We know how the Eleventh Corps lay, its reserve removed, with which it might have protected a change of front, should this become necessary, and itself facing southerly.  What was on its left, to move up to its support in case of an attack down the pike?  Absolutely not a regiment between Dowdall’s and Chancellorsville, and near the latter place only one division available.  This was Berry’s, still luckily massed in the open north of headquarters.  And to Sickles’s very deliberate movement alone is due the fact that Berry was still there when the attack on Howard burst; for Sickles had bespoken Berry’s division in support of his own advance just at this juncture.

Birney, who was the prop of Howard’s immediate left, had been advanced nearly two miles through the thickets to the south to attack an imaginary enemy.  Whipple had followed him.  Of Slocum’s corps, Williams had been sent out “two or three miles,” to sweep the ground in his front, and Geary despatched down the plank road “for the purpose of cutting off the train of the enemy, who was supposed to be in retreat towards Gordonsville.”  To oppose the attack of a column of not far from twenty-five thousand men, there was thus left a brigade front of four small regiments, and the flank of a corps of eight thousand men more, without reserves, and with no available force whatever for its support, should it be overwhelmed.

Is any criticism needed upon this situation?  And who should be responsible for it?

In a defensive battle it is all-important that the general in command should hold his troops well in hand, especially when the movements of the enemy can be concealed by the terrain.  The enemy is allowed his choice of massing for an attack on any given point:  so that the ability to concentrate reserve troops on any threatened point is an indispensable element of safety.  It may be assumed that Hooker was, at the moment of Jackson’s attack, actually taking the offensive.  But on this hypothesis, the feebleness of his advance is still more worthy of criticism.  For Jackson was first attacked by Sickles as early as nine A.M.; and it was six P.M. before the latter was ready to move upon the enemy in force.  Such tardiness as this could never win a battle.

While all this had been transpiring on the right, Lee, to keep his opponent busy, and prevent his sending re-enforcements to the flank Jackson was thus threatening, had been continually tapping at the lines in his front.  But, owing to the small force left with him, he confined this work to Hooker’s centre, where he rightly divined his headquarters to be.  About seven A.M. the clearing at Chancellorsville was shelled by some of Anderson’s batteries, obliging the trains there parked to go to the rear into the woods.

Hancock states that the enemy frequently opened with artillery, and made infantry assaults on his advanced line of rifle-pits, but was always handsomely repulsed.  “During the sharp contests of that day, the enemy was never able to reach my principal line of battle, so stoutly and successfully did Col.  Miles (who commanded the advanced line) contest the ground.”