Page:The Reminiscences of Carl Schurz (Volume Three).djvu/135

 around imperiled companions—for that I seek the motive in vain.” * * * *

“Everybody that knows me, will tell you that here, as elsewhere, I have been and am the most forbearing and inoffensive of men. And even in this case, I would have abstained from all sharpness of criticism had I not, by a series of occurrences, been tortured into the conviction that, at last, I owed it to myself and to my companions to array on one occasion the whole truth in its nakedness against official and private obloquy.” * * * *

The verdict of the court of inquiry appeared like an almost ludicrous effort to carry water on both shoulders. It is intelligible that the colonels composing that court should have hesitated to find their commander, General Hooker, guilty of a muddled head during the night of the Wauhatchie engagement in giving orders and then making the execution of those orders utterly impossible by subsequent orders, and of covering this fact by a palpable falsehood and a shameless slander of his subordinates in an official report. On the other hand, they were too honest to join General Hooker in his outrageous misrepresentation of facts and his calumnious assault. Thus they hit upon a finding according to which the facts were exactly as I had stated them; but General Hooker was right in wishing Geary speedily relieved, and in being displeased when this was not done as he had wished; and he held back my brigades, believing I had other troops to send to Geary. Tyndale was right in not marching to the relief of Geary, because he was ordered to occupy a certain hill. Hecker was right in doing what he did, because he was ordered to do so. And, finally, “General Schurz, as soon as he had received his orders from General Hooker, promptly set about carrying them into execution; the troops were quickly under arms; they turned out splendidly. The necessary orders answering the object and fitting the