The Sun.
London, England, 1863-05-26 00:00:00

THE CIVIL WAR IN AMERICA,

(From the Correspondent of the Times.)

NEW YORK, May 8.

General Joseph Hooker, the " fighting Joe," of
the soldiers, the vain braggart whom ill fortune and
imbecility placed at the head of the army of the Po-
tomac, has played his desperate game—and lost it.
With no single quality of the good soldier except
that of courage, he has done more to damage the
cause of the Union, demoralise the army, and dis-
hearten the people by his failure to accomplish the
impossible task which he set himself, than any score
of fools or knaves who have ever been allowed to
mismanage the affairs of the unfortunate North.
Pope, Bureside, and Hooker form a regular chain
and sequence of evil. Pope was bad, Burnside worse
and Hooker worst of all. These men were all brave,
and each of them would have made a good subordi-
nate, in spite of the inherent conceit and reckless-
ness of their several natures. Unluckily for the
country, it was their defects and not their merits
which commended them originally to the notice of
the impatient and presumptuous self-deceivers who
rule in Washington. The results in each case sur-
prised Mr. Lincoln and his Ministers, but few else.
Even in this last crowning humiliation of the Go-
vernment—for it is the Government which is princi-
pally if not wholly to blame—for entrusting men
like Hooker with the safety of a gallant army, the
shame and sorrow of all classes are not mingled with
much surprise. The most sanguine who heard of
Hooker's advance admitted the adventure to be ha-
zardous, and hoped, rather than calculated, that it
would succeed. It was a desperate throw of the dice.
If Hooker won, he was to be the greatest man in
America ; if he lost, he was to be the smallest. And
he is the smallest at this hour, and to be pitied that
he did not lose his life in the thick of the battle, by
a heroic death making some atonement for his rash-
ness. Had this been the enviable termination of his
career, millions of hearts would have felt sympathy
for the fate of the soldier, who would have withheld
their approbation from the strategy of the general.
Eight days ago—on Thursday, the 30th of April
—he announced to his martyred army " his heart-
felt satisfaction that the operations of the three
previous days had determined that the enemy must
either ingloriously fly, or come out of their en-
trenchments, and accept battle on ground of his
choosing;" in which latter case, he said "certain
destruction awaits them." On the following day
he announced, in words still more offensively vain-
glorious—that " the army of the enemy was his
property." His first conflict with the enemy on
Saturday, the 2d of May, must have taught him
how grievously he had miscalculated his own
strength and theirs ; while his second and final
battle of Sunday, the 3d, must have carried the con-
viction to his mind, that unless he retreated across
the Rappahannock, his own destruction, and not
that of the enemy, was inevitable. Upon that con-
viction he acted, after taking a day to consider of
it; and on Tuesday, the sth, he succeeded in moving
the shattered remnants of his noble legions across
the river to their old camping ground in the suburb
of Falmouth, pursued by the enemy to the bank of
the stream, greatly harrassed in the crossing.
The whole truth of this deplorable matter has
not been allowed to be made public, and possibly
there is much exaggeration in the reports that are
afloat that Hooker has lost 10,000 men in killed
and wounded, 8,000 or 10,000 prisoners, and as
many more by desertion. The battle of Sunday is
described as a scene of more awful carnage than the
assault of Burnside on the heights of Fredericks-
burg, and the fact of which there is no doubt.
That Hooker was compelled to leave his dead
unburied on the fatal field of Chancelloraville, and
to abandon the wounded to their fate, while he
made good his retreat, shows how sorely he was
pressed and how terrible was the disaster which
he courted. Mr. Lincoln and the War Depart-
ment however must know the truth ; for he
and General Halleck visited General Hooker at
Falmouth on Wednesday morning, and must have
learnt some, if not all, of the sickening details. Yet
on their return to Washington they instructed their
semi-official organ in that capital to announce to the
astonished people " that the demonstration of Gen.
Hooker had proved no disaster, but simply a failure,
owing to the impracticability of the position which
the army had gained with so much skill and energy."
Though they admit a loss not exceeding 10,000 men,
and think the enemy's loss must have been double
that number, they add " that the relinquishment of
the position was made simply because it offered no
field for the manoeuvring of the army, and not from
any reverse or injury sustained by it." And lest
there should have been any doubt of the authenticity
of the semi-official announcement, Mr. Stanton has
to-day sent an official despatch to Governor Curtin,
of Pennsylvania, apprising him of the visit of the
President and General Halleck to General Hooker,
and notifying him of the fact that although the
principal operation of the army has failed, there has
been no serious disaster to its organisation and effi-
ciency, and that its " offensive operations will be
speedily resumed." Can the force of folly go further
than this ? An army of lions is not only led by asses
into useless slaughter, but asses in high place ap-
prove of the deed, and bray out the asinine assertion
that the loss of 10,000 lions is neither a reverse nor
an injury, and that the lions who survived the little
difficulty are again to be driven towards destruction
by the same agencies as before.
Well indeed may the American people blush that
such men as Mr. Stanton and his coadjutors should
at such a time trifle with the outraged feelings of
the people, and insult the survivors of one of the
bloodiest conflicts of modern times, by representing
it as an insignificant repulse, which may have
retarded, but will not prevent, the operations that
were originally intended.

It is not in nature that General M'Ciellan and
General Burnside should not feel a little, perhaps a
very little—satisfaction at the discomfiture of Gen.
Hooker. A man who boldly and without the
slightest hesitation declared, in answer to the first
question pat to him by the Congressional Commit-
tee on the conduct of the war, that the failure of
the Peninsular Campaign was to be attributed
entirely to the want of generalship on the part of
the commander, cannot but be looked upon by that
commander as a very shallow and presumptuous
person—whose shallowness and presumption are
proved by his own signal want of success when
attempting what he thought M'Clellan incompe-
tently failed to perform. And General Burnside,
who reported to the President that Hooker was
unfit to hold a command in the army, and recom-
mended his dismissal, cannot but be confirmed in
the accuracy of his opinion, and the justice of his
recommendation, by the events of the last week.
The question is, what will the Government now do
It cannot retain Hooker in command. If it did,
it is doubtful whethrer the army would follow ; and
four there are only tshter known generals whose
post appointment to the
would be considered other
than an act of temerity
Bul ter, and M'Clellan Halleck, Fremont,
hasalleck
o been
but his name inspires confidence.
mentioned,
.
Next to Mr.
Stanton, he is the most unpopular
country, and has never fought the
a battleor an in
distin-
guished himself in the army, unless it were a dis-
tinction to have been splendidly befooled and foiled
by General Beauregard at Corinth. General
Fremont is the favourite of the Abolitionists, and
the god of the idolatry of Mr. Ward Beecher, Mr.
Greeley, and Miss Dickinson, and those who re
in their opinions. His appointment would be
hailed with shouts of acclaim from all the pulpits
of the North, but would create something very like
dismay everyA here else. He has not only been
tried in Missouri and found wofully wanting, but he
is not respected by the army; and, if not a jobber
himself, has proved himself more accessible to
jobbers than any other officer in the service. There
is but slight chance that he will receive the com-
mand, though there is a possibility of it if the
President be still in the hands of the Abolitionists
and theorists. The notification of the fact would
infallibly send up the price of gold to 80 or 100 per
cent, prem., and produce consternation, if not panic,
in every commercial circle. Gen. Butler's appoint-
ment would be more popular. He is known to have
will, energy, and brains, and to be a good adminis-
trator, but he is not known to be a soldier. He go-
verned New Orleans, but did not capture it, and
even his warmest admirers do not claim for him the