All that had occurred during the day was fairly explainable on the
former hypothesis. If Jackson was passing towards Culpeper, he would
naturally send flanking parties out every road leading from the one his
own columns were pursuing, towards our lines, for strictly defensive
purposes. The several attacks of the day might have thus occurred.
This assumption was quite justifiable.

And this was the theory of Howard. He knew that Hooker had all the
information obtained along the entire line, from prisoners and scouts.
He naturally concluded, that if there was any reasonable supposition
that an attack from the west was intended, Hooker would in some way have
notified him. But, far from doing this, Hooker had inspected and
approved his position, and had ordered Howard's reserve away. To be
sure, early in the morning, Hooker had told him to guard against an
attack on the right: but since then circumstances had absolutely
changed; Barlow had been taken from him, and he conjectured that the
danger of attack had passed. How could he assume otherwise?

Had he suspected an attack down the pike, had he received half an hour's
warning, he could, and naturally would, assuming the responsibility of a
corps commander, have changed front to rear so as to occupy with his
corps the line along the east side of the Dowdall's clearing, which he
had already intrenched, and where he had his reserve artillery. He did
not do so; and it is more easy to say that he was to blame, than to show
good cause for the stigma cast upon him for the result of this day.

However much Hooker's after-wit may have prompted him to deny it,
his despatch of 4.10 P.M., to Sedgwick, shows conclusively that he
himself had adopted this theory of a retreat. "We know that the enemy
is flying," says he, "trying to save his trains. Two of Sickles's