William Swinton, Campaigns of the Army of the Potomac

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[305] have been an impossibility, even had no enemy interposed. Sedgwick, after a gallant assault in which he suffered heavy loss, carried the Fredericksburg heights on Sunday forenoon; and he then moved out to obey Hooker's instructions to fall upon Lee's rear at Chancellorsville, but was stopped by the enemy at Salem Heights.

6. But meanwhile, on Sunday morning Hooker had been driven back at Chancellorsville. Moreover, the operations ending in the giving ground of the army at Chancellorsville were over five hours before Sedgwick attacked Salem Heights. It is therefore evident, that unless the Sixth Corps could, single-handed, fight all the force brought against it, the sole object of taking the heights of Fredericksburg, or uncovering Banks' Ford, was to hold a position from which the army might debouch. Therefore the attack on Salem Heights was mere waste of men; and if those heights had been taken, the Sixth Corps never could have extricated itself. Sedgwick should not have been called forward from Fredericksburg, because to abandon the possession of the heights was to give up a positive gain for a remote possibility. If, however, Sedgwick was to be expected to make a junction with the force at Chancellorsville, Hooker was committed by every consideration of honor and duty to so act as to make the junction possible. Yet he did not make the slightest effort as a diversion in Sedgwick's favor; but allowed Lee to countermarch at pleasure from his front a force sufficient to first check and then overwhelm Sedgwick. General Hooker lays the blame of the disaster at Chancellorsville to Sedgwick's failure to join him on Sunday morning. ‘In my judgment,’ says he, ‘General Sedgwick did not obey the spirit of my order, and made no sufficient effort to obey it. His movement was delayed so long that the enemy discovered his intentions; and when that was done, he was necessarily delayed in the further execution of the order.’¹ This is a cruel charge to bring against a commander now beyond the reach of detraction;