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  The second factor was connected to the first. General Lee always formed his designs with the opposing general very much in mind. In September 1862 he had led his invading army into Maryland with the failings of George McClellan in his thoughts. At Chancellorsville he had beaten “Fighting Joe” Hooker, whom he privately referred to contemptuously as “Mr. F. J. Hooker,” and now was looking forward to beating him again. Lee believed there was every chance that Hooker was demoralized by his recent defeat and would not be at his best in a second meeting. Hooker’s army, too, would likely be suffering from demoralization. Nearly 6,000 Yankee soldiers had surrendered at Chancellorsville, hardly a sign of high morale.

  Lee’s insight into the Army of the Potomac was sharpened by his reading in the Northern papers of numerous regiments of two-year men and thousands of nine-month short-termers being mustered out that spring. It was said these losses would be made good by the newly instituted conscription in the North. However that might be, Lee expected all this to produce a good deal of confusion in the Federal ranks in the coming weeks, and he wanted to take advantage of it. In short, the Army of the Potomac, and its commander, looked just then to be fair game, another good reason for assuming the aggressive.21

  To General Lee, then, the choice on this 15th of May was plain and the case unequivocal. He could not properly subsist his army on the Rappahannock line, and he had no wish to fight another battle there. The army needed to move. He had already made it plain to Secretary Seddon, in opposing sending Pickett to Vicksburg, that if his army was weakened—indeed, if it was not strengthened—he would probably have to fall back into the Richmond defenses. To do so (as he no doubt now pointed out) would be to surrender the strategic initiative and submit to slow death by siege. The options were clear, Lee would say: to “stand a siege, which must ultimately have ended in surrender, or to invade Pennsylvania.” To go on the aggressive, to cross the Potomac and march on Pennsylvania, opened up all manner of possibilities.

  First of all, it would pull the Army of the Potomac out of its fortified lines and disarrange all its plans for a summer offensive in Virginia. That alone would justify a march north. At the same time, it would free Lee of the defensive strictures of the Rappahannock line and allow him to maneuver at will. Once across the Potomac hungry Rebels could feast in a land of plenty, and the ravaged fields and farms of Virginia would have an opportunity for renewal.

  In the larger scheme of things, Northern morale and will were sure to be shaken by the prospect of a Confederate army—a winning Confederate army—marching into its heartland. “If successful this year,” Lee had predicted to his wife on April 19, “next fall there will be a great change in public opinion at the North. The Republicans will be destroyed & I think the friends of peace will become so strong as that the next administration will go in on that basis.” A successful campaign in Pennsylvania—even the army’s simply remaining there for some length of time—ought to give voice to the Northern peace movement. And a success there might even impress the European powers sufficiently to push them toward intervention or at least mediation.

  However he made the case, nothing in Lee’s correspondence or recollections suggests that he raised any hopes among his listeners that by marching into Pennsylvania he would pry Grant loose from Vicksburg. The argument that time and distance precluded the Confederates from sending reinforcements to Vicksburg that spring surely applied in the reverse direction to the Federals. In any case, it was too much to expect that the threat of a Confederate invasion of the North would paralyze Yankee efforts on every other war front. It was possible that an invasion would prevent the Yankees sending (as Lee put it) “troops designed to operate against other parts of the country,” but that was the most that could be hoped for.22

  On the other hand, the implications of a Confederate victory in Pennsylvania were well worth contemplating. Grant’s taking of Vicksburg would be offset, indeed would pale by comparison. On the Southern home front a Lee victory, said an observer, would be “a slogan to arouse the impatient populace to new endeavors….” To Richmond it was beginning to seem that the war might be lost in a year in the West, yet perhaps it could still be won in a day in the East. Should Lee gain another Fredericksburg or Chancellorsville on some battleground in Pennsylvania, especially if it was the more decisive battle he had long been seeking, the war would take on a whole new balance.

  It cannot be imagined, during this War Department conference, that President Davis, Secretary Seddon, and General Lee had the slightest doubt that sending the army north across the Potomac would result in anything less than a major battle. Despite the talk of hungry troops, this was never designed as merely a massive victualing expedition. Nor was there any thought of an invasion to conquer and occupy territory north of the Mason-Dixon Line—to append Pennsylvania to the Confederacy. The conferees had to be aware that just as surely as a Southern army would rise to the defense of Virginia, a Northern army would fight an invasion of Pennsylvania. If the Army of Northern Virginia made a campaign in the North, there could be no avoiding a battle there.

  To be sure, in the hindsight atmosphere of his reports and his postwar comments, General Lee was circumspect on this point. Still, it is unmistakable that from the first he intended the operation to end in a battle. In his reports he spoke of a march north offering “a fair opportunity to strike a blow” at the opposing army; and, again, he mentioned the “valuable results” that would follow “a decided advantage gained over the enemy in Maryland or Pennsylvania….”

  In a conversation in 1868 Lee was quoted as saying that “he did not intend to give general battle in Pennsylvania if he could avoid it.” This was a matter of evasive semantics. In Lee’s lexicon, to give battle was to seek it out deliberately and to attack. To accept battle (to accept “a fair opportunity”), however—which significantly Lee did not exclude in describing his plan—was electing to fight if conditions were favorable, or if by maneuver could be made favorable. This was precisely “the ruling ideas of the campaign” that he and Longstreet had discussed at length and agreed upon just before the Richmond conference. At the time of the decision-making Lee stated his objective with perfect clarity. on May 25, calling upon D. H. Hill for reinforcements, Lee wrote, “They are very essential to aid in the effort to turn back the tide of war that is now pressing South.” Only battle could satisfy an objective so grand.23

  In writing to his wife on April 19 about prospects for the coming campaigning season, Lee displayed a long view of affairs, looking toward breaking down the Republican administration in Washington. He did not suggest achieving this by one great war-ending battle of annihilation, a modern-day Cannae. His army was, after all, ever fated to be the smaller of the two armies. More realistically, Lee seems to have projected repeated morale-shattering victories that would eventually sap Northerners’ support for the war. Gaining a third successive victory, of whatever dimension, over the Army of the Potomac, this time on Northern soil, should go a long way toward that goal. That was clearly a risk worth taking. As Lee himself argued, according to the record of a postwar conversation, “He knew oftentimes that he was playing a very bold game, but it was the only possible one.“24

  Some two weeks after the Richmond conference, President Davis wrote a letter to Lee that has been interpreted by some to show the president less than wholehearted in his support, and indeed that he was not even aware of Lee’s intentions for the campaign. “I had never fairly comprehended your views and purposes…,” Davis wrote, “and now have to regret that I did not earlier know all that you had communicated to others.” In fact, as is readily apparent from the context of this remark, and from their other letters exchanged in this period, Davis was not speaking of the proposed Pennsylvania campaign at all, but rather of the ongoing difficulty Lee was having with D. H. Hill over the matter of reinforcements.

  While no directive was issued by Davis or Seddon formally approving the Pennsylvania campaign as Lee had outlined it on May 15, there cannot be the
slightest doubt of their approval. Both Davis and Seddon fully agreed with Lee on its necessity. In that same letter, for example, Davis pledged to relieve Lee of any concern for Richmond’s safety “while you are moving towards the north and west.” Secretary Seddon, the earlier advocate of a western strategy, assured the general, “I concur entirely in your views of the importance of aggressive movements by your army….“Lee could therefore return to his Rappahannock headquarters confident of Richmond’s support. On Sunday, May 17, he set about the task of readying his army to march north.

  What was debated and decided at the War Department that 15 th of May held the promise of reshaping the very direction of the war. In one sense, the conference revealed how the crisis in Mississippi had passed well beyond Richmond’s reach. The drama there seemed likely to play out without any further intervention from the Confederate capital. On the other hand, General Lee was persuasive in his argument that in the Virginia theater the road to opportunity pointed north, and that the way was open. By recapturing the strategic initiative he had surrendered after Sharpsburg, he proposed to take the war right into the Yankee heartland. At the least, a success in Pennsylvania would offset any failure at Vicksburg. At the most, a great victory on enemy soil might put peace within Richmond’s reach. James Seddon said it well: Such a movement by the Army of Northern Virginia “is indispensable to our safety and independence.“25

  2. High Command in Turmoil

  ON THE 13th of May 1863—one day before General Lee set off for Richmond to discuss high strategy with President Davis—Fighting Joe Hooker was summoned from Falmouth on the Rappahannock to Washington to see his president. In Hooker’s case, as in Lee’s, the topic for discussion was what to do next with the army he commanded. In striking contrast to Lee, however, Joe Hooker soon discovered that his very role as general commanding was under attack.

  President Lincoln’s summons came in reaction to Hooker’s latest planning paper, sent in earlier that day. “I know that you are impatient, and I know that I am,” Hooker had written, “but my impatience must not be indulged at the expense of dearest interests.” After an extended and generally gloomy discussion of the state of his army, and the presumed state of Lee’s, he announced, “I hope to be able to commence my movement tomorrow, but this must not be spoken of to any one.” Lincoln must have been taken aback by this offhand declaration of renewed warfare, for he promptly telegraphed, “please come up and see me this evening.”

  Hooker left no account of that evening’s meeting at the White House, but the letter Lincoln wrote him the next day suggests a for-the-record summary of their discussion. He had earlier “had an impression,” the president began, that a prompt resumption of the battle might catch the enemy “deranged in position” as a result of the Chancellorsville fighting. “That idea has now passed away…. It does not now appear probable to me that you can gain any thing by an early renewal of the attempt to cross the Rappahannock.” Of course, he went on, if General Hooker believed he could “renew the attack successfully, I do not mean to restrain you.” But until such time, the president would be content simply to see the enemy kept at bay “and out of other mischief” while the Army of the Potomac was gotten in good order again. In recognizing that his general was acting more dutiful than enthusiastic about renewing the offensive, Lincoln had concluded not to push the matter.

  Thus even as General Lee was preparing his argument to Mr. Davis that by all accounts the enemy was readying a new offensive against him, Mr. Lincoln told General Hooker to put aside all thoughts of taking the offensive any time soon. In his letter to Hooker the president revealed an important reason for the postponement: “I must tell you 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….” 1

  This bombshell must have surprised General Hooker as he read it, but on reflection he could hardly express himself shocked at evidence of a generals’ revolt within his own army. After all, it was not that long since he himself had done his best to undermine the previous general commanding. The other conspirators who plotted Ambrose Burnside’s downfall back in January had operated apart from Hooker, and with the goal of seeing General McClellan returned to power. Instead they got Joe Hooker. The chief ringleaders of the Burnside coup had been banished from the Potomac army, but others had risen to take their places. Now that defeat at Chancellorsville had left Hooker suddenly vulnerable, he became the target of these discontented lieutenants.2

  They had wasted not a moment taking aim. As early as May 7, with the beaten army scarcely back in its camps around Falmouth and with President Lincoln and General-in-Chief Henry W. Halleck on the scene to appraise the defeat, the conspirators set to work. General Halleck, who had no use for Hooker to begin with, called the corps commanders into council and learned, according to Darius Couch, of “great dissatisfaction among the higher officers at the management of Chancellorsville.” Henry W. Slocum, Twelfth Corps, went among his fellow corps commanders proposing a coup—petition the president then and there to dismiss Hooker and put George Gordon Meade, commander of the Fifth Corps, in his place.

  It is not clear whether Slocum had a full co-conspirator in the Second Corps’ General Couch, or if Couch was plotting independently. In any event, both Slocum and Couch required Meade’s acquiescence for their scheming to have any real weight. Meade, however, balked at the idea. As he explained to his wife, “I told both these gentlemen I would not join in any movement against Hooker….” Without Meade’s agreement to stand for Hooker’s place, the ringleaders lacked the stomach to make their case to the president. Rather lamely, Couch, Slocum, and John Sedgwick, all corps commanders senior to Meade on the major generals’ list, assured Meade they would be pleased to serve under him as army commander should that time ever come.3

  Joe Hooker now proceeded to play right into the conspirators’ hands. Hooker’s primary problem as a general had always been his runaway tongue, and in the aftermath of Chancellorsville he talked his way into the bad graces of practically all his senior lieutenants. He started off by dictating an ornate general order showering congratulations on the army for its achievements in the late battle. “If it has not accomplished all that was expected, the reasons are well known to the army,” he said. That left his men scratching their heads in puzzlement. What in fact no one in the Army of the Potomac could understand was why they had failed to win at Chancellorsville, and especially why they had retreated back across the river when the struggle still seemed in the balance. Hooker’s explanation was not much help: “In withdrawing from the south bank of the Rappahannock before delivering a general battle to our adversaries, the army has given renewed evidence of its confidence in itself and its fidelity to the principles it represents.“4

  Hooker might have left the matter there without much lasting damage—after all, he was hardly the first general in this war to employ bombast to paper over a defeat—but he then let it be known just who was responsible for the failure to accomplish “all that was expected” at Chancellorsville. The general commanding was heard to lay blame squarely upon three of the army’s eight corps commanders—on Oliver Otis Howard, for allowing his Eleventh Corps to be routed in Stonewall Jackson’s surprise attack on May 2; on John Sedgwick, for mismanaging command of the army’s left wing during the battle; and on George Stoneman, head of the cavalry corps, for utterly failing to carry out his assignment to destroy Lee’s railroad supply line.

  There was in fact considerable truth to these charges—Howard was negligent, Sedgwick sluggish, Stoneman incompetent—but at the moment that was not widely recognized or admitted by anyone but Hooker. In any event, this outspoken and public attack on three of their own only caused the officer corps to close ranks and the dissidents to stiffen their resolve. Hooker, by leaks to the press, also sought to dilute his responsibility for the retreat, serving to further irritate his subordinates. “I see the papers attribute Hooker’s withdrawal to the w
eak councils of his corps commanders,” Meade angrily wrote his wife on May 10. “This is a base calumny.”

  So it was that the officer corps’ nearly unanimous verdict finding General Hooker solely guilty for Chancellorsville stemmed in good measure from the general commanding’s ill-judged and intemperate finger-pointing. But it was also these generals’ convenient way of glossing over the serious command failings within their own ranks. They also ignored, or at least misunderstood, one of the major factors in the defeat. On May 3, in the midst of the heaviest fighting of the campaign, Hooker was felled and severely concussed by a Rebel cannon shot that hit the Chancellor house and shattered a porch pillar against which he was leaning. Although it was a hidden wound rather than an obvious one, the concussion rendered Hooker incapable of acting rationally throughout this pivotal day of the battle. Lincoln’s tart comment accurately gauged the matter. “If Hooker had been killed by the shot which knocked over the pillar that stunned him,” the president observed, “we should have been successful.” The dissident officers were not so perceptive; indeed the more malicious among them attributed the general’s comatose condition on May 3 to liquor.

  George Meade, fairer-minded than most, was nevertheless convinced that “these last operations have shaken the confidence of the army in Hooker’s judgment, particularly among the superior officers.” War correspondent George Smalley, sent by the New York Tribune to Falmouth to investigate Hooker and the state of the army, confirmed Meade’s opinion. Smalley, according to Captain Henry Abbott of the Second Corps, “stated the other day at Gen. Couch’s table that he had asked the opinion of every corps commander in the army, & with one exception, they all stated in the most unequivocal manner, that they had lost all confidence in Fighting Joe.” That one exception was the Third Corps’ Daniel Sickles, a longtime ally of Hooker’s—now perhaps his only ally.5