Swinton, rather grandiloquently, says, "To have marched a column of
fifty thousand men, laden with sixty pounds of baggage and encumbered
with artillery and trains, thirty-seven miles in two days; to have
bridged and crossed two streams, guarded by a vigilant enemy, with the
loss of half a dozen men, one wagon, and two mules,--is an achievement
which has few parallels, and which well deserves to rank with Prince
Eugene's famous passage of the Adige."

However exaggerated this praise may be, Hooker nevertheless deserves
high encomiums on his management of the campaign so far. Leaving
Stoneman's delay out of the question, nothing had gone wrong or been
mismanaged up to the present moment. But soon Hooker makes his first
mistake.

At 12.30 on Thursday, the Third Corps, which lay near Franklin's
Crossing, on the north side of the river, received orders to proceed by
the shortest route, and concealed from the enemy, to United-States Ford,
to be across the river by seven A.M., Friday; in pursuance of which
order, Sickles immediately started, in three columns, following the
ravines to Hamet's, at the intersection of the Warrenton pike and
United-States Ford road. Here he bivouacked for the night. At five
A.M. Friday he marched to the ford, and passed it with the head of his
column at seven A.M., Birney leading, Whipple and Berry in the rear.
Leaving Mott's brigade and a battery to protect the trains at the ford,
he then pushed on, and reported at Chancellorsville at nine A.M.
Under Hooker's orders he massed his corps near the junction of the roads
to Ely's and United-States Fords, in the open near Bullock's, sending a
brigade and a battery to Dowdall's Tavern.