James A. Hessler
Page 7
In late December 1862, after Fredericksburg but before Hooker assumed command of the army, Burnside replaced Butterfield and raised George Meade as the head of the Fifth Corps. (Both were major generals, but Meade was senior to Butterfield by eight days.) Butterfield resented being superseded, asking his friend Senator Henry Wilson “if anything can be done to save my command.” The change created lasting friction between Butterfield and Meade. In all probability, Butterfield’s new assignment as Hooker’s chief of staff was helped both by his connections with Salmon Chase and his growing friendship with Hooker and Sickles. “Hooker is ambitious & very susceptible of flattery,” Meade complained to his wife, and “Butterfield has been playing on the weaknesses.” Many of the professionals would learn to hate Butterfield in his new role.45
Like Butterfield, citizen soldier Sickles also rose in Hooker’s wake. The army was reorganized and General Stoneman was reassigned to command of the cavalry. Although Brigadier General Sickles had led a division during only one campaign—and had seen but little combat during that time—Hooker placed him in command of the Third Corps. The assignment was officially considered only “temporary” because Republicans in the Senate, still questioning his Democrat loyalty and probably his qualifications as well, resisted (again) in appointing him a major general. They refused to confirm him until March 9 (to rank from November 29). By the end of March, the “temporary” designation was removed from Major General Sickles’ corps command.46
One of the significant problems festering within the Army of the Potomac, passed-over officers such as Regis de Trobriand complained, was that the “list for promotion did not come from military recommendations.… The greater part were put there from outside recommendation, and, above all, by political influence.” As the highest ranking non-West Pointer in the Army of the Potomac—a distinction he would carry into Gettysburg—Sickles’ promotion to major general and command of the Third Corps was an amazing development even for that politically charged organization. Sickles succeeded by doing what he did best: latching onto prominent stars, in this case both Hooker and Lincoln, and convincing them that his aggressive temperament overcame his actual lack of experience. Not everyone was convinced. “Dan Sickles is a Major Genl. and commands a Corps in this Army,” an amazed Frank Haskell wrote. “Was he ever a man? Did he not have criminal intercourse with the mother of his wife [sic] for years before his marriage? Did he not shoot Key many months after the knowledge of the crime of his wife, and then take that wife back to his bed?” According to Haskell, the men would taunt Sickles by singing within Dan’s hearing, “Sickles killed a man/Sickles killed a man.…”47
Hooker initially retained Burnside’s “Grand Division” organization. Fifth Corps commander George Meade was given the Center Grand Division, which included Sickles’ Third Corps. The upshot was that for a few days in late January and early February, Sickles was under Meade’s direct command. What could have been a fascinating command structure (Meade as a middle man between Hooker and Sickles) was terminated on February 5, when Hooker abolished the Grand Division structure. Hooker’s immediate lieutenants were now responsible only for their own corps.48
If David Birney thought his combat experience, which exceeded Sickles’, warranted promotion to major general or command of his own corps, then he was sorely disappointed. Birney remained a brigadier general in command of the First Division. Brigadier General Hiram Berry also received a promotion to major general and was assigned to command Sickles’ former Second Division. Berry, thirty-eight years old, was another “amateur,” a former member of the Maine legislature and town mayor who was active in Maine’s local prewar militia. Berry had made brigadier general in April 1862 and led a brigade at Fredericksburg. Birney was particularly irritated by Berry’s promotion, since Berry had previously commanded a brigade in Birney’s division, and had now jumped over him to a higher rank. Though he may have been disgusted by the arrangement Birney accepted life under Sickles, who Birney thought “has many qualities to commend him as a soldier. I prefer him to mamby pamby Heintzleman who never had an original idea, a brave impulse, or a friendship in his life.” In short order, Sickles and Birney became friends.49
The Army of the Potomac marked time, waiting for the spring of 1863 to arrive. Sickles set the tone by throwing a huge New Year’s party, complete with a five piece band and a man who “chirruped like a bird.” “The programme was to first salute the General,” Chaplain Joe Twichell wrote, “then salute his victuals and drink.… Father O’Hagan and I… observed that rum was flowing freely.…” Regis de Trobriand, who had a great time, wrote that Sickles did things in “grand style” and “kept open house at his headquarters… The champagne and whiskey ran in streams. I wish I could add that they were used in moderation.”50
Contemporaries described Sickles as liable to drink to excess on social occasions, but was otherwise a moderate drinker. Hooker, however, was known for hard drinking, among other social vices. But for all his faults, Hooker was too good of a soldier to let drinking interfere with his duties. “Whatever may have been his habits in former times,” George Meade wrote, “since I have been associated with him in the army I can bear testimony of the utter falsehood of the charge of drunkenness.” Charles Wainwright, who would command the First Corps artillery at Gettysburg, confided to his diary, “I should say that his failing was more in the way of women than whiskey.” One brothel-filled section of Washington’s Second Ward had famously become known as “Hooker’s Division.” Sickles had never practiced marital fidelity while at home, and with Teresa exiled in New York, he must have especially enjoyed the winter serving under a man of similar interests.51
Sickles, Butterfield, and Hooker were now close friends, and each brought their own reputational baggage to the relationship. Hooker had his women and alcohol, and Sickles added murder (and more women) into the mix. Butterfield’s antecedents, however, were the most bizarre of the trio. As Washington Roebling explained, Butterfield in his youth “loved to see houses burn & was charged with having set many buildings on fire in Utica, N.Y.” It was this sullied trio that set the army’s social and morality standards in the months prior to Gettysburg. “The Army of the Potomac sank to its lowest point,” Captain Charles Adams famously complained. “It was commanded by a trio, of each of whom the least said the better.… All three were men of blemished character. During that winter (1862-3) when Hooker was in command, I can say from personal knowledge and experience that the headquarters of the Army of the Potomac was a place to which no self-respecting man liked to go, and no decent woman would go. It was a combination of bar-room and brothel.”52
One general who was decidedly excluded from this social calendar was the new Fifth Corps commander, George Meade. Already unpopular in the Third Corps and resented by the new chief of staff, Meade had no interest in their social vices and held the Regular soldier’s healthy dose of disrespect for amateurs like Sickles and Butterfield. Meade’s relationship with headquarters during the winter of 1862-63 had a decided impact on how men like Dan Sickles fought and remembered Gettysburg.
The happily married Meade was the professional and personal antithesis of Sickles. Meade graduated from West Point in 1835, and his front-line experience commanding troops under fire, first as a captain and then as a brigadier general of volunteers during the war’s early stages, exceeded Robert E. Lee’s. Meade’s bravery and commitment were never questioned (at least prior to Gettysburg), and he worked his way up through division command at Antietam and Fredericksburg before assuming the leadership of the Fifth Corps. Meade, wrote General Alexander Webb, was “utterly fearless [and] he never sent a man where he had not been himself.” When Hooker was promoted to army command, Meade told his wife, “I believe Hooker is a good soldier; the danger he runs is of subjecting himself to bad influences, such as Dan Butterfield and Dan Sickles, who being intellectually more clever than Hooker, and leading him to believe they are very influential, will obtain an injurious ascendancy over him and
insensibly affect his conduct.”53
Another trait that set Meade apart from both Sickles and Butterfield was that he was a self-professed novice at politics. “I am completely fuddled about politics.… Either carry on the war as it ought to be, with overwhelming means, both material and personal, or else give it up altogether. I am tired of half-way measures and efforts… I am in favor of… a vigorous prosecution of the war with all means in our power.”54 Lieutenant Colonel Theodore Lyman, who later served Meade as a volunteer aide-de-camp, described his superior as …
a thorough soldier, and a mighty clear-headed man; and one who does not move unless he knows where and how many his men are; where and how many his enemy’s men are, and what sort of country he has to go through. I never saw a man in my life who was so characterized by straight forward truthfulness as he is. He will pitch into himself in a moment, if he thinks he had done wrong; and woe to those, no matter who they are, who do not do right.55
While Meade did not share Hooker’s, Sickles’, and Butterfield’s fondness for women and alcohol, his social exclusion was also at least partially due to his personality, which was less magnetic than any of the three men. There is no indication that Meade was the man anyone would turn to when looking for a good time. Assistant Secretary of War Charles Dana claimed Meade “was totally lacking in cordiality toward those with whom he had business, and in consequence was generally disliked by his subordinates.” A staff officer compared Meade to “a firecracker, always going bang at somebody near him.” General Webb, however, did not think Meade’s moniker as the “old snapping turtle” was the result of a bad disposition. Rather, in Webb’s view, Meade “thought too quick and expected others to think the same—without his source of information.” Meade’s correspondence suggests that he deeply felt the pressure of his increasing responsibilities. “I sometimes feel very nervous about my position, they are knocking over generals at such a rate.” Meade was also like many of the old Army Regulars who resented finding themselves at professional peer-levels with amateurs like the sullied newcomer Sickles.56
In mid-February, when Meade had trouble obtaining a leave of absence from Hooker, the frustrated old soldier complained that “I do not like his entourage. Such gentlemen as Dan Sickles and Dan Butterfield are not the persons I should select as my intimates, however worthy and superior they may be.” One month later, Meade was entertaining camp visitors when he decided to visit Hooker. “The General was, however, absent at a grand wedding which took place yesterday in camp, followed last night by a ball, and I understand another ball is given to-night by General Sickles. Not being honored with an invitation to these festivities, I did not go.” Even Chaplains Twichell and O’Hagan drank some wine at the event and found Sickles “most familiar and agreeable.”57
On March 17, the Irish Brigade celebrated St. Patrick’s Day. “Most of the general officers of the army,” wrote Second Corps staff officer Josiah Favill, “with their many lady friends, were invited.… Hooker looked superb, followed by a great crowd of staff officers and retinue of mounted ladies.” The Third Corps responded on March 27 with a party of its own. The master of ceremonies was none other than David Birney, the supposed “pale, Puritanical figure, with a demeanor of ummovable coldness.” The event received extensive newspaper coverage. According to the New York Herald, “Fighting Joe was there in his usual trim. Sickles was there, as suave and courteous as Sickles always is.” An attendee recalled that “General Sickles and staff reached the ground, and the platform commenced to fill. Prominent in the foreground were several real live women, be-silked, be-furred, and bonneted like those of a more civilized state.” Colonel Wainwright was more direct: “How they managed to scare up such a number of females I cannot imagine.”58
President and Mrs. Lincoln visited the army in early April. Birney thought the president looked as “gaunt as a spectre.” A banquet was held with Hooker and his corps commanders at Sickles’ headquarters. For once Meade was invited, and he labeled the affair “a very handsome and pleasant dinner.” Also in camp was Princess Salm-Salm, a circus rider and actress whose husband commanded the 8th New York. The princess must have been an impressive woman, for she makes an appearance in numerous Federal memoirs. With uncharacteristic understatement, Sickles admitted only that she was “youthful and attractive.” It was due to the princess that Dan nearly ran afoul of Mary Todd Lincoln. When he realized that the president was depressed over the war’s mounting casualties, Sickles tried to cheer Lincoln up. “I proposed to several of the ladies that they should kiss Lincoln, but there were serious objections,” he later explained. None of the ladies were willing to lead off until Princess Salm-Salm agreed. Once she began, the others quickly followed suit. “Lincoln, it is needless to say, enjoyed the fun.” Tad Lincoln, the president’s son, was present and relayed every detail to the First Lady. The next day Dan learned that Mrs. Lincoln was “very angry with me.” According to Butterfield, everyone at headquarters noted her “freezing coldness whenever Sickles was present.” Mary Todd reportedly told her husband, “As for General Sickles, he will hear what I think of him and his lady guests. It was well for him that I was not there at the time.” Sickles suffered through a decidedly awkward dinner with the Lincolns the next evening, during which he “saw at once how much I was out of favor.” Fortunately for Sickles’ social prospects at the Executive Mansion, the president joked his way out of the mess and peace was eventually restored.59
In between social events, Hooker succeeded in reorganizing and reinvigorating the demoralized army. One of Hooker’s most lasting innovations, visible today on nearly every Gettysburg Union monument, was the adoption of corps badges. During the previous summer, General Phil Kearny designed a distinguishing diamond-shaped patch of red flannel for his division’s soldiers to wear on their caps. The division now belonged to David Birney, and the men still wore the diamond to distinguish the “Kearny Division.” Dan Butterfield, in one of his administrative inspirations, suggested to Hooker that a similar unique badge be given “for the purpose of ready recognition of corps and divisions.” Hooker liked and adopted the idea. Since Birney’s division was in the Third Corps, Sickles’ entire corps retained the diamond, or “lozenge,” as its enduring corps symbol.60
As winter turned to spring, and the army prepared to embark on what would evolve into the Chancellorsville campaign, Sickles was optimistic that Hooker had improved “the discipline and morale” so that the army was “for its numbers, more efficient in all respects than it had ever been before.” Not everyone was as convinced. “Confidence enough is felt in Hooker, I think,” General Marsena Patrick told his diary on April 28, “but not a great deal in some of his Corps Commanders… Sickles& the most of his crew, are poor—very poor concerns, in my opinion.” Foreshadowing his own use of councils of war during the Gettysburg campaign, George Meade wrote ominously that Hooker “is remarkably reticent of his information and plans; I really know nothing of what he intends to do.” The secrecy might result in “important plans” being “frustrated by subordinates, from their ignorance of how much depended on their share of work.”61
Chapter 3
I Think it is a Retreat
Although the battle of Chancellorsville was fought two months before Gettysburg, what happened in May had a direct impact on the July battle’s tactics, personality conflicts, and even the eventual outcome. Unlike earlier battles, Sickles saw significant action at Chancellorsville, and he would carry the lessons he learned there into Pennsylvania later that summer.
The Spring 1863 campaign opened with the armies of Joseph Hooker (130,000) and Robert E. Lee (61,000) locked in an apparent stalemate along the Rappahannock River around Fredericksburg. Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia had been significantly reduced by the detachment of much of James Longstreet’s First Corps for operations south and east of Richmond around Suffolk, Virginia. For Hooker and the Army of the Potomac, the time to strike had arrived. Rather than repeat General Ambrose Burnside’s attempt to attack
Lee frontally, Hooker decided on a bold plan to turn Lee’s left flank. Hooker combined George Meade’s Fifth Corps, Oliver Howard’s Eleventh Corps, and Henry Slocum’s Twelfth Corps into a strong column that marched on a wide detour northwest upstream to cross the river beyond the Southern flank, turn back east, and strike Lee’s rear. John Sedgwick, meanwhile, commanded a diversionary column that remained in and around Fredericksburg. His mission was to keep Lee’s army pinned down there while Hooker turned his flank and George Stoneman’s Federal cavalry rode into Lee’s rear to threaten Confederate supply and communications lines. By stealing a flank march on Lee, Hooker hoped Lee would fall back (and so abandon his powerful river line and the Fredericksburg defenses), or stand and fight at a disadvantage (and be beaten where he stood).1
The Federal move began on April 27. By the 30th, Hooker’s main column was across both the Rappahannock and Rapidan rivers. Joined by Darius Couch’s Second Corps, the powerful flanking force began to concentrate beyond Lee’s left around the crossroads at the small hamlet of Chancellorsville about ten miles west of Fredericksburg. This portion of Spotsylvania County was known as the Wilderness because it was covered with dense secondgrowth woods laced with small streams, gullies, briars, and thick underbrush. Only a handful of large clearings worthy of the name dotted the landscape. Chancellorsville sat at the intersection of several roads, including the Orange Turnpike and the Plank Road, which ran east to Fredericksburg and so was the most direct route leading like a giant arrow toward Lee’s lines.
The first stage of the operation worked smoothly for the Federals. Lee became suspicious of Sedgwick’s “apparent indisposition to attack,” however, and on the 29th his cavalry commander, James Ewell Brown (Jeb) Stuart, confirmed Hooker’s river crossings. The pressing dilemma brought out the best in Lee, who reacted with his characteristic aggressiveness. He did not retreat, however, but instead decided to come out of his defenses and offer battle. Instead of doing so with his entire army, he violated one of the cardinal rules of warfare and divided his command in the face of superior numbers. The same night that Stuart brought him the information (April 29), Lee put Thomas “Stonewall” Jackson’s corps in motion to confront Hooker at Chancellorsville while the balance of his army remained in its Fredericksburg defenses to confront Sedgwick.2