On the positive side of the ledger, Sickles and Pleasonton helped stop Jackson’s tidal wave after Howard had been routed. Even allowing for the usually exaggerated post-battle claims of the episode’s significance, of which Pleasonton in particular was accused, the defensive effort demonstrated Sickles’ fighting character: he was willing to stand his ground while others fled. The midnight attack on May 2-3 was vintage Sickles. A professional soldier probably would not have seriously considered launching a nighttime offensive in the Wilderness, but Sickles threw caution to the wind and ordered the attack anyway. The result, as we have seen, was a chaotic mess.
Gettysburg scholars routinely point to Sickles’ forced withdrawal from Hazel Grove on May 3 as the primary motive for seizing the higher terrain along the Emmitsburg Road at Gettysburg later that summer. His voluminous postwar writing and speeches suggest otherwise. Sickles was deeply influenced by Jackson’s flanking attack on May 2. At Chancellorsville, Lee had massed his forces on the Federals’ right flank and had almost swept the entire Army of the Potomac out of position. At Gettysburg, Sickles would hold the army’s left flank—determined to not reprise Howard’s role.
After Chancellorsville, George Meade insisted that he had favored an advance by the army and was particularly disappointed in Hooker’s collapse under pressure, “thus proving that a man may talk very big when he has no responsibility, but that is quite a different thing, acting when you are responsible and talking when others are.” Meade’s “only fear is that Hooker, goaded by the attacks that are now made on him, may be induced to take some desperate step in the hope of retrieving his waning fortunes.” Meade’s fears proved correct. Trouble began when criticism of Hooker predictably appeared within the press and inside the army’s ranks. Meade eventually had to deny a rumor that he saved the army when Hooker was wounded, but he was infuriated to see newspaper reports that Hooker’s retreat was due to “to the weak councils of his corps commanders. This is a base calumny,” he exclaimed. Pennsylvania Governor Andrew Curtin visited Meade on May 12, and drew the general into expressing “my disappointment at the caution and prudence” exhibited by Hooker “at the critical moment of the battle…and at the withdrawal of the army, to which I opposed.” Meade naively intended for his views to remain private, and was surprised when Hooker returned from Washington with word that Curtin was spreading stories that both Reynolds and Meade “had lost all confidence” in Hooker. An embarrassed Meade tried to explain that although Curtin had no right to use him in such a manner, Meade did essentially agree with Curtin’s story. “To this Hooker assented and expressed himself satisfied with my statement.”39
In reality, Hooker was far from satisfied. He probably believed that Meade was maneuvering for his job. The army commander confronted Meade on May
18 with the accusation “that Reynolds and myself had determined him to withdraw. I expressed the utmost surprise at this statement.… ” Hooker admitted that during the May 4 war council Meade had expressed the opinion that it was impracticable to withdraw the army, but since Hooker considered it “perfectly practicable to withdraw,” Hooker did not consider Meade in favor of an advance. Meade replied that this “was a very ingenious way of stating what I had said; that my opinion was clear and emphatic for an advance.” When Hooker refused to retract his opinion, Meade realized that he was now “at open war with Hooker.”40
On May 22, Meade asked the other corps commanders to share their recollections of the war council. John Reynolds agreed that “you were decidedly in favor of an advance in the direction of Fredericksburg…that you considered this army had already too long been made subservient to the safety of Washington.…This drew the remarks from General Sickles.” On the other hand, Oliver Howard replied to Meade’s inquiry: “I understood you at first to say that you thought it best to attack, for you believed a retreat would be disastrous. After General Hooker returned to the tent…and gave his decided opinion that he would withdraw the army in safety, I think you made no further objections, and, from something you said—what, I do not precisely recall—the impression I had was, that your opinion in favor of an attack was contingent upon the practicability of withdrawing the army to this side of the Rappahannock.”41
Sickles, who according to the Herald spent two hours “closeted” with Lincoln on May 16, responded to Meade on May 26. Before answering Meade’s question, Sickles peevishly lectured, “it will not be irrelevant to refer to the regret which I expressed, when the consultation began, that written inquiries or propositions were not submitted to the council.…If my suggestions, predicated upon the unsatisfactory mode in which the deliberations of the council were to be conducted, had not been disregarded, the issue of which you inform me could not have arisen.”42 Getting to the point, Sickles told Meade:
You expressed the opinion that General Hooker should attack the enemy; that a retrograde movement in his presence, flushed with the success of his flank attack, the retreat of Sedgwick and the reoccupation of Fredericksburg had become impossible. This opinion afterward yielded somewhat to other considerations; among these were our deficiency in supplies; our imperiled communications, the hazards of a general engagement with an enemy…the instructions which required the commanding general to protect Washington; and the consequences to the North which would follow disaster to this army. At the close of the discussion, my impression was that your original preferences appeared to have been surrendered to the clear conviction of the commanding general.43
And thus the council at Chancellorsville increased the strain on the already tenuous Meade–Sickles relationship. Events would bear out that Sickles’ response was a rare political mistake, for he unwittingly damaged further his relationship with his soon-to-be commanding general. Sickles completely misread Meade’s rising star within the army’s upper echelons of command, or Meade’s potential was unnoticeable. Although neither party knew it at the time, Sickles would return to this portrayal of Meade—indecisive and lacking force of decision—repeatedly for decades to come. Following Gettysburg, allies of both Sickles and Joe Hooker would attempt to convince the country that Meade intended to retreat from Gettysburg. Did the earlier Chancellorsville debate between Meade and Hooker serve as the genesis for this story?44
If Meade’s star was rising, Hooker’s was clearly not. The newspapers insisted that his days at the head of the army were numbered, and that his replacement would be none other than Dan Sickles. James Gordon Bennett of the New York Heraldcalled “the attention of President Lincoln to General Sickles as the man” to replace Hooker and that the defeat might have been avoided if Hooker had promptly supported Sickles’ attack on Jackson’s flank. Although Sickles had never attended a military academy, Bennett reminded readers that neither had Julius Caesar or George Washington. An appalled George Templeton Strong wrote in his diary on May 17 that a “trustworthy piece of information” from Washington indicated that “Sickles (!!!) is to succeed Hooker in command.…A very doubtful improvement, but there are judicious men who rate Sickles very high.”
There is no evidence to suggest that Lincoln ever gave serious consideration of Sickles for the command of the Army of the Potomac, but the New York politician’s ego must have swelled at the thought of not only being presented as a viable candidate for the command, but that he was being compared to other “amateurs” the likes of Caesar and Washington! Sickles’ remarkable recovery following the Key murder scandal continued.45
Chapter 4
No One Ever Received a More Important Command
Both armies struggled to reorganize in the wake of Chancellorville’s staggering casualties. Many might have shared the opinion of Captain Charles Francis Adams, who observed that “Sickles, Butterfield, and Hooker are the disgrace and bane of this army; they are our three humbugs, intriguers and demagogues. Let them be disposed of and the army would be well satisfied to be led by any of the corps commanders.” Joe Hooker, however, still held his job at the top of the army.
The most significant comm
and change occurred when Winfield Scott Hancock was given charge of the Second Corps when Darius Couch resigned. The reorganization of Sickles’ Third Corps was made necessary by the death of two of his three divisions commanders, in addition to casualties suffered. The late General Whipple’s Third Division was broken up and folded into the other two divisions. David Birney was promoted to major general and retained command of the First Division. Birney considered the promotion bittersweet, for his commission was dated May 20; anyone with an earlier Chancellorsville-dated promotion would supersede him. Command of the Second Division was given to Andrew Humphreys, who replaced the late General Berry.1
Andrew A. Humphreys had led the Third Division, Fifth Corps, at Chancellorsville. Born in 1810, Humphreys was a Philadelphia native and an 1831 West Point graduate. His first assignments were in artillery and against Seminole Indians, but like many of the Old Army officers, he had little combat experience prior to the Civil War. Humphreys had briefly resigned from the army in 1836, and like George Meade, worked in civilian life as a lighthouse engineer before returning in 1838 with an appointment to the Corps of Topographical Engineers. Despite expertise in scientific disciplines, Humphreys bristled at the thought that he was anything but a soldier. “Why, anyone who knows me intimately, knows that I had more of the soldier than a man of science in me.” Humphreys steadily expressed his deep desire to command troops instead of serving in staff capacities. His first real experience leading large bodies of men under fire came at Fredericksburg. There, he led his Fifth Corps division in the last of six massive but futile assaults against Marye’s Heights, where his 5,000-man division suffered more than 1,000 casualties. Like most of the Old Army professionals, Humphreys could be profane and often was a strict disciplinarian. Assistant Secretary of War Charles Dana thought Humphreys was “one of the loudest swearers” he had ever met, a man of “distinguished and brilliant profanity.” Although Dana considered Humphreys to be without vanity, Humphreys’ personal correspondence suggests otherwise. On the eve of his new assignment to the Third Corps, he wrote of his former command: “It is acknowledged throughout this army that no officer ever did as much with troops of short term of service as I have done with these, and it is acknowledged at the same time that no one else would or could have done as much.”2
Brigadier General Andrew A. Humphreys
Library of Congress
Humphreys apparently welcomed his new Third Corps assignment. He was happy to be getting a more experienced division (which still included the Excelsiors), an outfit he considered “one of the best in the whole army.” Despite the constant profanity, when he was not in action Humphreys offered something of a scholarly appearance and was known to be “continually washing himself and putting on paper dickeys.” According to General Birney, Humphreys was “what we call an old granny, a charming, clever gentleman, fussy.… ” Humphreys, Warren, and Meade belonged to what Birney considered the army’s engineer clique. Meade was sorry to lose his friend from Fifth Corps, whom he considered “a most valuable officer, besides being an associate of the most agreeable character.”3
While the Third Corps reorganized, the Chancellorsville survivors came to grips with the heavy losses they had suffered. The field officers of Charles Graham’s brigade met and passed “resolutions conveying a sense of the severe loss they had sustained at Chancellorsville.” On May 11, Regis de Trobriand attended a “grand review of the 3rd Corps… The review was a beautiful sight, but in spite of its martial bearing, there was something sad, it was pierced by the ghosts of 4,000 of our men, left on the battlefield, that seemed to float above our decimated regiments.… But after all, you can’t make an omelette without breaking some eggs, and you can’t have a battle without breaking many heads.”4
Later in the month, a presentation of more than 400 “Kearny Badges of Honor” was given to Birney’s non-commissioned officers and privates for meritorious service at Chancellorsville. Sickles gave the presentation speech to a crowd that included Generals Meade, Birney, Humphreys, and Graham, among others. The New York Herald covered the ceremony as if it were a social event, pronouncing it “one of the happiest impromptu efforts of the season.”5
Shortly after the ceremony, Sickles left for New York on what was supposed to be a ten-day leave of absence “rendered necessary by the impaired state of his health,” reported the Herald. Sickles had, apparently, been wounded. “I received a serious injury at the battle of Chancellorsville,” he later testified. “I cannot perhaps call it technically a wound, but I received a contusion from a fragment of a shell, which affected my general health very seriously, and it became necessary for me to avail myself of a leave of absence for the benefit of my health; which leave I applied for about three weeks after we returned.”6
Dan returned home and spent most of June recuperating with Teresa and daughter Laura. Living quietly in the background, Teresa enjoyed none of the prestige that should have befitted a major-general’s wife. Her husband, though, was a celebrity again. The New York Board of Councilmen celebrated his return and the New York Times worried that he would be gone from the army too long as he has “proven himself a thoroughly competent and complete master of himself and his position.”7
The organizational challenges facing Robert E. Lee were heavier than those that fell upon Hooker’s shoulders. Filling the hole left by Stonewall Jackson’s death was on the minds of everyone associated with the Army of Northern Virginia. Lee eventually decided to restructure his entire army, dividing his two large corps into three. He promoted Richard Ewell to command Jackson’s Second Corps and A. P. Hill to command the new Third Corps. James Longstreet retained command of his First Corps, which had rejoined the army just after the Chancellorsville operations came to a close. Whenever and wherever the next battle was fought, Lee would wage it with a radically different command structure. Strategically, the costly Chancellorsville victory had accomplished little for Lee. Hooker’s army had escaped, and both sides were left in the same basic positions near Fredericksburg. Food and supplies for Lee’s army were running dangerously low in Virginia, while elsewhere, General Ulysses S. Grant was threatening the vital city of Vicksburg in an effort to cut off Confederate control of the Mississippi River. Later in May, Lee met with Jefferson Davis and Secretary of War James Seddon in Richmond to discuss the army’s next move. Despite reservations on Davis’ part, Lee convinced Davis and Seddon that a move north would pull Hooker away from Virginia, clear Federal troops from the Shenandoah Valley, and disrupt Federal campaigns in Virginia for the summer. Emboldened by the confidence of Chancellorsville, Lee and Davis agreed on a thrust north above the Potomac River. On June 3, Lee began withdrawing his army from its Fredericksburg lines.8
Hooker was aware of Lee’s movements as early as June 4. Unsure of Lee’s intent or final destination, Hooker began squabbling with Washington over his orders and troop dispositions. When the Army of the Potomac finally began moving in pursuit, the Third Corps (still without Sickles) broke camp about June 10. The days were long and sweltering, and the road dust laid several inches thick. One day the corps tramped thirty long miles. “I was completely exhausted when we finally halted,” wrote General Humphreys, who enjoyed the luxury of traversing the miles on horseback. While Sickles convalesced in New York, Lee moved north into Pennsylvania. The movement triggered a large cavalry battle on June 9 at Brandy Station, followed by a series of other actions at Winchester, Aldie, Middleburg, and Upperville. The new campaign was underway.9
Like every other Federal soldier, Fifth Corps commander George Meade knew nothing of Lee’s goals. What he was sure about was that if Lee could “destroy or cripple this army, he will have no opposition to his progress of invasion.” Meade was predisposed to fight a defensive battle, believing that if “they assume the offensive and force us into a defensive attitude, our morale will be raised, and with a moderate degree of good luck and good management, we will give them better than they can send.” But Meade was still on the outs with Hooker’s head
quarters, and admitted that he knew “nothing of what is going on.”10
Even as the army marched and fought, rumors circulated over Hooker’s fate. “Meade or Reynolds seems to be the favorite… and either is respectable and would be a great improvement on the drunk- murdering- arson dynasty now prevailing of Hooker, Sickles, and Butterfield,” concluded Captain Charles Francis Adams. John Reynolds met with Meade during the march. According to Reynolds, he told President Lincoln that he was not interested in Hooker’s job. Although Meade considered Reynolds “a very good fellow,” there remained a bit of professional rivalry between the men. Both Meade and his wife resented the fact that Reynolds received command of his own corps before Meade (especially since Reynolds had missed several battles after falling asleep and being captured after Gaines’ Mill). Meade also harbored some resentment over Reynolds’ lack of support at Fredericksburg. Meade was “very glad” for Reynolds’ successes, but also resigned himself that Reynolds “is very popular & always impresses those around him with a great idea of his superiority & has had very strong friends.” As for his own prospects, Meade thought it unlikely that he would be named, “because I have no friends, political or others, who press or advance my claims or pretensions.”11
As the days of June passed, Hooker continued arguing with General Halleck about his orders, particularly those that mandated the Army of the Potomac cover Washington and Harpers Ferry. Hooker believed, erroneously, that he was outnumbered and so was unable to keep both locations covered while actively pursuing Lee’s army. He wanted Harpers Ferry abandoned, but Halleck refused to approve it unless “absolutely necessary.” Hooker, who had never fully accepted Halleck’s authority, asked to refer the matter directly to Lincoln and Stanton. Before receiving a reply, Hooker wired Washington on June 27: “My original instructions require me to cover Harpers Ferry and Washington. I have now imposed upon me, in addition, an enemy in my front of more than my number. I beg to be understood, respectfully, but firmly, that I am unable to comply with this condition with the means at my disposal, and earnestly request that I may at once be relieved from the position I occupy.”12
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