It seems now very clear that about ten o'clock in the morning was the great crisis in this battle. The sudden and complete rout of Sedgwick's division was not easily accounted for, and, with McClellan's theory of the enormous superiority of Lee's numbers, it looked as if the Confederate general had massed overwhelming forces on our right. Sumner's notion that Hooker's corps was utterly dispersed was naturally accepted, and McClellan limited his hopes to holding on at the East Wood and the Poffenberger hill, where Hooker's batteries were massed and supported by the troops that had been rallied there. Franklin's corps, as it came on the field, was detained to support the threatened right centre, and McClellan determined to help it further by a demonstration upon the extreme left by the Ninth Corps. At this time, therefore, he gave his order to Burnside to cross the Antietam and attack the enemy, thus creating a diversion in favor of our hard-pressed right. His preliminary report of the battle (dated October 16, 1862) explicitly states that the order to Burnside to attack was "communicated to him at ten o'clock A.M." This exactly agrees with the time stated by Burnside in his official report, and would ordinarily be quite conclusive. [Footnote: See note, p. 334, _ante_. C. W., pt. i. p. 41; Official Records, vol. xix. pt. i. pp. 31, 416.] In the book published in 1864 as his official report of his whole military career, McClellan says he ordered Burnside to make this attack at eight o'clock. The circumstances under which his final published statements were made take away from them the character of a calm and judicial correction of his first report. He was then a general set aside from active service and a political aspirant to the Presidency. His book was a controversial one, issued as an argument to the public, and the earlier report must be regarded in a military point of view as the more authoritative unless good grounds are given for the changes. When he wrote his preliminary report he certainly knew the hour and the condition of affairs on the field when he gave the order to Burnside. To do so at eight o'clock would not accord with his plan of battle. [Footnote: _Id_., pp. 30, 55.] His purpose had been to move the Ninth Corps against the enemy "when matters looked favorably" on our right, after an attack by Hooker, Mansfield, and Sumner, supported, if necessary, by Franklin. But Sumner's attack was not made till after nine, and Franklin's head of column did not reach the field till ten. McClellan's book, indeed, erroneously postpones Franklin's arrival till past noon, which, if true, would tend to explain why the day wore away without any further activity on the right; but the preliminary report better agrees with Franklin's when it says that officer reached the field about an hour after Sedgwick's disaster. [Footnote: Official Records, vol. xix. pt. i. pp. 30, 61, 376.]