The Campaign of Chancellorsville

by Theodore Ayrault Dodge

"Loyalty to the memory of our beloved commander, Major-Gen. Joseph Hooker, makes it a duty, on this occasion, to protest against unjust and uncalled-for criticisms on his military record as commander of the Army of the Potomac."

It having been intimated to me by some old brother officers of the Third Corps, that my late Lowell lecture on Chancellorsville was the occasion of this proposed protest, I wrote to the chairman of the committee which called the meeting, asking for an opportunity to reply to this protest, within such bounds as even-handedness and the purposes of the meeting would allow. The committee answered that it could not see the propriety of turning the occasion into a public debate, and referred me to the press. I do not object to their decision, made, no doubt, upon what appeared to them sufficient grounds; but as the occasion was turned into a public debate—one-sided, to be sure—I ask you for space, to reply in your valued columns.

As an old Third-Corps man, I attended the meeting at Music Hall. The treasurer did not object to selling me a ticket to the dinner. I expected to hear some new facts about Hooker and Chancellorsville. I expected to hear some new deductions from old facts. I do not consider myself beyond making an occasional lapse even in a carefully prepared piece of work, and am always open to correction. But, to my surprise (with the exception of a conjecture that Lee's object in his march into Pennsylvania was to wreck the anthracite-coal industry), there was not one single fact or statement laid before the meeting, or the company at dinner, which has not already been, in its minutest details, canvassed and argued at a length covering hundreds of pages in the volumes on Chancellorsville, by Hotchkiss and Allen, Swinton, Bates, the Comte de Paris, Doubleday, and myself, not to speak of numberless and valuable brochures by others. The bulk of the time devoted to talking on this occasion was used in denunciation of the wretch—in other words, myself—who alleged that Joseph Hooker was drunk at Chancellorsville, or at any other time. This denunciation began with a devout curse in the chaplain's prayer, culminated in a set of fierce resolutions, and ended with the last after-dinner speech.

One thing particularly struck me. There was no one, of all who spoke, who began to say as many things in favor of Joseph Hooker as I for years have done; and not in fleeting words, but printed chapters. There was plenty of eulogy, in nine-tenths of which I joined with all my heart. But it was of the soldiers'-talk order,—cheering and honest and loyal, appealing to the sentiments rather than the intelligence. What I have said of Hooker has been solid praise of his soldierly worth, shown to be borne out by the facts. Barring, in all I say, the five fighting days at Chancellorsville, I have yet to find the man who has publicly, and in print, eulogized Hooker as I have done; and no one among the veterans gathered together Fast Day applauded with more sincerity than I, all the tributes to his memory. For though, as some one remarked, it is true that I "fought mit Sigel," and decamped from Chancellorsville with the Eleventh Corps; it is also true that I passed through the fiery ordeal of the Seven Days, and fought my way across the railroad-cutting at Manassas, side by side with Joseph Hooker, under the gallant leadership of that other hero Philip Kearney. It was very evident that but few of the speakers, as well as auditors, had themselves heard or read what I actually said. The result of "coaching" for the occasion by some wire-puller was painfully apparent. Let us see what was said. I give the entire paragraph from my Lowell lecture:—

"It has been surmised that Hooker, during this campaign, was incapacitated by a habit of which, at times, he had been the victim. There is, rather, evidence that he was prostrated by too much abstemiousness, when a reasonable use of stimulants might have kept his nervous system at its normal tension. It was certainly not the use of alcohol, during this time, which lay at the root of his indecision."

If that is an accusation that Hooker was then drunk, if it does not rather lean toward an exculpation from the charge of drunkenness, then I can neither write nor read the English language. As is well known, the question of Hooker's sudden and unaccountable loss of power, during the fighting half of this campaign, coupled with the question of drunkenness, has been bandied to and fro for years. The mention alone of Chancellorsville has been enough, ever since that day, to provoke a query on this very subject, among civilians and soldiers alike. In a lecture on the subject, I deemed it judicious to lay this ghost as well as might be. Had I believed that Hooker was intoxicated at Chancellorsville, I should not have been deterred by the fear of opposition from saying so. Hooker's over-anxious friends have now turned into a public scandal what was generally understood as an exoneration, by intentionally distorting what was said into an implication that Hooker was so besotted as to be incapable of command. What I have written of his marching the army to this field and to the field of Gettysburg is a full answer to such unnecessary perversion. Let these would-be friends of Hooker remember that this calumny is of their own making, not mine. I am as sorry for it, as they ought to be. If the contempt expressed in the resolutions they passed had been silent, instead of boisterous, Hooker's memory would have suffered far less damage.

Gens. Sickles and Butterfield are doubtless good witnesses, though they sedulously refrained from any testimony on the subject, contenting themselves with declamation. But they are not the only good witnesses. After the loss of a leg at Gettysburg, I was ordered to duty in the War Department, where I served in charge of one or other bureau for seven years. I have heard this Hooker question discussed in all its bearings, in the office of the Secretary of War or Adjutant-General, by nearly every leading officer of the army, hundreds of whom had known Hooker from West Point up. I have had abundant opportunity of forming an opinion, and I have expressed it. Let him who garbles its meaning, bear the blame.

This action by many veterans of the Third Corps—even though procured by design from their thoughtless and open soldier's nature—is, however, much more sweeping and important. To the world at large it is a general condemnation of every thing which can be said in criticism of Hooker. It will reach far and wide, and in this light I desire to say what I do. The resolutions passed at the meeting explicitly protest against the statement that Hooker proved a failure as an independent commander. This needs notice at greater length than the question of sobriety or drunkenness. Few have studied the details of the campaign of Chancellorsville as carefully as I; but one other author has spread the facts so fully before the reading public. No part of my recent criticism before the Lowell Institute was new. It was embodied at much greater length four years ago, in my "History of Chancellorsville;" the reception of which volume by press, public, and soldiers, has been its own best excuse. Gen. Hooker, though making no report, has put on record his explanation of this campaign. Before the Committee on the Conduct of the War, he stated his views as follows: "I may say here, the battle of Chancellorsville has been associated with the battle of Fredericksburg, and has been called a disaster. My whole loss in the battle of Chancellorsville was a little over seventeen thousand.... In my opinion, there is nothing to regret in regard to Chancellorsville, except to accomplish all I moved to accomplish. The troops lost no honor, except one corps, and we lost no more men than the enemy; but expectation was high, the army in splendid condition, and greater results were expected from it. When I returned from Chancellorsville, I felt that I had fought no battle; in fact, I had more men than I could use, and I fought no general battle, for the reason that I could not get my men in position to do so."

To speak thus of a passage of arms lasting a week and costing seventeen thousand men is, to say the least, abnormal.

In trying to shift the onus of failure from his own shoulders he said: "Some of our corps commanders, and also officers of other rank, appear to be unwilling to go into a fight.... So far as my experience extends, there are in all armies officers more valiant after the fight than while it is pending, and when a truthful history of the Rebellion shall be written, it will be found that the Army of the Potomac is not an exception."