Before closing, I deem it my duty to call your attention to one feature of this business which has an important bearing, not only upon my interests but upon yours and upon those of every subordinate commander in the army. We are bound by the iron chains of military discipline. The superior has it in his power to do all manner of things which may work serious injury to the honor and reputation of the subordinate, which the latter is but seldom at liberty to disprove and almost never able to resent. The greater, in this respect, the power of the superior, the more is he in honor and conscience bound to use his power with the utmost carefulness and discrimination, for the honor and reputation of every subordinate officer is a sacred trust in the hands of the superior commander. The most formidable weapon in the hands of the latter is his official report of campaigns and actions. It is universally received as documentary history,as the purest fountain from which the future historian can take his most reliable information. Praise and censure conveyed in such report is generally looked upon as based upon irrefutable evidence. And it ought to be. Every conscientious commander will therefore consider it a sacred duty before making an official statement affecting the honor and reputation of a subordinate, to scrutinize with scrupulous care the least incident connected with the case and when at last, after weighing every circumstance, he has arrived at the conclusion that his duty commands him to pronounce a censure, he will again well weigh every word he says so as to be perfectly sure that he does not say too much. For it must be considered that public opinion is generally swayed by first impressions, and an injury once done can but rarely be repaired by a subsequent modification of language.

And now I invite you to apply this criterion, which certainly is a just one, to the report of General Hooker. That it is severe in its reflections on a body of troops nobody will deny. By solemnly excepting them in a general commendation of courage and valor, it stigmatizes them as destitute of the first qualities which the soldier is proud of. That the report is a just one, who will after this investigation assert it? I am far from saying that General Hooker knowingly and willfully reported what was false, his position ought to exempt him from the suspicion of such an act. I have not entertained that suspicion a moment, but what excuse is there for his error?

There are two things which every conscientious man will be careful to guard against. The first is saying anything to the prejudice of another which he knows to be false, and the other is saying anything to the prejudice of another which he does not positively know to be true. And did General Hooker positively know his report to be true and just? He could not know to be just what is proved to be unjust. But would it have been impossible to ascertain the truth? I lived within five minutes' walk of his headquarters. My brigade commanders were all within call. I saw him almost every day, and a single question would have elicited a satisfactory explanation. The question was not asked. Five minutes' conversation with his own aides, Lieutenant Oliver and Captain Hall, would have removed the error. Was the error so dear to him that he shielded it with silence against the truth? But to me it is a mystery how that error could stand against the force of his own recollections. Were they, too, shut out when that paragraph was penned? They would, indeed, have ill-comported with the sensational dash with which the verbiage of the censure is flavored.