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.  Such censors generally can.  These dozen lecturers have all been earnest students of our civil war, as is abundantly testified by the twenty odd volumes on the subject published by them since the reports of operations became available; and they keenly feel that modesty which is always bred of study.  Such as they had, they were glad to give the public; nor do they in any wise shrink from generous disagreement or courteous criticism.  I submit, however, that some of the carping which has been indulged in is scarcely apt to lead to the correction of errors, or the elucidation of truth.  It is passing strange, that, at this late day, one may not criticise the military operations without arousing the evil spirit of the war.  Can we not aim at truth, rather than self-gratulation, which will live no longer than we do?  Criticism has always been indulged in, always will be.  If a Frederick may be dissected by a Lloyd, if a Napoleon may be sat on in judgment by a Lanfrey, may not the merest tyro in the art of war he pardoned for reviewing Hooker?  The gallant soldier who helped make history rarely writes history.  The same spirit which sent him to the front in 1861 generally keeps him busy to-day with the material interests of the country.  Despite the certainly novel fling of Fast Day at one who went into service as a mere boy, it remains a fact that rank, without the devoted study of years and a single eye to truth, will not enable any one to write history.  It was proven beyond a peradventure on Fast Day, that the command of a corps, let alone a division, will not of itself breed a historian.  Partisanship never will.

Truth will get written some day.  I myself prefer to write as an American, forgetting North and South, and to pass down to those who will write better than any of us, as one who tried to speak the truth, whomsoever it struck.  It is not I who criticise, who condemn Joseph Hooker:  it is the maxims of every master, of every authority on the art of war.  Not one of Hooker’s apologists can turn to the history of a master’s achievements, or to a volume of any accepted authority, without finding his pet commander condemned, in every action, and on every page, for the faults of the fighting days at Chancellorsville.