reason is only to be found in Hooker’s inability to handle so many men.  All the resolutions in the world, passed under a furore of misstatement and misconception, even by such a noble body of men as Third-Corps veterans, will not re-habilitate Joseph Hooker’s military character during these five days, nor make him other than a morally and intellectually impotent man from May 1 to May 5, 1863.  Loyalty to Hooker, so-called, is disloyalty to the grand old army, disloyalty to the seventeen thousand men who fell, disloyalty to every comrade who fought at Chancellorsville.  I begrudge no man the desire to blanket facts and smother truth in order to turn a galling defeat into a respectable campaign; I begrudge no man his acceptance of Hooker’s theory that Chancellorsville was not a disaster; I begrudge no one his faith in Hooker as a successful battle-field commander of the Army of the Potomac.  But let it be well understood that this faith of necessity implies the fact that the Army of the Potomac was unable or unwilling to fight one-quarter its number of Lee’s troops.  I prefer my faith in the stanch, patient army, in its noble rank and file, in its gallant officers, from company to corps; and I refuse to accept Hooker’s insult to his subordinates as any explanation for allowing the Army of the Potomac to “be here defeated without ever being fought.”

The Army of the Potomac was better than its commanders from first to last.  It was, beyond speaking, superior to its commander during the fighting days at Chancellorsville.  As a corps commander, Joseph Hooker will always be a type and household word.  In logistics, even as commander of the Army of the Potomac, he deserves high praise.  But when it comes to fighting the army at Chancellorsville, let whoso will keep his loyalty to Hooker, without protest from me.  I claim for myself and the bulk of my comrades the right, equally without protest, sneers, or resolutions, to express my loyalty to the rank and file, my loyalty to the officers, and my loyalty to the army as a whole.  And I claim, moreover, the right, without protest, sneers, or resolutions, to show that on this field it was the general commanding, and not the army, whose lapses caused defeat.  Not that I object to these Fast-Day resolutions.  I believe that I can still struggle onward in life, even under the contempt of their authors.  But partisanship in matters of history is a boomerang which always flies back to whack its thrower.  And Fast Day’s performance was baldly partisan.

I am satisfied to abide the verdict of all soldiers, of all citizens, who ever studied the facts of this campaign.  What ever the action of any meeting of old soldiers may be under partial knowledge of facts, under the influence of heated or sectional discussion, or under the whipping-in of a member of Hooker’s staff, I do not believe that with the issue squarely put before them, and the facts plainly stated, any but a very inconsiderable fraction, and that not the most intelligent one, of the men of the Army of the Potomac, will give their suffrage to what has been suddenly discovered to be loyalty due to Gen. Joseph Hooker, as against loyalty to the Army of the Potomac.