Gettysburg (3 page)

He had taken great risks with his army at Chancellorsville. Time and again he had opened himself to the possibility of destruction by stripping his defensive strength in one sector to reinforce an offensive movement in another. His goal throughout had been not merely to drive the enemy force back across the Rappahannock River but to destroy its military effectiveness. In the next campaign he hoped to find the battle of annihilation he had tried and failed to manage at Chancellorsville. All other reasons proffered for his intended operation were inconsequential.
According to the recollection of a staff officer, Lee “knew oftentimes that he was playing a very bold game, but it was the only
possible
one.”

How deep into the North he would march, and where he would meet the enemy, would be determined as events unfolded. The important preliminary step had been taken: he had won Richmond’s grudging permission to make the effort. Still, Lee recognized that the sufferance could be taken from him at any time. Postmaster Reagan had in fact renewed his arguments during an impromptu caucus with other cabinet members in Davis’s office on May 17, though nothing had come of that discussion because not enough had changed on the Vicksburg front to alter the president’s decision. Lee worried that the next dawn would bring news from the West that might upset everything. As he left Richmond on May 18, the general knew one thing for certain: he would have to act quickly. On his way to rejoin his army, Lee breakfasted with a family friend who was “very glad to see that the great and good man was so cheerful.”

Some fifty-five miles north of Richmond, on the same day Lee met with Seddon and Davis, union military engineers watched in grim silence as ambulances bearing the last gatherings from the Chancellorsville battlefield creaked painfully across the pontoon bridge laid at Banks’ Ford. An assistant surgeon on the scene was satisfied with the manner in which his staff had handled these wounded men, some of whom had lain untended for days. “The complicated injuries … were placed in proper supports, firmly bound, and the men were then well supported in the ambulances by pads and blankets,” he reported. “In this manner, we were enabled to transport the wounded with comparatively little suffering.” Nevertheless, reflected a soldier, “more than one poor fellow died on the way from loss of blood.”

A short distance south along the Rappahannock River, near Falmouth, the man who had commanded the Army of the Potomac at Chancellorsville was suffering his own torments. If ever an officer had set himself up for ridicule, Major General Joseph Hooker provided an object lesson. The forty-eight-year-old West Pointer had risen steadily through the ranks thanks to solid performances in combat, some valuable political connections, and a willingness to intrigue. The sharp criticisms he had voiced regarding his superior’s mishandling of his men at the Battle of Fredericksburg had tagged him for dismissal, but then the superior had been relieved instead, and Joe Hooker had found himself commanding the Army of the Potomac.

Sure of himself to the point of arrogance, Hooker had undertaken the Chancellorsville campaign absolutely confident of success. To the reporters he made welcome around headquarters, Hooker had boasted that Lee’s army was the “legitimate property of the Army of the Potomac.” Even Lincoln, always anxious to encourage aggressiveness in his generals, worried to a friend, after hearing Hooker’s predictions, that “he is overconfident.”

Hooker’s plan
had
been brilliant. While one Union corps of more than 23,600 men kept Lee’s attention riveted at Fredericksburg, Hooker had marched the rest of his infantry undetected upstream to cross behind the Rebel army. His flanking force numbered about 72,300 men at that point and would eventually grow to nearly 80,000. However, the Confederate commander refused to play according to Hooker’s script, even when the Union corps that had been left behind to divert attention actually crossed the river to occupy Fredericksburg. Instead of falling back toward Richmond, Lee divided his outnumbered command and struck at Hooker’s main force in a series of ragged, desperate actions that suddenly metamorphosed into a powerful, stunning flank attack. In an instant, Hooker’s posture changed from a bold offensive stance into a confused and hesitant defensive. While Hooker fretted, Lee struck hard against the lone Federal corps that had moved inland from Fredericksburg, threatening it with annihilation. Stung, and ignoring subordinates who were prepared to fight where they stood, the Union commander ordered his army to retire to the northern side of the river, which it did by May 6. Even though he would always refuse to label Chancellorsville a defeat, Hooker would admit that its aftermath was a time “when the nation required a victory.”

Hooker’s failure at Chancellorsville had been compounded by many factors, including leadership lapses on the part of several of his leading corps officers, some instances of plain bad luck, and a number of poor command decisions that were his alone to make. Most damning was the fact that he never used all his available units in the fight: while three of his seven corps were heavily engaged, the other four were only partially involved. It was not without some justification that one of Hooker’s officers declared that the “Army of the Potomac did not fight at Chancellorsville.”

Most observers saw only Hooker’s failings. Newspapers that had bannered his predictions of victory in their headlines now turned on him, with the
New York Herald
leading the pack that trumpeted for his
dismissal. Certain bars in Washington and New York were even said to be promoting a new concoction dubbed “Hooker’s Retreat.”

Most unseemly to some was Hooker’s selective memory regarding the council of war he had called on the evening of May 4 (the fourth day of battle), during which several of his corps commanders, especially the Fifth Corps’ Major General George G. Meade, had urged that the attack be renewed. Meade now learned that Hooker was characterizing his objections to a retreat as conditional, implying that once his conditions had been met, the Pennsylvanian favored the withdrawal. This prompted the austerely professional Meade to solicit statements from others who had been present disputing Hooker’s version. In the end, the testimonials would prove unnecessary, as Hooker would never write up a final report of the Chancellorsville campaign.

President Abraham Lincoln had visited Hooker’s headquarters on May 7, not to apportion blame but to assess matters. Lincoln had confided to George Meade that this reverse, in terms of its effect on both Northern morale and international opinion, “would be more serious and injurious than any previous act of the war.” At the end of his one-day visit, the president had given Hooker a personal note in which he urged the officer to consider soon making “another movement” but cautioned him not to undertake any initiative out of “desperation or rashness.” Lincoln had also posed the most painful question of all: “What next?” he asked. “Have you already in your mind a plan wholly, or partially formed?”

In response, Hooker had assured Lincoln that he indeed had in mind “the plan to be adopted in our next effort, if it should be your wish to have one made.” After a week’s further consideration, Hooker had informed Lincoln of his intention to move soon, even though his total force had been reduced by casualties and the expiration of enlistments to around 80,000. Lincoln replied on May 14. The time to strike the enemy, he told Hooker, “has now passed away. … It does not now appear probable to me that you can gain anything by an early renewal of the attempt to cross the Rappahannock.”

Far more chilling, though, was the president’s closing comment: “I must tell you,” he wrote, “that I have some painful intimations that some of your corps and division commanders are not giving you their entire confidence. This would be ruinous, if true. …” The news that some of his key officers were speaking against him did not come as a complete surprise, but to hear it from the commander in chief was especially galling.

Even as Robert E. Lee headed back to Fredericksburg with a blank check of limited term, his opposite number faced a public pillorying and a revolt in his command ranks. Perhaps most discomforting was President Lincoln’s blunt question: “What next?” Joseph Hooker had to admit to himself that he had no good answer.

F
ollowing the Battle of Chancellorsville, the Union Army’s seven infantry corps had returned to their winter encampments along the Rappahannock River’s northern bank, near Fredericksburg. Their positions covered likely crossing points and protected the logistical arteries connecting them to supply sources via the Potomac River. Morale among many Federals was low. Private Theodore Garrish—whose Fifth Corps regiment, the 20th Maine, had seen action during the battle—deemed Hooker’s performance at Chancellorsville a “fearful shock” to the army. Meanwhile, in the 7th Indiana, a First Corps regiment that had missed the combat, a lieutenant diagnosed the Army of the Potomac as being “in a comatose state.” That opinion was seconded and elaborated on by Robert K. Beecham, an infantryman in the 2nd Wisconsin (First Corps), who declared, “The Chancellorsville campaign pretty thoroughly demonstrated the fact that as a general in the field at the head of an army, Gen. Joseph Hooker was no match for Gen. R. E. Lee.”

Not everyone shared this pessimistic outlook, however. “The army is neither disorganized, discouraged, or dispirited,” insisted a soldier in the 14th Connecticut (Second Corps). “As far as spirits are concerned, the army was never more jubilant; it thinks with Joe Hooker that ‘it can take care of itself, move when it wishes to; fight when it sees fit; retreat when it deems it best.’” This determination was reflected in a letter sent by the officer commanding the 20th Maine to his six-year-old daughter: “There has been a big battle,” explained Joshua Chamberlain, “and we had a
great many men killed and wounded. We shall try it again soon, and see if we cannot make those Rebels behave better, and stop their wicked works in trying to spoil our Country, and making us all so unhappy.”

A Pennsylvanian in the 102nd regiment (Sixth Corps) minced no words: “The talk about demoralization in this army is all false. The army is no more demoralized to-day than the day it first started out, although God knows it has had, through the blundering of inefficient commanders and other causes too numerous to mention, plenty of reason to be.” A soldier in the Third Corps by the name of John Haley weighed the moment with the fatalistic outlook of a veteran: he was certain, he wrote, that the army was “again buoyant and ready to be led to new fields of conquest—or defeat.”

A member of the 1st United States Sharpshooters marveled at the way the men put defeat out of their thoughts and “turned their minds and hands to the duties and occupations of the present.” For Wilbur Fisk, a private in the 2nd Vermont (Sixth Corps), those duties included standing guard in a position so far to the rear that “the prospect of seeing an enemy was about equal to the prospect of taking Richmond.” Oliver Norton, a Fifth Corps orderly, found time between assignments to enjoy the performance of a mockingbird that was housekeeping in a nearby apple tree. “He combines in one the song of every bird I ever heard and many I haven’t,” Norton enthused. “One minute he’s a bobolink, the next a lark or a robin, and he’s never tired of singing.”

The mood was far less upbeat in the camps of the Eleventh Corps, situated along the railroad connecting the army to its supply base at Aquia Landing. The May 2 Confederate flank attack had fallen squarely on the poorly positioned Eleventh, whose commander had chosen to ignore the warning signs, leaving his men to their fate. They had fought better than might have been expected, but few outside the corps gave them much credit for that.

Nearly half of the soldiers in the Eleventh Corps hailed from Germany, a circumstance that made them handy scapegoats. Sergeant Benjamin Hirst, a member of the Second Corps, expressed a not-untypical opinion when he described to his wife how “the whole 11th Army Corps, gave way almost without firing a shot, the Panic stricken runing about in hundreds and thousands.” Similar contempt was voiced by Lieutenant Frank Haskell, an otherwise perceptive Second Corps officer, who noted that the “Dutchmen … ran … before they had delivered a shot.” “As
for this last defeat they lay it all to the Dutch. 11th Army Corps,” reported a Third Corps soldier. “They runn like sheep.”

All of this contumely came as a rude surprise to the Eleventh Corps soldiers themselves, who had suffered about three-fourths of the union losses on May 2 while delaying the enemy advance until nightfall ended the combat. One of the corps’ brigade commanders was visited by a delegation of soldiers bearing copies of newspapers heaping scorn on the Eleventh. The men bluntly asked “if such be the reward they may expect for the sufferings they have endured and the bravery they have displayed.” A few outside the corps’ German community managed to see past the filters of prejudice. One such was Robert
K.
Beecham, who avowed, “The fault was not in the troops, but in the generalship that could not provide against such a surprise.”

The Eleventh Corps was under the overall command of Major General Oliver Otis Howard. A deeply religious man who had lost his right arm in battle in 1862, Howard had been brought in to replace the extremely popular (but in military terms notably unsuccessful) Fritz Sigel just a few months before Chancellorsville. When Howard failed to acknowledge the indignation that was coursing through the ranks of his German regiments, and carefully dodged any personal blame for his own leadership failures, the mood of some under his command darkened. “It is only the miserable setup of our Corps because of General Howard that we had to retreat in such a shameful way,” swore one soldier in the 26th Wisconsin. “In time the truth will come out,” promised another in the same regiment. “It was all General Howard’s fault. He is a Yankee, and that is why he wanted to have us slaughtered, because most of us are Germans. He better not come into the thick of battle a second time, then he won’t escape.”

One of the officers whom Howard counted among his friends was Major General John Fulton Reynolds, commanding the First Corps. Reynolds, Howard would later proclaim, “secured reverence for his serious character, respect for his ability, care for his uniform discipline, admiration for his fearlessness, and love for his unfailing generosity.” Like Howard, Reynolds was a West Point graduate and a veteran of some of the toughest campaigns undertaken by the Army of the Potomac. Unlike several of his fellow corps commanders, Reynolds kept himself apart from the political intrigues that were an inevitable fact of life for an army posted so near the capital.