention alone of Chancellorsville has been enough, ever since that day, to provoke a query on this very subject, among civilians and soldiers alike.  In a lecture on the subject, I deemed it judicious to lay this ghost as well as might be.  Had I believed that Hooker was intoxicated at Chancellorsville, I should not have been deterred by the fear of opposition from saying so.  Hooker’s over-anxious friends have now turned into a public scandal what was generally understood as an exoneration, by intentionally distorting what was said into an implication that Hooker was so besotted as to be incapable of command.  What I have written of his marching the army to this field and to the field of Gettysburg is a full answer to such unnecessary perversion.  Let these would-be friends of Hooker remember that this calumny is of their own making, not mine.  I am as sorry for it, as they ought to be.  If the contempt expressed in the resolutions they passed had been silent, instead of boisterous, Hooker’s memory would have suffered far less damage.

Gens.  Sickles and Butterfield are doubtless good witnesses, though they sedulously refrained from any testimony on the subject, contenting themselves with declamation.  But they are not the only good witnesses.  After the loss of a leg at Gettysburg, I was ordered to duty in the War Department, where I served in charge of one or other bureau for seven years.  I have heard this Hooker question discussed in all its bearings, in the office of the Secretary of War or Adjutant-General, by nearly every leading officer of the army, hundreds of whom had known Hooker from West Point up.  I have had abundant opportunity of forming an opinion, and I have expressed it.  Let him who garbles its meaning, bear the blame.

This action by many veterans of the Third Corps—­even though procured by design from their thoughtless and open soldier’s nature—­is, however, much more sweeping and important.  To the world at large it is a general condemnation of every thing which can be said in criticism of Hooker.  It will reach far and wide, and in this light I desire to say what I do.  The resolutions passed at the meeting explicitly protest against the statement that Hooker proved a failure as an independent commander.  This needs notice at greater length than the question of sobriety or drunkenness.  Few have studied the details of the campaign of Chancellorsville as carefully as I; but one other author has spread the facts so fully before the reading public.  No part of my recent criticism before the Lowell Institute