General Hooker had his own way of doing things. This was what might be called a reconnaissance in force; two brigades in line pushing steadily forward; a force of cavalry in advance, two divisions following. By the time we came in touch with Lee's left, it was dusk. We could see the flashes of the Rebel rifles which drove Hooker's cavalry back upon the infantry division. Hooker played the game of war as the youngest member of a football team plays football. He had to the full that joy of battle which McClellan never had at all; and showed it.

Between the man by whose side I had stood two days before at South Mountain, and the man near whom I now rode, the contrast was complete. McClellan was not a general; he was a Council of War, and it is a military axiom that councils of war never fight. He surveyed the field of battle beneath him at Turner's Gap as a chess-player surveys the board. At the naval battle of Santiago, as the Spanish ships were sinking, our bluejackets began to cheer. Said Admiral Philip: "Don't cheer, boys. They are dying over there." If everything else about Philip should be forgotten, that will be remembered; and he will be loved for it; for this one touch of human feeling for a human enemy amid the hell of war. But for the pawns and pieces the chess-player sends to slaughter he has no regrets. I don't say McClellan had none for the men whom his mistaken strategy drove to death. All I say is that as I looked at him I saw no sign of it. A general, we are told, can no more afford to have feelings amid a battle than a surgeon with the knife in his hand can feel for his patient. It may be. But Napoleon, who is always cited as the highest example of indifference to the lives of men, is perhaps the best example to the contrary. He would sacrifice a brigade without scruple for a purpose; never one single armed man without a purpose. He had men enough to consume for victory; never one to squander. He was an economist of human life, though for purely military reasons. It is awful to reflect how many thousands of Americans in these early Civil War days were sent to death uselessly by the ignorance of their commanders; or as in McClellan's case by his irresolution, and his incapacity for the handling of troops in the field.

General Hooker's was a face which lighted up when the battle began. The man seemed transformed. He rode carelessly on the march, but sat straight up in his saddle as the martial music of the bullets whistled past him. He was a leader of men, and his men would have followed him and did follow him wherever he led. Hesitation, delay, he hated them. "If they had let us start earlier we might have finished to-night," he muttered. But night was upon us, and even Hooker could not fight an unknown force on unknown ground in the dark. It was nine o'clock when we went into camp; Union and Rebel lines so close that the pickets got mixed and captured each other. "Camp" is a figure of speech. We lay down on the ground as we were. I slept with my horse's bridle round my arm. At four o'clock next morning, with the earliest light of a coming dawn and as soon as a man could see the sights on his rifle, the battle began.

CHAPTER XVI
CIVIL WAR—PERSONAL INCIDENTS AT ANTIETAM

General Hooker was about the first man in the saddle. The pickets had begun sniping long before dawn. My bivouac was within sight of his tent. "The old man," said one of his staff, "would have liked to be with the pickets." No doubt. He would have liked to be anywhere in the field where the chance of a bullet coming his way was greatest. Kinglake has a passage which might have been written for Hooker. That accomplished historian of war remarks that the reasons against fighting a battle are always stronger than the reasons for fighting. If it were to be decided on the balance of arguments, no battle would ever be begun. But there are Generals who have in them an overmastering impulse of battle; it is in the blood; temperament prevails over argument, and they are the men who carry on war. Hooker was one of them. He loved fighting for fighting's sake, and with the apostles of peace at any price he had not an atom of sympathy. He would have thought Herbert Spencer something less than a man, as he was; and Mr. Carnegie, if he had been anything then but the boy he has never outgrown, a worthy disciple of an unworthy master.

No, I am not keeping you waiting for the story of Antietam, for I am not going to re-tell it. But General Hooker, on that day a hero, has had hard measure since, and I like to do him what justice I can. I liked the man. My acquaintance with him began that morning. To hear him issue an order was like the sound of the first cannon shot. He gathered up brigades and divisions in his hand, and sent them straight against the enemy. That is not at all a piece of rhetoric. It is a literal statement of the literal fact. His men loved him and dreaded him. Early in the morning he had scattered his staff to the winds, and was riding alone, on the firing line. Looking about him for an officer, he saw me and said, "Who are you?" I told him. "Will you take an order for me?" "Certainly." There was a regiment which seemed wavering, and had fallen a little back. "Tell the colonel of that regiment to take his men to the front and keep them there." I gave the order. Again the question:

"Who are you?"

"The order is General Hooker's."