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MAJOR-GENERAL JOSEPH HOOKER.

BY

H. EDWIN TREMAIN.

CINCINNATI
ROBERT CLARKE & CO.

1881.

HARVARD COLLEGE LIBRARY

FROM

THE BEQUEST OF EVERT JANSEN WENDELL 1948

In Memoriam.

MAJOR-GENERAL JOSEPH HOOKER.

HOOKER.-At Garden City, N. Y. November 2, 1879, MAJOR-GENERAL JOSEPH HOOKER,

No memorial tablet can contain an appropriate record of the life, character, and services of MAJOR-GENERAL JOSEPH HOoker. They deserve & volume. Inscriptions suggest rather than narrate. This sketch must be something less than an inscription.

Some men impress themselves on history through deeds accomplished; others, less fortunate, it may be, in their visible achievements, acquire renown by influence among their contemporaries and on posterity. History accepts the soldier to be great who, in campaigns and battles, was the victorious commander. HOOKER was the leading spirit in battles where he did not command; he was the commander in campaigns history does not yet fully understand and will not accept as victorious.

BUT HOOKER Was a great SOLDIER. The impress of his genius is stamped on the army in which he was reared and commissioned, and, through that army, on the country whose service was to him the highest duty. It is no detraction from the fame and honor justly due to his contemporaries to say that intrusion is not possible into the niche reserved for him. Living, he enjoyed the admiration of soldiers and of his countrymen; dead, his increasing renown fails to satisfy his surviving friends.

HOOKER's career, however, was not a complicated one. Like his nature, it was frank, open-hearted, and simple. With the exception of a period of about eight years, immediately preceding

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