Joseph Hooker

For the English botanist, see: Joseph Dalton Hooker.

Joseph Hooker (November 13, 1814 – October 31, 1879), known as "Fighting Joe", was a career U.S. Army officer and a major general in the Union Army during the American Civil War. Although he served throughout the war, usually with distinction, he is best remembered for his stunning defeat by Confederate General Robert E. Lee at the Battle of Chancellorsville in 1863.

Early years

Hooker was born in Hadley, Massachusetts, the grandson of a captain in the American Revolutionary War. His initial schooling was at the local Hopkins Academy. He graduated from the U.S. Military Academy in 1837 and was commissioned a second lieutenant in the 1st U.S. Artillery. His initial assignment was in Florida fighting in the second of the Seminole Wars. He served in the Mexican War in staff positions in the campaigns of both Zachary Taylor and Winfield Scott. He received brevet promotions for his staff leadership and gallantry in three battles: Monterrey (to captain), National Bridge (major), and Chapultepec (lieutenant colonel). His future Army reputation as a ladies' man began in Mexico, where local girls referred to him as the "Handsome Captain".

After the war, he served as assistant adjutant general of the Pacific Division, but resigned his commission in 1853; his military reputation had been damaged when he testified against his former commander, General Scott, in the court-martial for insubordination of Gideon Pillow. Hooker settled in Sonoma County, California, as a farmer and land developer, but one more devoted to gambling and liquor than to agriculture. He was obviously unhappy and unsuccessful in his new profession because in 1858 he wrote to Secretary of War John B. Floyd to request that his name "be presented to the president Buchanan as a candidate for a lieutenant colonelcy", but nothing came of his request. From 1859 to 1861, he held a commission as a colonel in the California militia.

Civil War

At the start of the war, Hooker requested a commission, but his first application was rejected, possibly due to the lingering resentment harbored by Winfield Scott, general-in-chief of the Army. He had to borrow money to make the trip east from California. After he witnessed the Union Army defeat at the First Battle of Bull Run, he wrote a letter to President Abraham Lincoln that complained of military mismanagement, promoted his own qualifications, and again requested a commission. He was appointed in August 1861 as brigadier general of volunteers to rank from May 17. He commanded a brigade and then division around Washington, D.C., as part of the effort to organize and train the new Army of the Potomac, under Major General George B. McClellan.

1862

In the Peninsula Campaign of 1862, Hooker commanded the 2nd Division of the III Corps and made a good name for himself as a combat leader who handled himself well and aggressively sought out the key points on battlefields. He distinguished himself at the Battle of Williamsburg (as a result of which he was promoted to major general as of May 5, 1862) and throughout the Seven Days Battles. He chafed at the cautious generalship of McClellan and openly criticized his failure to capture Richmond. Of his commander, Hooker said, "He is not only not a soldier, but he does not know what soldiership is." The Peninsula cemented two further reputations of Hooker's: his devotion to the welfare and morale of his men, and his hard drinking social life, even on the battlefield.

As McClellan's army retreated into inactivity, Hooker was transferred to John Pope's Army of Virginia. His division first served in its III Corps under Samuel P. Heintzelman, but Hooker assumed corps command (III Corps of the Army of Virginia) on September 6, after the Northern Virginia Campaign and the Second Battle of Bull Run, a severe Union defeat. As Robert E. Lee's army moved north into Maryland, Hooker's corps (redesignated the I Corps on September 12) was returned to the Army of the Potomac, and he fought with distinction at South Mountain and Antietam. At Antietam, his corps launched the first assault of the bloodiest day in American history, driving south into the corps of Stonewall Jackson, where they fought each other to a standstill. Hooker, aggressive and inspiring to his men, left the battle early in the morning with a foot wound. He asserted that the battle would have been a decisive Union victory if he had managed to stay on the field, but General McClellan's caution once again failed the Northern troops and Lee's much smaller army eluded destruction. With his patience at an end, President Lincoln replaced McClellan with Maj. Gen. Ambrose Burnside.

The December 1862 Battle of Fredericksburg was another Union debacle. Upon recovering from his foot wound, Hooker was briefly made commander of V Corps, but was then promoted to "Grand Division" command, with a command that consisted of both III and V Corps. Hooker derided Burnside's plan to assault the fortified heights behind the city, deeming them "preposterous". His "Grand Division" (particularly V Corps) suffered serious losses in fourteen futile assaults ordered by Burnside over Hooker's protests. Burnside followed up this battle with the humiliating Mud March in January and Hooker's criticism of his commander bordered on formal insubordination. He described Burnside as a "wretch ... of blundering sacrifice." Burnside planned a wholesale purge of his subordinates, including Hooker, and drafted an order for the president's approval. He stated that Hooker was “unfit to hold an important commission during a crisis like the present.” But Lincoln's patience had again ran out and he removed Burnside instead.

Army of the Potomac

The new commander of the Army of the Potomac, as of January 26, 1863, was Fighting Joe Hooker. Parts of the army saw this move as inevitable, given Hooker's reputation for aggressive fighting, something sorely lacking in his predecessors. Hooker did not take the promotion with modest reserve. He wrote to Lincoln that the country at war would be best served by a dictator. Lincoln replied,

I have heard, in such way as to believe it, of your recently saying that both the Army and the Government needed a Dictator. Of course it was not for this, but in spite of it, that I have given you the command. Only those generals who gain success can set up dictators. What I now ask of you is military success, and I will risk the dictatorship.

During the spring of 1863 Hooker established a reputation as an outstanding administrator and restored the morale of his soldiers, which had plummeted to a new low under Burnside, through reforms in health and welfare programs and efforts to increase esprit de corps. Hooker said of his revived army:

I have the finest army on the planet. I have the finest army the sun ever shone on. ... If the enemy does not run, God help them. May God have mercy on General Lee, for I will have none.

But Fighting Joe set a very bad example for the conduct of generals and their staffs and subordinates. His headquarters in Falmouth, Virginia, was described as being a combination of a "bar-room and a brothel". He built a network of loyal political cronies that included Dan Butterfield and the notorious political general, Daniel E. Sickles.

Hooker's plan for the spring and summer campaign was both elegant and promising. He first planned to send his cavalry corps deep into the enemy's rear, disrupting supply lines and distracting him from the main attack. He would pin down Robert E. Lee's much smaller army at Fredericksburg, while taking the large bulk of the Army of the Potomac on a flanking march to strike Lee in his rear. Defeating Lee, he could move on to seize Richmond. Unfortunately for Hooker and the Union, the execution of his plan did not match the elegance of the plan itself. The cavalry raid was conducted cautiously by its commander, George Stoneman, and met none of its objectives. The flanking march went well enough, achieving strategic surprise, but Hooker somehow lost his nerve when the first reports of enemy contact reached him on May 1, 1863. Rather than pushing aggressively into Lee's rear, he pulled his army back around the tiny crossroads town of Chancellorsville and waited for Lee to attack. Lee audaciously split his smaller army in two to deal with both parts of Hooker's army. Then, he split again, sending Stonewall Jackson's corps on its own flanking march, striking Hooker's exposed right flank and routing the Union XI Corps. The Army of the Potomac dropped into a purely defensive mode and eventually was forced to retreat.

The Battle of Chancellorsville has been called "Lee's perfect battle" because of his ability to vanquish a much larger foe through audacious tactics. Part of Hooker's failure can be attributed to a deadly encounter with a cannonball. While standing on the porch of his headquarters, the missile struck a wooden column the general was leaning against, knocking him senseless and putting him out of action for the rest of the day. Despite his incapacitation, he refused entreaties to turn over temporary command of the army to his second-in-command, Darius N. Couch. A number of his subordinate generals, including Couch and Henry W. Slocum, openly questioned Hooker's command decisions. Couch was so disgusted that he refused to ever serve under Hooker again. Political winds blew strongly in the following weeks as generals maneuvered to overthrow Hooker or to position themselves if Lincoln decided on his own to do so.

Robert E. Lee once again began an invasion of the North in June 1863 and Lincoln urged Hooker to pursue and defeat him. Hooker's initial plan was to seize Richmond instead, but Lincoln immediately vetoed that idea, so the Army of the Potomac began to march north, attempting to locate Lee's Army of Northern Virginia as it slipped down the Shenandoah Valley into Pennsylvania. Hooker's mission was first to protect Washington, D.C., and Baltimore and second to intercept and defeat Lee. Unfortunately, Lincoln was losing any remaining confidence he had in Hooker. When the general got into a dispute with Army headquarters over the status of defensive forces in Harpers Ferry, he impulsively offered his resignation, which was quickly accepted by Lincoln and Maj. Gen. Henry Halleck. On June 28, three days before the climactic Battle of Gettysburg, Hooker was replaced by Maj. Gen. George G. Meade. Hooker received the Thanks of Congress for his role at the start of the Gettysburg Campaign, but the glory would go to Meade.

Western Theater

Hooker's career was not ended by his poor performance in the summer of 1863. He went on to regain a reputation as a solid commander when he was transferred with the XI and XII Corps of the Army of the Potomac westward to reinforce the Army of the Cumberland around Chattanooga, Tennessee. Hooker was in command at the Battle of Lookout Mountain, playing an important role in Ulysses S. Grant's decisive victory at the Battle of Chattanooga. He was brevetted to major general in the regular army for his success at Chattanooga, but he was disappointed to find that Grant's official report of the battle credited his friend William Tecumseh Sherman's contribution over Hooker's.

Hooker led his corps (now designated the XX Corps) competently in the 1864 Atlanta Campaign under Sherman, but asked to be relieved before the capture of the city, due to his dissatisfaction with the promotion of another general (Oliver O. Howard) who had less seniority. He commanded the Northern Department (comprising the states of Michigan, Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois), headquartered in Cincinnati, Ohio, from October 1, 1864, until the end of the war. In Cincinnati he married Olivia Groesbeck, sister of Congressman William Groesbeck.

Final years and legacy

After the war, Hooker suffered from poor health and was partially paralyzed by a stroke. He was mustered out of the volunteer service in 1866 and retired from the U.S. Army two years later with the regular army rank of major general. He died on a visit to Garden City, New York, and is buried in Spring Grove Cemetery, Cincinnati, Ohio, his wife's home town.

Hooker was popularly known as "Fighting Joe" Hooker, a nickname he detested. When a newspaper dispatch arrived in New York during the Peninsula Campaign, a typographical error changed an entry “Fighting — Joe Hooker” to remove the dash and the name stuck. Robert E. Lee occasionally referred to him as "Mr. F. J. Hooker" in a mildly sarcastic jab at his opponent.

Despite Hooker's reputation as a hard-drinking ladies' man, there is no basis for the popular legend that the slang term for prostitutes came from his last name, due to parties and a lack of military discipline at his headquarters. The term "hooker" was used in print as early as 1845, years before Hooker was a public figure.

There is an equestrian statue of General Hooker outside the Massachusetts State House in Boston.

References

Eicher, John H., & Eicher, David J., Civil War High Commands, Stanford University Press, 2001, ISBN 0-8047-3641-3.
Lincoln, Abraham, Letter to General Hooker, January 26, 1863.
Sears, Stephen W., Chancellorsville, Houghton Mifflin, 1996, ISBN 0-395-87744-X.
Sears, Stephen W., To the Gates of Richmond: The Peninsula Campaign, Ticknor and Fields, 1992, ISBN 0-89919-760-6.
Smith, Gene, The Destruction of Fighting Joe Hooker, American Heritage magazine, October 1993.
Warner, Ezra J., Generals in Blue: Lives of the Union Commanders, Louisiana State University Press, 1964, ISBN 0-8071-0882-7.
Cincinnati Civil War Roundtable biography of Hooker

External links

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