The Generals' Revolt
After the Battle of Fredericksburg, in December, 1862, the Union's Army of the Potomac was a mess. It had suffered one of its greatest defeats, taken grievous casualties, was horribly demoralized, and the Confederate's Army of Northern Virginia remained within sight of their camps on the other side of the Rappahannock River. A second attempt to take Fredericksburg in late January was cut off by a winter storm. The Fredericksburg campaign had ended.
The army was under the command of Maj. Gen. Ambrose Burnside. Several of Burnside's generals were openly critical of him. In late December, Maj. Gen. William F. Smith, commander of the Sixth Corps, and Maj. Gen. William B. Franklin, commander of the Left Grand Division, encouraged two junior officers (Brig. Gen. John Newton, one of Smith's division commanders, and Brig. Gen. John Cochrane, one of Newton's brigade commanders) to go to Washington with complaints against Burnside. They managed to get an audience with Lincoln, which resulted in Burnside being recalled to Washington for a meeting, and the subsequent delay in kicking off Burnside's second offensive.
After the so-called "Mud March" offensive ended, criticism turned to open revolt. Maj. Gen. Joseph Hooker went so far as to complain to the media about both Burnside's leadership and Lincoln's administration. Hooker suggested that Burnside was incompetent and that the administration should be replaced by a dictatorship (in the classical sense of a general who would run the country until the crisis was over, and then return the nation to the civil authority). Burnside, a day after the campaign ended, issued an order on January 23, 1863, for the removal of Generals Franklin, Smith, and Hooker for insubordination. He didn't have the authority, so he told Lincoln to accept this order or his own resignation. Instead, Lincoln relieved Franklin and Burnside from their respective commands, and handed the Army of the Potomac over to Maj. Gen. "Fighting Joe" Hooker.
Fighting Joe Takes Command
"Fighting Joe" Hooker
Joe Hooker was a braggart and had a history of opening his mouth first and regretting it later. He had an excellent academic record at West Point but graduated 29th in his class (out of 50) due to demerits. During the Mexican War he was chief of staff for 5 generals, none of whom were professional soldiers and each of whom relied on Maj. Hooker to manage their commands. He was breveted three times for gallantry, ending the war with a brevet rank of lieutenant colonel. Even then he didn't know when to keep quiet. He testified for a political general after the war in a dispute with commanding general Winfield Scott. This resulted in his being initially denied a commission at the beginning of the Civil War by Scott. Hooker also had a long standing dispute with Maj. Gen. Henry Halleck from Hooker's days in California prior to the war. After First Manassas (First Bull Run), Hooker went to Lincoln and criticized the generalship during that battle, and asserted that he could do better. He was given a commission, but this didn't end his habit of criticizing the army's commanders.
His nickname is actually the result of a transcription error. A typesetter mistook a reporter's lead in, "Fighting - Joe Hooker", and reset it as a heading, "Fighting-Joe Hooker". The name was appropriate (though he apparently disliked it). Hooker was a fighting general. He was also a general who became disgusted with the waste of men under his command. Every one of his battles saw him ordered to make a bloody frontal assault or to repel one. At Williamsburg during the Peninsula Campaign, his division lost more than 1500 men in an unsupported attack. At Second Manassas/Bull Run he put his men into a "useless slaughter" after protesting the order made by Maj. Gen. Pope. At Antietam Hooker lost 1/3 of his men in an assault on Stonewall Jackson. It was at Fredericksburg that he was most disgusted, terming Burnside's assault on Marye's Heights as senseless. He went in as ordered and fought until "I lost as many men as my orders required me to lose." Lincoln chose Hooker because he wanted a general who wasn't afraid to fight, and who would "use all his troops". Still he specifically pointed out Hooker's penchant for criticizing superiors as a potential problem. Lincoln felt it necessary to point out that his job was to defeat Confederate commander General Robert E. Lee's army and to defend Washington. His job was not to attack Richmond.
Hooker had a reputation as a drunkard that was unwarranted. Investigations after the Battle of Chancellorsville showed that the allegations of Hooker's drinking were not true. This was a charge fabricated by his opponents. He also had a reputation for visiting with prostitutes. This was true. Hooker was 48 in early 1863 and unmarried, which was somewhat scandalous at the time. There are several accounts of him liking the company of women. Eye witnesses put his carriage in Washington's Second Ward on several occasions, parked outside of brothels. Hooker did little to hide his activities, and the prostitutes of Washington came to be known as "Hooker's division". An urban legend states that this is the origin of the term "hooker". Not so. The word long predated the Civil War, probably originating with prostitutes "hooking" or snaring their clients. The fact that Hooker's name so well matched his predilections was just a coincidence.
Hooker the Administrator
Hooker's first action was to reorganize his army. He appointed Maj. Gen. Daniel Butterfield as his chief of staff. Butterfield was a business executive and an excellent administrator. With Butterfield as his aide, he began making sweeping changes in the army. Butterfield was commander of the Fifth Corps, but Burnside had swept him aside to put Maj. Gen. George G. Meade in that position. Now that Butterfield was available, Hooker made him his chief of staff.
Maj. Gen. George Stoneman, commander of the Third Corps, was made commander of the newly created Cavalry Corps. This pulled the cavalry out from under the control of divisional commanders and put it into an organization equal to the Confederate cavalry. Many history texts explain the qualitative difference between Federal and Rebel cavalry as due to the north being more urban and the south more rural. In fact both were heavily rural during the Civil War. The major difference in quality was the north's squandering its cavalry arm by placing it under the control of divisional and corps commanders. The cavalry's men and horses were used up in picket duty and as messengers. Union cavalry was unable to counter the raids conducted by Confederate cavalry, which was set up as an independent organization. Hooker's reorganization was the first step in addressing this problem.
He also made a change to the artillery arm at the same time, but this was not for the better. McClellan and Burnside had put the artillery under the central authority of Maj. Gen. Henry Hunt. Hooker, who had been a divisional and brigade commander, placed the artillery back in the hands of the individual artillery commanders, resulting in a weakening of the army's artillery organization.
Stoneman's move resulted in a vacancy in Third Corps. There was also the question of who should lead the four grand divisions created by Burnside. In the same order that created the Cavalry Corps, Hooker abolished the Grand Divisions as being too unwieldy. He appointed Maj. Gen. Daniel Sickles to command Third Corps. Sickles was a political general and not at all trained in warfare. Sickles was personally brave and liked by his men, so Hooker made the promotion. His promotion stepped on the toes of another divisional commander, Oliver Otis Howard of the Second Corps. Hooker had a remedy for this.
The Eleventh Corps was commanded by Maj. Gen. Franz Sigel, a German who fled the German states after the abortive revolution of 1848. He was well known in the German community. The Eleventh Corps was made up heavily, though not exclusively, of German immigrants. Their motto was "I fights mit Sigel" ("I fight with Sigel"). Burnside had elevated Sigel to the head of the Reserve Grand Division (including the Eleventh and Twelfth Corps). When Hooker eliminated the grand divisions, Sigel — the most senior officer left in the army, senior even to Hooker — was unhappy to be reduced to merely commanding a corps, and so he resigned. Hooker could have put the divisional commander and fellow German Carl Schurz in command, but instead Hooker gave the Eleventh Corps to Howard.
There were two other corps command changes required by Hooker. First there was William "Baldy" Smith, the "evil genius" of the General's revolt, who commanded the Sixth Corps. Hooker moved Smith over to the Ninth Corps. The Ninth Corps was Burnside's old command. Hooker wanted rid of it. He sent Smith and the Ninth out of the way towards the Peninsula, with unexpected benefits that will be related later. This left an opening in Sixth Corps, which Hooker filled by promoting Maj. Gen. John Sedgwick from divisional command.
Four corps commander changes, Stoneman, Sickles, Howard and Sedgwick, would come back to haunt Hooker. As it was, Hooker now had 4 new corps commanders (the three promotions he made — Sickles, Howard, and Sedgwick — and George Meade), 4 new division commanders and 19 new brigade commanders.
Buried in his list of promotions was Col. George H. Sharpe as the new deputy provost marshal. The promotion was more important than it sounded, for Sharpe was in actuality Hooker's chief of intelligence. This was the start of a major reform in the Army of the Potomac's intelligence service. Sharpe put in place an intelligence apparatus far superior to that put forth by McClellan. Intelligence was gathered from spies, signal interceptions, newspapers, and hydrogen balloon observations. It was then cross checked and analyzed. Now in some cases Hooker's knowledge of the Army of Northern Virginia was almost as good as Robert E. Lee's.
After dealing with the reorganization, Hooker's main problem was the condition of his army. Desertions were rampant, and morale was low. In January, 1863, the army was losing the equivalent of a regiment of men per day due to desertions. The morale problem was partly due to the defeat at Fredericksburg and partly due to a corrupt supply system. The men were going hungry in their winter camps in spite of full supply buildings. Unscrupulous supply soldiers were selling food on the black market and reaping huge profits.
Family members would send civilian clothes to soldiers to aid them in there desertion attempts. Hooker stopped these packages from arriving. At the same time, he instituted a successful program of furloughs. His "bread order" gave soft bread to the men, as opposed to the almost inedible hardtack cracker that was a staple of the soldier's diet. Quartermasters were required to explain why they didn't have adequate supplies. The men were kept busy with drills and inspections, while Hooker himself was lavish with praise. Sanitary regulations in the camps were enforced. He instituted a system of corps badges, with each corps receiving a symbolic patch. Each division within a corps had the same patch in a different colour. This created an esprit de corps while making it harder for deserters to walk around anonymous. All of these changes instilled soldierly pride in the men while reducing desertions to a bare trickle. The men warmed to Hooker as a commander. Hooker repeated Maj. Gen. George McClellan's feat of rebuilding the morale of the Army of the Potomac, but Hooker did it with an organization in far worse shape. He was showing himself to be a superb administrator.
Lee Tries to Feed His Army
On the other side of the Rappahannock River sat Gen. Robert E. Lee's Army of Northern Virginia. Like Hooker, Lee had problems getting food to his soldiers. The source of the problem was the small Richmond, Fredricksburg, and Potomac railroad line. There weren't enough sidings available, nor were there enough trains and rolling stock. The army had to make do with no more than two trains per day arriving at Hamilton's Crossing, just south of Fredericksburg. As a result not enough food was getting into the camps to feed men and horses. Lee partly alleviated this problem by dispersing his cavalry. He also dispersed his artillery into new artillery camps. His infantry, however, were still down to quarter rations, enough for them to subsist but not enough for campaigning. Foraging in the area over the past two years of war had taken its toll; there was precious little food left for the taking.
Lee was pondering this problem when he got word of Smith's Ninth corps moving towards the Peninsula. The Peninsula was the eastern portion of Virginia bordered by the Potomac River in the north, the James River in the south, and Chesapeake Bay in the east. In January Lee sent Maj. Gen. Robert Ransom's division of Longstreet's corps south on "loan" for the defence of Charleston and to guard the North Carolina coast. Now in February this new movement looked like Hooker was planning a replay of McClellan's 1862 Peninsula Campaign. He sent two crack divisions from Longstreet's Corps — those of Maj. Gen. John Bell Hood and Maj. Gen. George Pickett — along with Lt. Gen. James Longstreet himself to the Peninsula. They were to cover the Ninth Corps and to forage for food. Hooker's desire to rid himself of Smith now had the added benefit of stripping Lee of about a quarter of his army.
Battle of Kelly's Ford, March 17, 1863
Confederate Brig. Gen. Fitzhugh Lee, cavalry general and nephew of Robert E. Lee, was a friend — and now nemesis — of Federal Maj. Gen. William W. Averell. In the last week of February, Fitzhugh Lee raided Hartwood Church. Averell was sent in pursuit but could not stop Fitz Lee's escape. Averell asked Hooker for permission to avenge Fitz Lee's raid. He was given permission, and at first light on March 17, 1863 Averell sent his brigade across the Rappahannock at Kelly's Ford.
The cavalry battle at the ford was the largest of the war up until that time. Averell had nine cavalry regiments and an artillery battery, totalling about 3100 men and 6 guns. On March 16 he posted 900 of these men to guard his flank at Catlett Station, leaving about 2200 for the attack on Kelly's Ford 15 miles away.
On the other side of the river, counting the pickets guarding the ford and a horse artillery battery, Fitz Lee had about 1000 men and four guns. When the Confederate cavalry commander learned of Averell's movements he posted sharpshooters so that they could guard both Kelly's Ford and Rappahannock Ford, 4 miles up river and to the north. The bulk of his force — 800 troopers and the Captain James Breathed's gun battery ‐ was at Culpepper. Directly defending Kelly's Ford were about 85 men of the 2nd and 4th Virginia cavalry regiments.
Averell sent a group of 100 men to sweep up the Confederate pickets and cross the ford under cover of darkness. The group consisted of a few Regular Army men from the 5th U.S. cavalry, but most were from the 4th New York cavalry, Dickel's Mounted Rifles. This unit had an undistinguished record, so it was surprising that Averell sent them on such an important task. When he arrived at the ford, he found that they were dug in on his side of the river sporadically firing at Confederate pickets on the other side. He sent a small band to downstream to outflank the Confederates, but they quickly returned due to the deep water and swift current. Averell had Brown's battery of artillery available, but he feared using the battery would alert Fitzhugh Lee's main body. Instead, he ordered the 4th New York to storm the ford.
They German New Yorkers quickly routed back across the ford after being engaged by the Confederate skirmishers. The skirmishers defended a line of rifle pits and a dry millrace. Abatis (trees felled to create a defensible entanglement; essentially the mid-19th century equivalent to barbed wire) blocked the ford. The 4th New York tried again and was repulsed. The 1st Rhode Island fared no better. Eventually troops with axes cut a gap through the abatis and the Rhode Islanders rushed the ford. Only four men from the lead party of 18 made it across, but it was enough for the remaining Virginians to flee their rifle pits. Lt. Simeon A. Brown waved the rest of the Yankees across. They had seized the ford.
It took until mid morning for Averell to get his force across the ford and onto his chosen battlefield. He pushed aside Fitz Lee's advance guard with dismounted troopers from the 4th Pennsylvania and the 4th New York. They took up positions behind a long stone wall in the field owned by one Mr. Wheately. The 4th Pennsylvania held the far left end of the wall. On their right was the 4th New York, then the 3rd Pennsylvania. The 16th Pennsylvania held the far right flank anchored on the Rappahannock at Wheatley Ford, and the 3rd Ohio held the far left flank. The 1st Rhode Island and elements of the 5th U.S. were held in reserve. Due to casualties and the guard force he had left on the other side of the Rappahannock, he had about 2050 men left. Averell chose to fight the battle defensively, expecting roughly even numbers and an aggressive counter attack by Fitz Lee.
Instead of the 2000 troops Averell expected, Brig. Gen. Lee only had about 800 troopers with which to counterattack. Fitz Lee moved this force from Culpeper, joined by Maj. Gen. James Ewell Brown ("Jeb") Stuart (who had been nearby to attend a court-martial case) and Maj. John Pelham. Pelham was the gallant horse artillery officer who harassed Meade at Fredericksburg. With Fitz Lee, in order from his right to his left, were the 2nd Virginia, 3rd Virginia, 4th Virginia, 1st Virginia and 5th Virginia regiments. As he approached the battlefield, he saw the retreat of the advance guard. He gave the 3rd Virginia the order to charge.
The 3rd Virginia's Col. Thomas H. Owen sent out a squadron of skirmishers ahead of his troops. Carbine fire and artillery fire from Brown's Ordnance rifles caused the skirmishers to falter. Jeb Stuart rode up, shouting, "Confound it, men, come back! Don't leave me alone here." The skirmishers held their ground, and the 3rd Virginia began its charge. The regiment slanted across the battlefield to their left. When it reached the stone wall they found the wall was too high to jump and had no gaps. They charged across the front of the fence. When they got to the Wheately farmstead they were joined by the 5th Virginia. The two regiments found a gateway in the fence and charged through.
Pelham, caught up in the fervor, was at the gateway. Suddenly a shell burst in the air above him and he fell to the ground, apparently untouched but unconscious. After he was pulled from the field surgeons determined he had been struck on the head by shell shrapnel. He died later that day. The 16th Pennsylvania defended the Wheately outbuildings. Their heavy carbine fire checked the 3rd and 5th Virginia, driving them back.
On the other end of the field, Col. Alfred Napoleon Alexander Duffié, late of the French army, led the 1st Rhode Island, 6th Ohio, and elements of the 4th Pennsylvania and the 5th U.S. on a charge of his own. He was met by the 2nd, 4th, and 1st Virginia. Duffié's wider line threatened to overlap Fitz Lee's line, so — in spite of a counterattack that captured 18 men of Duffié's lead 1st Rhode Island regiment — Fitz Lee had no choice but to withdraw through a strip of woods and the field beyond to behind Carter Run. Averell moved his men up to the edge of the woods. He and Fitz Lee stood 600 yards apart.
The cautious Averell did not seize the momentum resulting from Duffié's attck. Instead, he ordered that no officer was to leave their assigned position without an order from him or one of his staff. Averell remained on the defensive. This was partly due to his belief that Fitz Lee had superior numbers. Confederate prisoners told him that Jeb Stuart was on the field, reinforcing that belief.
Fitz Lee ordered another charge. Averell's men were mounted, but stationary. The difference in accuracy soon showed as the Confederates began taking casualties. They took even more casualties when they got within canister range of Brown's artillery. The charge dissolved in confusion. Captain Reno of the 5th U.S. was in an ideal position to attack the flank of the disordered Rebels, but Averell's order prevented him from acting. Fitz Lee retreated half a mile as his horse artillery dueled with Brown's battery. Averell's pursuit ended on the ground Fitz Lee's line had just abandoned.
It was 5:30 pm. A charge by the Yankees could rout the Rebel cavalry. Instead, Averell ordered his command to retreat back across the ford. He left behind two wounded Confederate officers, whom his force had captured, with a bag of coffee and a message. The message said, "Dear Fitz, Here's your coffee. Here's your visit. How do you like it?"
The battle was indecisive, though technically a Confederate victory, with Averell suffering 78 casualties (six killed, 50 wounded, 22 missing) to Lee's 133 (11 killed, 88 wounded, 34 missing). Joe Hooker was not happy with Averell's performance. He said, "He was sent to perform a certain duty, and failed to accomplish it from imaginary apprehensions." The performance of the Union cavalry, however, was impressive. If not for Averell, they could have won a resounding victory. Although Fitz Lee boasted that he had driven the Federals back across the Rappahannock, it was clear to all that the Union cavalry had been the better force in this battle. The cavalry arm of the Army of the Potomac was now a force to be reckoned with.
