Now, this is scarcely a fair statement of facts. And yet they were all spread before Hooker, in the reports of the Sixth Corps and of Gibbon. No doubt Sedgwick was bound, as far as was humanly possible, to obey that order; but, as in "losing every man in his command" in its execution, he would scarcely have been of great eventual utility to his chief, he did the only wise thing, in exercising ordinary discretion as to the method of attacking the enemy in his path. Hooker's assumption that Sedgwick was on the north side of the Rappahannock was his own, and not Sedgwick's fault. Hooker might certainly have supposed that Sedgwick had obeyed his previous orders, in part at least. Sedgwick testified before the Committee on the Conduct of the War: "I have understood that evidence has appeared before the Committee censuring me very much for not being at Chancellorsville at daylight, in accordance with the order of Gen. Hooker. I now affirm that it was impossible to have made the movement, if there had not been a rebel soldier in front of me." "I lost a thousand men in less than ten minutes time in taking the heights of Fredericksburg." Sedgwick did "shoulder arms and advance" as soon as he received the order; but the reports show plainly enough that he encountered annoying opposition so soon as he struck the outskirts of the town; that he threw forward assaulting columns at once; and that these fought as well as the conditions warranted, but were repulsed. It is not intended to convey the impression that there was no loss of time on Sedgwick's part. On the contrary, he might certainly have been more active in some of his movements. No doubt there were other general officers who would have been. But it is no exaggeration to insist that his dispositions were fully as speedy as those of any other portion of the army in this campaign. Hooker not only alleges that "in his judgment, Gen. Sedgwick did not obey the spirit of his order, and made no sufficient effort to obey it," but quotes Warren as saying that Sedgwick "would not have moved at all if he [Warren] had not been there; and that, when he did move, it was not with sufficient confidence or ability on his part to manoeuvre his troops." It is very doubtful whether Warren ever put his opinion in so strong a way as thus quoted by Hooker from memory. His report does speak of Gibbon's slowness in coming up, and of his thus losing the chance of crossing the canals and taking the breastworks before the Confederates filed into them. But beyond a word to the effect that giving the advance to Brooks's division, after the capture of the heights, "necessarily consumed a considerable time," Warren does not in his report particularly criticise Sedgwick's movements. And in another place he does speak of the order of ten P.M. as an "impossible" one.