Sumner was ordered to have the Second Corps ready
to march an hour before day, but he had no authority to move till
explicit orders to that effect should reach him. I have said that
Hooker claims in his report that the promise was made him that
Mansfield's corps, when it came to reinforce him, should be under
his orders. If this were so, it would unite all the troops now
present which had fought in Pope's Army of Virginia. I find no
trace, however, in the reports of the battle, that Hooker exercised
any such command. He seems to have confined his work to the
independent action of his own corps until Mansfield's death, and was
himself disabled almost immediately afterward. As there were
commanders of wings of the army duly designated, and two corps were
now separated by a long interval from the rest in an independent
turning movement, it can hardly be debated that that was the place
of all others where one of them should have been, unless McClellan
were there in person. Had Burnside's two corps been kept together as
the right wing, the right attack could have been made a unit. If
Sumner had then been directed to keep in communication with
Burnside, and to advance when the latter did, nobody will doubt that
Sumner would have been prompt in sustaining his comrades.
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