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In January 1863, Abraham Lincoln was determined to improve the fortunes of the Union in its struggle with the secessionist states. Having been dismayed and disappointed by George B McClellan and then by his replacement Ambrose Burnside, he was desperate to find a general who could save the army and thus the Union. He thought he had found the right man for the job in the person of Brigadier General ‘Fighting Joe’ Hooker.
A veteran of the Seminole Wars and the Mexican-American War, Hooker had graduated from West Point in 1837 but resigned his commission when snubbed by US Army commander-in-chief Winfield Scott at the beginning of the war. After witnessing the debacle at the First Battle of Bull Run in July 1861, he had written to Lincoln saying, ‘I am a damned sight better general than you, sir, had on that field.’ It must have had an impact on Lincoln, who promoted him in January 1863 to command the Army of the Potomac. He quickly took over the reorganisation of that force, improving the rations, clothing, shelter, and training of the troops. He began using the cavalry for advanced reconnaissance, and promoted the use of hot-air balloons with telegraphic links as artillery-spotters. All the while, Hooker was working out plans to demolish Robert E Lee’s army and crack the hard nut of Fredericksburg, halfway between Washington and Richmond.
Hooker’s plans were detailed and thorough. He divided the Army of the Potomac into thirds: one wing would stage a diversionary attack against Lee’s entrenchments; a second, under Hooker’s control, would proceed up the Rappahannock River to attack Lee’s flank and rear; while a third would be held in reserve to reinforce either assault at need. It seemed like a good plan. In early spring, Hooker felt assured of victory saying, ‘may God have mercy on General Lee for I will have none’. Considering that Hooker had more than 130,000 effectives versus Lee’s 60,000, he was certainly entitled to his optimistic outlook. But Hooker’s self-confidence was badly flawed, for he had not anticipated Lee’s wily countermeasures.
A good plan thwarted
Knowing he faced superior numbers, Lee nevertheless gambled by splitting his forces. He kept a smaller portion under command of Jubal Early, defending the earthworks on the strongly fortified ridge known as Marye’s Heights, overlooking Fredericksburg and the Rappahannock River. But he dispatched the bulk of his troops under ‘Stonewall’ Jackson to hit Hooker’s reserve forces encamped at Chancellorsville a few miles to the west. Comfortably ensconced in an area known as The Wilderness, a forest of white oak above a dense thicket of undergrowth and brambles, Hooker’s troops were relaxing, brewing coffee, with weapons stacked outside their tents, when Jackson’s 30,000 soldiers struck at about 5pm on 2 May 1863. One Federal soldier later described it as ‘like a clap of thunderstorm from a cloudless sky’. Although they outnumbered Jackson’s force by 2 to 1, the Federal forces collapsed under the violent attack, abandoning their positions and fleeing headlong through the forest.
As this fight unfolded, Union General John Sedgwick’s troops successfully drove Early’s forces from Marye’s Heights – but Lee soon threw Sedgwick back across the Rappahannock, before turning back to confront Hooker and drive him back across the river as well. Hooker’s grand plan to destroy the Army of Northern Virginia came to ruin. It was a great victory for Lee – but it came at a tremendous cost. On the evening of 2 May, the first day of the four-day fight, ‘Stonewall’ Jackson and his aides rode out ahead of the lines on a reconnaissance for the next day’s battle. On returning to the Confederate lines, a nervous rebel outpost fired on the small party. One man was wounded in the left arm. The wounded man was Lieutenant General Jackson. Rushed to the rear by his aides, Jackson lost his left arm then, after lingering for several days, succumbed to pneumonia. Lee was crushed, noting solemnly that while Jackson had first lost his left arm, ‘I have lost my right arm.’ Meanwhile, in Washington DC, Lincoln bemoaned the Union defeat saying, ‘Well, to tell the truth, I just lost confidence in Joe Hooker.’
of the Potomac. Five months later, he resigned in disgust, to be replaced by George G Meade (below).
A change of strategy
Despite the harrowing loss of the general he considered ‘a great and good soldier’, Lee was delighted with his victory at Chancellorsville. The North’s attempt to destroy the Army of Northern Virginia and seize Richmond had evaporated when he had thoroughly thrashed ‘Fighting Joe’ Hooker’s thrust south. The victory was not without its downside, however, for the Army of Northern Virginia had also sustained a high rate of casualties. Lee knew that the North greatly outmatched him in manpower and resources. Further, it seemed only a matter of time before Union Major General Ulysses Grant’s siege of the river port of Vicksburg, Mississippi, succeeded in further crippling Southern resources and releasing yet more men and matériel for the Federals’ war in the east. Thus far, virtually all of the fighting had taken place on Southern territory, and Lee decided that the best way to bring the war to a hasty and satisfactory conclusion was to put exceptional pressure on the Northern states. If he moved north, deep into Federal territory, he could obtain needed supplies, further damage civilian morale, and encourage the efforts of the growing anti-war movement in the North. It should be enough he felt to force Lincoln and his cabinet into a negotiated end to the hostilities.
As Lee’s forces started north along the strategically important Shenandoah Valley, Hooker, eager to restore his reputation, was determined to derail this movement by driving on to Richmond – thus forcing Lee to fall back and defend his capital. Lincoln’s administration vetoed the idea, and instead ordered Hooker to shadow Lee and frustrate his northward push. Hooker complied but was not sanguine about it. By the second week of June 1863, Lee had assembled the Army of Northern Virginia near Culpeper, Virginia, in preparation for its northward push. It was near there that Hooker’s cavalry of some 11,000 men under the command of Major General Alfred Pleasonton launched a surprise attack on the Confederate cavalry. But, for all their numbers and élan, the Federal cavalry was outmatched by Major General J E B Stuart’s 9,000 troopers. Clashing outside Brandy Station, the two bodies of cavalry battered each other for hours, until Pleasonton finally withdrew his forces, leaving the field to Stuart and having never discovered the presence of Lee’s main body a mere few miles to the west.
An accidental clash
Following the fight at Brandy Station, Lee’s army continued its inexorable march north, crossing into Pennsylvania and aiming for the state capital of Harrisburg. Hooker, concerned he was undermanned for the task of tracking Lee, applied to Lincoln for additional troops from nearby Harpers Ferry – when this was refused, he resigned in disgust. Accordingly, on 28 June, Lincoln sent a messenger to Major General George G Meade, placing him in command of the Army of the Potomac. Lee knew of Meade’s reputation and considered him slow and plodding, and thus easily beaten. He underestimated his opponent. Three days after Meade’s appointment, the Army of Northern Virginia ran into Federal cavalry units on the outskirts of Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. While rebel units were able to drive their opponents back through the town, the Federal units dug in on Cemetery Hill – from which they repulsed successive rebel attempts to flank their positions. Confederate losses were extremely heavy, which prompted Lee to attempt what might be termed a ‘forlorn hope’ aimed at the centre of the Federal line. Major General James Longstreet urged against it, saying, ‘It is my opinion that no 15,000 men ever arrayed for battle can take that position’.
Nevertheless, Lee insisted. Under the command of Major General George Pickett, some 12,500 infantry advanced as a body across three-quarters of a mile of open fields. Federal rifle and artillery fire cut down the rebel lines as they laboured up the sloping hillside. While a few managed to scramble over the low stone wall from behind which the Federal troops fired, they were quickly repulsed, and the entire operation dissolved into a bloodbath. Pickett’s command suffered 50 per cent casualties. On 3 July, the battered Army of Northern Virginia began its withdrawal, leaving Pennsylvania behind and heading for Virginia. But General Meade, convinced that the Army of the Potomac was exhausted by the fight, declined to pursue and destroy Lee’s army. While glad of the victory, Lincoln was not pleased that Meade hadn’t followed up and finished the job.
The Confederacy split
At about the same time as ‘Stonewall’ Jackson was breathing his last outside Chancellorsville, the war in the western theatre was approaching a climax. Grant had driven the Confederate Army of Mississippi across the Mississippi River and into defensive positions in the strategically located river port of Vicksburg – which, owing to its placement, was able to control all traffic on the water. The odds seemed to lie in Grant’s favour, with five corps comprising some 77,000 troops versus Confederate General John C Pemberton’s 33,000 men in four divisions. But Vicksburg was well situated for defence on the bluffs overlooking the river and surrounded by a complex network of gun emplacements, trenches, and forts located above steep hills – all of which would have to be stormed under fire. Vicksburg was an especially hard nut to crack.
Repeated assaults on Confederate positions were repulsed with increasingly heavy losses, even as Grant used more than 200 pieces of artillery on land, as well as naval gunfire, to bombard the city. All the bombardments achieved was to drive the civilian population into caves and more than 500 dugouts they had sunk into the bluffs. Despite the best efforts of the Federal troops under Major General William Tecumseh Sherman and Major General James McPherson, all subsequent assaults on Vicksburg were thrown back with terrible casualties, and Grant’s forces settled into a siege. Meanwhile, Pemberton sent repeatedly to General Joe Johnston (in command of the Confederate Department of the West) seeking reinforcements and relief. But Johnston, feeling blocked by Sherman’s forces, demurred, urging Pemberton to abandon the city and save his command. It was a suggestion that Pemberton was not inclined to follow.
With his forces steadily whittled down by fatigue, hunger, scurvy, malaria, and dysentery, Pemberton finally surrendered to Grant on 4 July 1863. Coming on the heels of Meade’s success at Gettysburg, Lincoln sensed that victory was now a distinct possibility. He hoped that the continuous pressure on three of the Confederate armies would prevent them from reinforcing each other and ensure the success of his strategy.
A grim setback
Somewhat to the east of Grant’s operations along the Mississippi River, Major General William Rosecrans was leading the Union’s Army of the Cumberland steadily south-east through Tennessee. The Lincoln administration was eager for Rosecrans to push on with alacrity – with Secretary of War Edwin Stanton sending him a message saying, ‘Lee’s army overthrown; Grant is victorious. You and your noble army now have the chance to give the finishing blow to the rebellion. Will you neglect the chance?’
Spurred on by Stanton’s admonition, Rosecrans moved against General Braxton Bragg’s Army of Tennessee and into north-west Georgia. Rosecrans achieved some measure of success, forcing Bragg to evacuate his army from Chattanooga and Knoxville. As Rosecrans cautiously pursued Bragg, the latter did his utmost to draw the Federal forces after him and deep into the Georgia mountains, while at the same time beseeching Richmond to send him reinforcements to enable him to destroy his Federal pursuers. Under directions from Confederate President Jefferson Davis, Lee detached Longstreet’s corps and rushed it by rail to Bragg’s assistance.
In early September, Bragg caught Rosecrans unaware and thoroughly thrashed his army along Chickamauga Creek. The fight lasted several days, until Longstreet’s force discovered a gap in the Union lines and drove through with a vengeance. Rosecrans’ lines collapsed, and the entire army retreated hastily to Chattanooga. Longstreet insisted that they pursue and destroy Rosecrans entirely – but Bragg, appalled that his army had suffered more than 20,000 casualties, refused his entreaties. While Bragg had achieved a brilliant tactical success, it had come at a high cost and was probably a strategic misfire.
A change of command
The shame of having fled the battlefield seems to have unmanned Rosecrans, who hunkered down in Chattanooga as Bragg’s forces tried to choke off the Federals’ supply routes in hopes of starving the Yankees into submission. Isolated in Chattanooga, Rosecrans was unable to make any serious decisions about his dilemma. Lincoln was pessimistic about him, remarking that Rosecrans seemed ‘stunned and confused like a duck struck on the head’. Something had to give, and Lincoln took matters into his own hands, relieving Rosecrans of his command. Thinking of the recent success in Vicksburg, Lincoln formed a new organisation called the Division of the Mississippi, naming Ulysses S Grant as its commander. Within a week of Grant’s arrival on the scene, he had broken the rebel stranglehold on the supply line and was soon thereafter joined by Major General Sherman and an additional 17,000 troops.
On the Confederate side, Bragg’s command was beginning to fracture. Longstreet was not the only senior officer to object to Bragg’s leadership. Brigadier General Nathan Bedford Forrest, the renowned cavalry officer, confronted Bragg in his headquarters and decried him, saying, ‘If you ever again try to interfere with me or cross my path it will be at the peril of your life.’ Meanwhile, Grant, unaware of the tension in the rebel forces, was determined to eliminate Confederate positions on the heights of Lookout Mountain, overlooking Chattanooga, thereby opening a path directly to Atlanta. Here, Bragg’s men were well dug in along Missionary Ridge in what appeared to be impregnable positions.
Lacking full confidence in the Army of the Cumberland after the debacle at Chickamauga and not wanting to hazard a frontal assault, Grant launched attacks against the flanks of the Confederate positions. They were repeatedly repulsed by the rebel troops. Grant then assigned Major General George Thomas, who had replaced Rosecrans, to launch a small diversionary attack directly against Missionary Ridge, hoping to dissuade Bragg from sending reinforcements to his flanks. But, contrary to his orders and expectations, the troops under Thomas stormed directly up the face of Lookout Mountain and, to Grant’s stunned surprise, the rebel defenders abandoned their positions, broke, and ran. Bragg’s forces did not stop until they had reached Atlanta, 30 miles away.
It was a positive end to the year and, in his address to Congress in December 1863, President Lincoln noted that ‘the crisis which threatened the friends of the Union is past’. There were, however, still months of hard campaigning and desperate struggle ahead.
Fred Chiaventone is a military historian, retired cavalry officer, and Professor Emeritus for International Security Affairs at the US Army’s Command and General Staff College.
In the next issue of MHM: The closing acts: how the American Civil War was finally won.
All images: Wikimedia Commons, unless otherwise stated
