Gettysburg Page 6

  The Eleventh Corps was the foster child of the Army of the Potomac—the foster child that no one wanted. It was assigned from John Pope’s short-lived Army of Virginia, and Chancellorsville was its first battle with the Potomac army. “The spirit of this corps is broken, and something must be done to revive it,” warned divisional commander Carl Schurz after the Chancellorsville debacle. There was little chance that a revival would be generated by the corps commander, Otis Howard. Howard was no better fitted to lead an army corps than was Dan Sickles, and one of his lacks was a commanding presence. As Colonel Charles Wainwright put it, “there is some doubt as to his having snap enough to manage the Germans, who require to be ruled with a rod of iron.“27

  The Eleventh’s three division commanders formed a study in contrasts, but each in his way was well enough suited to his post. Brigadier General Francis Channing Barlow, twenty-eight, graduate of Harvard (first in his class) and a lawyer, was a self-taught officer of resolute battlefield courage who was capable of ruling the Germans in his division with a rod of iron if anyone could. The same could be said of Adolph von Steinwehr, Prussian-trained and well respected by his men. Carl Schurz, an influential leader of the German-American community, had made himself an energetic student of the trade of soldiering. Of the corps’ six brigades, four had commanders of experience, and two (both in von Steinwehr’s division) were led by newcomers. Only one regiment of two-year men was scheduled to be mustered out, but its Chancellorsville losses left the Eleventh Corps sadly understrength.

  The Twelfth Corps was another refugee from the Army of Virginia, but it had fought hard and well at Antietam and Chancellorsville and never had to share the stigma of the outcast Eleventh Corps. The corps commander, Henry Slocum, was a battle-scarred veteran—he had fought at First Manassas and was wounded there—who in generalship was much like John Sedgwick: competent, careful, cautious, and entirely without military imagination. There was a bitter, peevish streak in him that seemed to power his hatred of Hooker. (Hooker blamed this on Slocum’s “digestive apparatus being out of repair.”) Slocum’s First Division was led by Alpheus’S. Williams, the most experienced and one of the best divisional commanders in the army. In the reshuffling necessitated by the expiration of enlistments, Williams had one recast brigade under a brand-new commander, a veteran brigade under the battle-tested Thomas H. Ruger, and a third brigade of Maryland garrison troops that would join during the campaign.

  Slocum’s other divisional commander, John W. Geary, was a fearless giant of a man who led by example and had already been wounded three times in this war (and five times in the Mexican War). His three brigades had strong, experienced commanders in Charles Candy, Thomas L. Kane, and George Sears Greene. The Twelfth Corps would be fated to next go into battle with fewer than 10,000 men, but with leadership as good as any in the army.28

  JOE HOOKER NEVER offered any detail on his ideas for resuming the offensive on the Rappahannock front after the Chancellorsville defeat. He would say only that next time he wanted to arrange matters so that he had “elbow-room” for maneuvering—no more trying to fight in the heavily wooded Wilderness region south of the river—and that instead of dividing the army into scattered independent commands as he had at Chancellorsville, he would keep all his forces “within my personal supervision.” Clearly in the late battle he had lost as much confidence in his lieutenants as they had in him. As the spring campaigning season slipped away, however, it became evident that General Hooker was perfectly content to let the initiative fall into his opponent’s hands. 29

  That his opponent intended to pounce on that initiative did not escape the notice of the Federals’ sharp-eyed intelligence service. The Bureau of Military Information was another of Joe Hooker’s innovations, and as important a one as any. Colonel George H. Sharpe, head of the B.M.I., reported to headquarters that the Confederate army was under marching orders, “and an order from General Lee was very lately read to the troops announcing a campaign of long marches & hard fighting in a part of the country where they would have no railroad transportation.” That could mean nothing else but a march north.

  The intelligence came from a deserter, Colonel Sharpe explained, and was confirmed by his own spies and supported by a broad hint from the Richmond Examiner of May 22. Speaking of the discouraging reports from Vicksburg, the Examiner offered the prediction that happenings in that quarter “will soon be eclipsed by greater events elsewhere. Within the next fortnight the campaign of 1863 will be pretty well decided. The most important movement of the war will probably be made in that time.” With this fresh intelligence in hand, General Hooker and his chief of staff, Daniel Butterfield, went up to Washington on the evening of May 25 for what was termed “a kind of Council of War” at the White House.30

  It appears that this council was attended only by the president, Generals Hooker and Butterfield, and Secretary of War Stanton. Not in attendance was General-in-Chief Halleck, who soon afterward again made complaint that Hooker never told him anything; clearly general-in-chief and general commanding remained at swords’ points. The agenda of the White House meeting is not known, but with Hooker bearing news from the B.M.I. of a projected advance by the enemy, his primary concern just then had to be reinforcements. Hooker had earlier pursued intelligence about troops reportedly transferred to Lee from Charleston, and surely he was in Washington to seek reinforcements of his own to match what the Rebels were doing. This, he surely pointed out, was quite apart from the need to replace the troops being mustered out in their thousands day by day.

  Nothing concrete came out of the discussion. Hooker’s sole accomplishment was a promise by Secretary Stanton to send him a copy of the manpower analysis for the Department of Washington prepared a week earlier by General Halleck. No doubt Hooker threw up his hands when he read Halleck’s smugly reasoned conclusion: “Under these circumstances, I think it my duty to urge the retention of the present force in Washington or its vicinity.” While in Washington Hooker also met with his sole Cabinet ally, Treasury Secretary Chase, to talk about how to handle the army’s discordant high command. Little good news came out of that discussion either, and the general commanding returned to his Falmouth headquarters little wiser than when he left. He did take back with him Secretary Stanton’s injunction, “Command whatever service I can render you,” but that rang of an empty promise. 31

  Apparently there was nothing about this White House meeting that convinced the president that General Hooker had regained the confidence of his lieutenants. That disappointment, and word that the Rebel army was stirring, persuaded Mr. Lincoln that he must seriously consider making a command change before the next battle. Shortly thereafter, Major General John F. Reynolds was summoned to Washington and offered the command of the Army of the Potomac.

  Previously, when Lincoln had sounded out the most senior of Hooker’s generals, Darius Couch, on this subject, he phrased it hypothetically; Couch took himself out of the running, citing poor health. Indirect soundings, through intermediaries, were then made to another of the Potomac army’s senior generals, John Sedgwick, and to Winfield Hancock; neither expressed interest in the command. One notch below Sedgwick on the seniority list was John Reynolds, and now that it was Reynolds’s turn the president decided on a more direct approach. At the White House, on June 2, the commander-in-chief spoke straight out to Reynolds about heading the army.

  The previous January, during the last generals’ revolt, against Ambrose Burnside, John Reynolds had unburdened himself in a private letter about the critical problem he saw in the high command. “If we do not get some one soon who can command an army without consulting ‘Stanton and Halleck’ at Washington,” he wrote, “I do not know what will become of this Army.” That was still a widely held view within the army’s old guard, and reflected General McClellan’s corrosive legacy. Repeatedly, to any of his generals who would listen, McClellan had blamed all the troubles of his troubled regime on “interference” from Washington—on Secretary Stanton for put
ting radical Republican schemes ahead of what was best for the army, on General Halleck for forcing his foolish, outdated military notions on those who would lead on the battlefield. Everyone in Washington, said McClellan (he included the president and congressional investigators in his indictment), was guilty of selfishly playing politics with the Army of the Potomac.

  Reynolds’s response to the president was that (as he later phrased it) he “was unwilling to take Burnside’s and Hooker’s leavings.” He wanted assurances there would be no more interference from Washington in the running of the army. Whether he had thought it through or not, what John Reynolds was in fact insisting on, before he would take the command, was the suspension of the network of civilian control over the military. He was calling for an end to “interference” from the president, the commander-in-chief and his ultimate superior officer; from Secretary of War Stanton, the army’s chief civilian overseer; even from General Halleck, his immediate superior officer. There is no record of the form Lincoln’s reaction took, but obviously he did not—could not—accept such a bargain. In that case, said Reynolds, he could not accept the command.

  During the conversation Reynolds seems to have spoken bluntly of Joe Hooker’s shortcomings, and to have promoted General Meade (next on the seniority list) for head of the army. Yet there must have been something disturbing enough about Reynolds’s expressed attitude toward the command that it hardened Lincoln’s own attitude on the subject. These various generals were going out of their way to condemn Hooker as unfit, yet not one of them would step up to take his place. Rather than continuing this discouraging search through the seniority list, the president determined, at least for the time being, to stay with Joe Hooker. Reynolds quoted Lincoln as saying he “was not disposed to throw away a gun because it missed fire once; that he would pick the lock and try it again.” The word was soon around the capital that the president had resolved to “re-try” General Hooker.

  Ten days later Reynolds would relate this episode to Meade, but only after recasting it. As he now told it, he learned from a Washington acquaintance that he was being considered for the army command, and had marched straight to the White House to tell the president he did not want it and would not take it. Such a preemptive performance would have required a good deal more gall than John Reynolds was known to possess. Clearly he told it this way to spare his friend Meade from being backed into a corner—from having to set parallel conditions for accepting the command—if (as Reynolds expected) it was offered him. Later, after there was no need for such subterfuge, Reynolds explained to his artillery chief, Colonel Wainwright, that he had indeed been summoned to Washington and offered the army command, and refused it because he would have been under the same constraints as Burnside and Hooker. (In reporting this conversation in his diary, Wainwright added that he learned Reynolds had recommended Meade for the post.) Reynolds confided much the same story to his aide Stephen Weld: that he had been called in and offered, and had refused, the army command. 32

  Here then was the Army of the Potomac, once again defeated, in the midst of an organizational turmoil, by all reports on the eve of a new campaign, commanded by a general who nearly all his lieutenants regarded as unfit. And here was the president, deeply disturbed by this dissension and disloyalty in the officer corps, who could not seem to find a qualified general who actually wanted to lead that army. It was obvious to Lincoln that should he dismiss Joe Hooker now, he would have to order rather than ask another general to take his place. That was not a happy prospect. He had gone on record as supporting Hooker; to dismiss him would be a further sign of dissension and weakness within the administration. The president could only wait and watch—and hope that General Lee gave him time enough to resolve the dilemma somehow.

  3. The Risk of Action

  IT WAS May 18, 1863, the day after General Lee returned to Fredericksburg from the Richmond strategy conference, and Brigadier General Dorsey Pender sensed change in the air. “We have nothing in the world new,” he wrote his wife, “but all feel that something is brewing and that Gen. Lee is not going to wait all the time for them to come to him.” Pender’s prediction rang true. Over the next two weeks, as Lee shaped his plans for the Pennsylvania campaign, change was the order of the day in the Confederate camps.

  Lee made the army’s high command his first priority. Stonewall Jackson’s death necessitated a new commander for the Second Corps, and Lee seized on that requirement to alter the basic makeup of the Army of Northern Virginia. “I have for the past year felt that the corps of this army were too large for one commander,” he wrote President Davis on May 20. Each corps “when in fighting condition,” he said, contained some 30,000 troops, too many for one general to manage in battle, especially in wooded country. “They are always beyond the range of his vision, & frequently beyond his reach.” To remedy this evil, he proposed revamping the two-corps army into a three-corps army.

  This meant two new corps commanders, and Lee presented the president with his selections—for the Second Corps, Richard Stoddert Ewell, “an honest, brave soldier, who has always done his duty well”; and for the new Third Corps, Ambrose Powell Hill, who “upon the whole is the best soldier of his grade with me.” Both men should be promoted to lieutenant general, said Lee, to rank alongside James Longstreet, the First Corps’ commander. He went on to say that Richard H. Anderson and John B. Hood, both “capital officers,” would make good corps commanders “if necessary”—that is to say, with proper deference, should Mr. Davis not approve General Lee’s first choices. Both president and general knew full well that this was not going to happen. If Robert E. Lee, the Confederacy’s most successful general, wanted Dick Ewell and Powell Hill as two of his three chief lieutenants, he would have them.1

  Richard S. Ewell led the Confederate Second Corps in Stonewall Jackson’s place. (Cook Collection, Valentine Museum)

  There was one question about Dick Ewell—was he fit enough for field duty? Ewell had lost his left leg in the Second Manassas campaign the previous August, and his recuperation progressed slowly. He had not served in the nine months since, and was only now growing accustomed to his wooden leg. But when he reported for duty at Fredericksburg on May 29, newly minted a lieutenant general, he appeared in good enough health. General Ewell, wrote Sandie Pendleton of the Second Corps staff, “seems quite pleased to get back into the field. He manages his leg very well & walks only with a stick, & mounts his horse quite easily from the ground.” Ewell’s spirits were enlivened by the presence of his bride of three days, the former Lizinka Campbell Brown, widow. “Old Bald Head,” well known for his eccentricities, lived up to his reputation by introducing Lizinka to his army colleagues as “my wife, Mrs. Brown.”

  Ewell was the natural choice for the Second Corps, for he had been Jackson’s most trusted divisional commander, especially during the renowned Shenandoah Valley campaign of 1862. Indeed, it was said to have been Jackson’s deathbed wish that Ewell succeed him. Old Bald Head had proven himself a sound battlefield tactician and a good manager of troops. Like all of Jackson’s lieutenants, however, Ewell had always operated on a tight rein held in the iron grip of the secretive Stonewall. In the coming campaign he would have to prove himself anew in the more expansive role of corps commander. In the army it was generally agreed that while Jackson was irreplaceable, Dick Ewell was the best suited to manage the corps’ painful transition from old to new. “Our old confidence in Jackson,” wrote Colonel Clement Evans of the 31st Georgia, “has found a new birth in our faith in Ewell. Always a favorite with his division, he is now the idol of his corps.“2

  “He fights his troops well, and takes good care of them.” So General Lee summed up A. P. Hill after Sharpsburg, and it would have been hard to ask much more of a divisional commander. Yet there were contradictions to Hill. For all his oft-proven fighting prowess, he was sometimes careless on a battlefield. At Second Manassas and at Fredericksburg his defensive postings were poor and nearly proved very costly. He had a strong affi
nity with his men, but often prickly dealings with his superiors, and was notorious for contretemps with both Longstreet and Jackson; presumably now, with Lee his only superior, that problem would abate. And, finally, Hill was prey to a mysterious ailment, which was liable to strike him during active service. (This has since been diagnosed as prostatitis, stemming from a youthful indiscretion of Hill’s during his West Point years.) Like Dick Ewell, Powell Hill would be required to prove, on campaign, that he was up to the burdens and responsibilities of corps command.3

  As Lee reorganized it, the army was to have three corps of three divisions each. Previously, there were eight infantry divisions, divided equally between Longstreet’s First Corps and Jackson’s Second. Now, Lee took Richard H. Anderson’s division from the First Corps and Powell Hill’s Light Division from the Second to form two-thirds of the new Third Corps. Hill’s third division—the army’s new ninth infantry division—would be a patchwork. Two brigades were plucked out of the oversized Light Division and combined with two brigades of reinforcements to be brought up from North Carolina. This new division would require a major general to command it, and another was needed to replace A. P. Hill as head of the Light Division.

  Ambrose Powell Hill commanded the Army of Northern Virginia’s Third Corps. (Cook Collection, Valentine Museum)

  To ease the transition for the troops being shuffled and reshuffled to form the new corps, Lee proposed brigadiers from Hill’s old division for the two posts. Dorsey Pender, who had sensed the change brewing in the Rappahannock camps, became one of the first beneficiaries of that change. He was advanced from command of a brigade in the Light Division to head of the division itself, as a major general—at twenty-nine, the youngest of that rank in the army. Lee praised Pender as a “most gallant” officer, and added, “I fear the effect upon the men of passing him over in favour of another not so identified with them.” A. P. Hill’s ringing endorsement of Pender as his successor sealed the bargain.