So much for disparity in generalship. The South had found its great and masterful commander, who knew how to utilize to the utmost such forces as were placed at his disposal. Mr. Lincoln had not yet found a general capable of employing to the full measure of its capacity, the superb army which the North had created by a lavish expenditure of treasure and by the eager volunteering of Northern youth for their country's service. Ulysses S. Grant was still the subordinate of Halleck and the Army of the Potomac was commanded by a general utterly unequal to the task of holding his own in a contest with Robert E. Lee. In his new position Hooker stood upon the defensive and appealed to Sedgwick, who held the position below Fredericksburg, to come to his rescue and save him from disaster. Sedgwick responded promptly, as it was his custom to do, though the task set him was a difficult one. He must assail Lee's works at Fredericksburg, drive out the 8,500 confident Confederates who were holding the trenches there, and then by a march of some weary miles fall upon Lee's right and rear, thus rescuing Hooker from the peril of the great Confederate's persistent assaults. A whole library of controversial literature has been written in conflicting efforts to show who was to blame for the failure of Sedgwick to relieve Hooker in time to save him from the vengeance of Lee. With that controversy the present narrative of facts in no way concerns itself. Let us simply tell what happened. Already in command of an available force twice as great as Lee's, Hooker, driven from his chosen line, had fallen back to a more concentrated one. Finding Lee disposed, with one man to his two, to assail him on this new line, he called upon Sedgwick as already stated, to come to his relief, against enormous obstacles. The order was received late at night. Its execution required a complete change in Sedgwick's dispositions, which had been made with the entirely different purpose of cutting off Lee's retreat after Hooker should have broken the Confederate resistance at Chancellorsville. So far from breaking that resistance Hooker had been forced to yield to it and retire before it. Sedgwick changed front, drove Lee's 8,500 men out of the works at Fredericksburg, and pushed on to assail Lee's flank. Lee detached, to meet him, all of his small force except the Jackson corps of 19,000 men, with which he undertook, personally, to hold in check any movement that Hooker might make with the 80,000 or more of hardened veterans whom the Federal commander had under his immediate orders. But Hooker made no determined movement. On Sunday a fierce battle was fought between Sedgwick and those of Lee's forces which were engaged in trying to check his movement. It ended in the Confederates holding their ground and defeating Sedgwick's purpose of coming to the relief of his commander.