_May 9._--The poorest defence of Hooker is that the terrain was such that he could not manoeuvre. If the terrain was so bad, Hooker ought to have known it beforehand, and not brought his army there. The rebels have not been prevented from marching and manoeuvring on the same ground, and not prevented from attacking Hooker, all of which ought to have been done by our army.
_May 9._--All is again in unspeakable confusion. All seems to crack. This time, more than ever, a powerful mind is necessary to disentangle the country. If all is confirmed concerning Hooker's incapacity, then it is a crime to keep him in command; but who after him? It becomes now only a guess, a lottery.
The acting Chief-of Staff on the battle-field was General Van Alen. Brave and devoted; but Van Alen saw the fire for the first time, and makes no claims to be a scientific soldier.
_May 10._--I wrote to Stanton to call his attention to, and explain the reasons of Hooker's so-called miscarriage. The insufficiency, the inadequacy of his staff and of chief-of-staff. Hooker attempted what not even Napoleon would have dared to attempt, to fight an army of more than one hundred thousand men, literally without a staff, or without a thorough, scientific and experienced chief-of-staff. I directed Stanton's attention to evidences from military history. Persons interested in such questions read Battle of Ligny and Waterloo, by Thiers.
Cobden, Cobden the friend of the Union, can no more stand Mr. Seward's confused logomachy, and in a speech sneers at Mr. Seward's dispatches. The New York _Times_ _dutifully_ perverts Cobden's speech; other papers _dutifully_ keep silent.
_May 10._--To extenuate Hooker's misconduct, his supporters assert that he was struck, stunned, and his brains affected. Hooker was stunned on Friday, and his campaign was already lost on Tuesday before, when he wrote his silly proclamation, when he subsided with the army in a _semi-lunar_ (the worst form of all) camp, and challenged Lee to come and fight him. Lee did it. Hooker was intellectually stunned on Tuesday. Further: the results of the material stunning on Friday could never have been so fatal if the army had been organized on the basis of common sense, as are all the armies of intelligent governments in Europe. The chief-of-staff elaborates with the commander the plan of the action; he is therefore familiar with the intentions of the commander. When the commander is disabled, the chief-of-staff continues the action. At the storming of Warsaw, in 1831, Prince Paschkewitsch, the commander, was disabled or stunned, and his chief-of-staff, Count Toll, directed the storm for two days, and Warsaw fell into Russian hands.