The Civil War: A Narrative: Fredericksburg to Meridian (91 page)

The sting of this was somewhat relieved by a covering letter in which the Chief Executive explained that all he asked was “that you will be in such mood that we can get into our action the best cordial judgment of yourself and General Halleck, with my own poor mite added, if indeed he and you shall think it entitled to any consideration at all.” However, it had begun to seem to Hooker that Lincoln’s advice in regard to Lee—“fret him and fret him”—was also being applied in regard to himself, not only by the general-in-chief but also by the President, whose “poor mite” often made up in sharpness for what it lacked in weight. It seemed to Hooker that he was being goaded, and unquestionably he was. One after another his proposals had been dismissed as rash, or else they had been urged upon him only after subsequent instructions had placed his army in an attitude from which they could no longer be accomplished. Urgent appeals for reinforcements were rejected out of hand, as were others that his authority be extended to include the soldiers in the capital defenses. More and more, as the long hot days of hard and dusty marching went by, it came to seem to Fighting Joe that he commanded his army only in semblance, though it was clear enough at the same time that his was the head on which the blame would fall in event of the disaster he saw looming. Leapfrogging his headquarters northward, first to Dumfries and then to Fairfax, with no information as to what was occurring beyond his immediate horizon, he complained at last to Halleck, on June 24, that “outside of the Army of the Potomac I don’t know whether I am standing on my head or feet.” The next two days were spent crossing the Potomac at Edwards Ferry and effecting a concentration around Frederick. His plan was to strike westward into the Cumberland Valley, severing Lee’s communications
with Virginia, and for this he wanted the co-operation of the 10,000 men at Harpers Ferry, which was beyond the limits of his control, but which he thought should be evacuated before Lee turned and gobbled up the garrison as he had done in September. On the evening of June 26, believing that the authorities might have learned from that example—at least they had learned to post the troops on Maryland Heights, occupation of which had permitted the Confederates to take the place in short order the time before, along with some 12,000 men and 73 cannon—Hooker wired Halleck: “Is there any reason why Maryland Heights should not be abandoned after the public stores and property are removed?” Halleck replied next morning: “Maryland Heights have always been regarded as an important point to be held by us, and much expense and labor incurred in fortifying them. I cannot approve their abandonment, except in case of absolute necessity.”

Convinced that the garrison was “of no earthly account” on its perch above the Ferry, Hooker decided to appeal through channels to Stanton and Lincoln. “All the public property could have been secured tonight,” he wired back, “and the troops marched to where they could have been of some service. Now they are but a bait for the rebels, should they return. I beg that this may be presented to the Secretary of War and His Excellency the President.” While waiting for an answer, he either decided the appeal should be strengthened or else he lost his head entirely. Or perhaps, having taken all he could take from above, he really wanted to get from under. At any rate, before the general-in-chief replied, Fighting Joe got off a second wire to him, hard on the heels of the first. “My original instructions require me to cover Harpers Ferry and Washington,” it read. “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.” This was sent at 1 p.m. The long afternoon wore slowly away; the sun had set and night had fallen before he received an answer addressed to “Major General Hooker, Army of the Potomac.” Whether the word
commanding
had been omitted by accident or design he could not tell. Nor was the body of the message at all conclusive on that point. “Your application to be relieved from your present command is received,” Halleck told him. “As you were appointed to this command by the President, I have no power to relieve you. Your dispatch has been duly referred for Executive action.”

The wire was headed 8 p.m. and that was where duplicity came in. Halleck knew that the special train had left Washington half an hour before that time, for the courier aboard it was Colonel James A. Hardie, his own assistant adjutant general, and Old Brains himself had written the documents he carried, one an order relieving Hooker of command
and the other a letter of instructions for his successor. Reaching Frederick well after midnight, Hardie did not wait for morning. Nor did he call first on Joe Hooker. Rather, he went directly to the tent of the man who would succeed him: George Meade.

This would come as something of a shock to the army, especially to Reynolds and Sedgwick, who ranked him, but no one was more surprised than Meade himself. His immediate reaction, on waking out of a sound sleep at 3 o’clock in the morning to find the staff officer standing beside his cot, was alarm. He thought he was about to be arrested. Sure enough, after a brief exchange of greetings, during which Meade wondered just what military sin he had committed, Hardie’s first words were: “General, I’m afraid I’ve come to make trouble for you.” And with that, changing the nature if not the force of the shock, he handed him Halleck’s letter of instructions, which began: “You will receive with this the order of the President placing you in command of the Army of the Potomac.”

Shortly before, in a letter to his wife, Meade had commented on “the ridiculous appearance we present of changing our generals after each battle,” and only two days ago, amid rumors that Hooker was slated for removal, he had written her that he stood little chance of receiving the appointment, not only because he was outranked by two of his six fellow corps commanders, but also “because I have no friends, political or others, who press or advance my claims or pretensions.” Yet now he had it, against all the odds, and with it a cluster of problems inherited on what was obviously the eve of battle. Partly, though—if he could believe what Halleck told him—these problems were reduced at the very outset. “You will not be hampered by any minute instructions from these headquarters,” the letter read. “Your army is free to act as you may deem proper under the circumstances as they arise.” His main duty would be to cover Washington and Baltimore. “Should General Lee move upon either of these places, it is expected that you will either anticipate him or arrive with him so as to give him battle.” By way of stressing the fact that the new commander would have a free hand, Halleck added: “Harpers Ferry and its garrison are under your direct orders.” Knowing the difficulties Hooker had encountered on this question, Meade could scarcely believe his eyes. “Am I permitted, under existing circumstances,” he inquired by telegraph, later that same day, “to withdraw a portion of the garrison of Harpers Ferry, providing I leave sufficient force to hold Maryland Heights against a
coup de main?”
Promptly the reply came back: “The garrison at Harpers Ferry is under your orders. You can diminish or increase it as you think the circumstances justify.”

Meanwhile the new commander had called on Hooker, who reacted to the order with as much apparent relief as Lincoln and Halleck had felt in issuing it. In fact, nothing in Fighting Joe’s five-month tenure,
in the course of which the army had experienced much of profit as well as pain, became him more than the manner in which he brought it to a close. Conferring with Meade on his plans and dispositions, he was cooperative and pleasant, except for one brief flare-up when Meade, looking over the situation map, remarked that the various corps seemed “rather scattered.” Then Hooker quieted down, issued a farewell address urging support for his successor—“a brave and accomplished officer, who has nobly earned the confidence and esteem of this army on many a well-fought field”—and got into a spring wagon, alongside Hardie, for the ride to the railroad station. Meade shook his hand, stood for a moment watching the wagon roll away, then turned and entered the tent Hooker had just vacated. Presently he was interrupted by Reynolds, who had put on his dress uniform to come over and congratulate his fellow Pennsylvanian. This had a good effect on those who had wondered what his reaction would be: the more so because those closest to him knew that he had gone to Washington early that month, when it was rumored that Fighting Joe was about to get the ax, to tell Lincoln that he did not want the command—for which, with Couch gone, he was next in line—unless he was allowed more freedom of action than any of the army’s five unfortunate chieftains had been granted up to then. Now, if not before, Reynolds had his answer, and he took it with aplomb. Sedgwick too arrived to offer congratulations and assurance of support, having managed to assuage the burning in his bosom which the announcement had provoked. News that it was Meade who would head the army, and not himself, had reached Uncle John while he was out for his morning ride. For him, as for most old soldiers, the tradition of seniority was a strong one. Putting the spurs to his horse, he led his staff on a hard gallop for some distance to relieve his agitation, then rode over to shake the hand of the man who had passed him by.

That hand was a busy one just now, getting the feel of the controls even as the vehicle was headed for a collision. Meade’s own elevation called for other promotions and advancements beyond those recently conferred in the wake of Chancellorsville, which in turn had followed hard upon another extensive shake-up after bloody Fredericksburg. As a result, not one of the seven army corps was commanded now by the general who had led it into battle at Antietam, and the same was true of all but two of the nineteen infantry divisions—Humphreys’ and Alpheus S. Williams’—only four of which were commanded by major generals: Doubleday, Birney, Newton, and Carl Schurz. Of the fifteen brigadiers in charge of divisions, seven had been appointed to their posts since early May: John C. Caldwell, Alexander Hays, James Barnes, Romeyn B. Ayres, Samuel W. Crawford, Horatio G. Wright, and Francis Barlow. Equally new to their positions were Hancock and George Sykes, successors to Couch and Meade as corps commanders. In fact, only Reynolds and Slocum had the same division commanders
they had had at Chancellorsville: Doubleday, James S. Wadsworth, and John C. Robinson with the former, Williams and John W. Geary with the latter. Other drawbacks there were, too. In contrast to Lee, all of whose corps and division commanders were West Pointers except for one V.M.I. man, Meade had only fourteen academy graduates among the twenty-six generals who filled those vital positions in the Army of the Potomac. This meant that nearly half were nonprofessionals, and of these a number were political appointees: Dan Sickles for example, for whom Meade had small use, either military or private. He had, however, for whatever it was worth, a better geographical distribution among his generals than Lee had achieved. Eight were Pennsylvanians and seven were New Yorkers, while three were from Connecticut, two from Maine, two from Germany—Schurz and Adolf von Steinwehr, both of course in Howard’s corps—and one each from Vermont, Massachusetts, Maryland, and Virginia. The revised order of battle was as follows:

Doubtful as were the qualities of a sizable proportion of these men, one third of whom had been assigned to their current posts within the past eight weeks, none was more of a military question mark than the man who had just been given the most responsible job of all. This doubt was not so much because of any lack of experience; Meade had performed well, if not brilliantly, in combat as the commander of a brigade, a division, and a corps. If at Chancellorsville, through no fault of his own, he had been denied an appreciable share in the battle, at Fredericksburg his had been the only division to achieve even a brief penetration of the rebel line, and surely this had been considered by Lincoln—along with Reynolds’ unacceptable stipulation and Sedgwick’s alleged poor showing in early May, of which Hooker had complained—in making his choice as to who was to become the army’s sixth commander. The question, rather, was whether Meade could inspire that army when pay-off time came round, as it was now about to do. He seemed utterly incapable of provoking the sort of personal enthusiasm McClellan and Hooker could arouse by their mere presence; Burnside and Pope, even the hapless McDowell, seemed downright gaudy alongside Meade, who gave an impression of professorial dryness and lack of juice. What he lacked in fact was glamour,
not only in his actions and dispatches, but also in his appearance, which a journalist said was more that of “a learned pundit than a soldier.” Two birthdays short of fifty, he looked considerably older, with a “small and compact” balding head, a grizzled beard, and outsized pouches under eyes that were “serious, almost sad,” and “rather sunken” on each side of what the reporter charitably described as “the late Duke of Wellington class of nose.” The over-all effect, although “decidedly patrician and distinguished,” was not of the kind that brought forth cheers or a wholesale tossing of caps, particularly when it was known to be combined with a hair-trigger temper and a petulance which tested in turn the patience of his staff. “What’s Meade ever done?” was a common response among the men—those outside his corps, at least—when they heard that he was their new commander. The general himself had few delusions on this score. “I know they call me a damned old snapping turtle,” he remarked.