CAMP NEAR RAPPAHANNOCK
STATION, November 14, 1862.
Generals Halleck and Meigs, as I anticipated, objected to
the change of base from the Orange and Alexandria Railroad to the
Fredericksburg Railroad, but after discussion yielded their views to those of
the general officers in command, and have returned to Washington, to endeavor
to obtain the sanction of the still greater general, Stanton. It is also
understood the army is to be divided into three commands, each of two corps, to
be commanded respectively by Sumner, Hooker and Franklin. Our corps is to be
under Franklin. Baldy Smith takes Franklin's corps, and Sykes is to have
Porter's corps.
General McCall sent me Hooker's report of the battle of
Glendale,1 and called on me, as the present commander of the
division, to reply to it; but I answered him that I considered his being in
command at that time constituted him the proper person to reply, and if not
himself, then Seymour, who commanded the Third Brigade, which was on the left
of our line and adjacent to Hooker's command. I further told McCall that I
hardly thought it worth while to make any public reply to Hooker; that the
reputation of the Reserves was now well established, and the facts of the New
Market battle very generally known, and Hooker's report would carry its
antidote with its bane. What McCall has done I do not know, as I have not heard
from him since. I have no doubt a portion of Seymour's command did run through
Hooker's line, but he has made the mistake of confounding this portion of one
brigade with the whole division, thus depriving us of the credit of having for
four hours resisted an overwhelming onset of vastly superior numbers, and by
this resistance, and the check which we gave the enemy, preventing his piercing
our army, and enabling it that night to concentrate on the banks of the James
River, which they never would have or could have effected if our whole
division had run at the first fire, as Hooker charges.
__________
1 Or New Market Road, June 30, 1862.
SOURCE: George Meade, The Life and Letters of George
Gordon Meade, Vol. 1, p. 327-8
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