Page:Hooker Inquiry (Wauhatchie Engagement) - Schurz Argument - Page 21.jpg

21

on the part of the subordinate, or a morbid desire to blame on the part of the Commander. Public and official censures under such circumstances are so unusual, that, either, the provocation must be enormous, or the ill will uncontrollable.

It may be asked why the censure in the report is so ambiguous as to admit of an application to some Brigade of mine, as well as to myself. In my public life I have learned to understand the language of those who want to hurt. It is never more insidious than when it merely suggests and insinuates. By saying little that is positive, and, expressing that little obscurely, it opens a wide field for a malevolent imagination. Just enough is said in that report to give a hold to backbiting malignity, which now may point to an official document as proof, and suggestively add: no more was said, in order not to ruin him. I appreciate this tenderness, as well as I highly appreciate the elaborate flourish of language, in which the greatness of the danger is so artistically, so touchingly, and yet so gratuitously, contrasted with the tardiness of the relief which was caused by superior orders, and the flimsiness of an excuse which nobody ever thought of offering.

Here I will stop. I feel that I owe you an apology for the length and sweep of my remarks. When I entered the Army, I left a position of ease and splendor. I might have led a life full of honor and enjoyment in other spheres of activity, but after having co-operated in the development of the ideas governing this country, I desired to share all its fortunes to the last. I entered upon this career with a heart full of enthusiasm and readiness for self-sacrifice. I have been quietly endeavoring to do my duty, with zeal, but without ostentation. For all this I claim no higher consideration than any other man in the Army may claim; but I do not see why I should be satisfied with less. Knowing what material glory so frequently is made of, I do not crave for glory, but for justice. 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 troops to array on one occasion the whole truth in its nakedness against official and private obloquy. Since the battle of Chancelorsville,—the first time I had the honor to participate in an engagement under General Hooker’s command,—since that time, when through newspaper articles, dated at the Headquarters of the Army of the Potomac, I was covered with the most outrageous slanders, which, although easily disproved, were as easily repeated; since that time until the present day I have had to suffer so much from the busy tongue of open and secret