November 13, 1814–October 31, 1879
HIGHEST RANK:
Union General
ASTROLOGICAL SIGN:
Scorpio
NICKNAMES:
Fighting Joe
WORDS TO REMEMBER:
“I was at the Battle of Bull Run the other day, and it is neither vanity or boasting in me to declare that I am a damned sight better general than you, sir, had on that field” (to Abraham Lincoln).
It is said that the word hooker, as a synonym for prostitute, came into common usage with all the women of ill repute who followed Joe Hooker’s camps during the Civil War. The assertion may well be true, though some would argue that hooker was already slang for a streetwalker (a lady, if you will, who “hooks” a john) in parts of the English-speaking world before Fort Sumter was ever fired upon. In any event, even one who is skeptical of the story is confronted with the question of why the connection was made at all—the answer being, of course, that so many women of ill repute followed Joe Hooker’s camps.
Hooker was more than just a libertine. He was also a braggart and an intriguer. But it was in spite of these exemplary qualities that he rose for a brief moment to become commander of Lincoln’s precious instrument of force, the Army of the Potomac. For Hooker was also a pretty decent general.
His Mexican War experience was representative of his life in general. Awarded three brevets for his gallant and meritorious service (a rare achievement indeed for any lieutenant in that conflict), Hooker managed to jeopardize all he had fought for by backing into a contentious personal battle between two higher-ups: Winfield Scott and Gideon Pillow. In the hearings that resulted, Hooker testified on the latter’s behalf, carving a place for himself in Scott’s memory that he would one day come to regret.
Joe Hooker’s headquarters had the reputation of being like a government-sponsored saloon, full of alcohol and gambling and women of ill repute.
But that lay in a distant future. Born in Massachusetts, the grandson of a Revolutionary War hero, Hooker’s accomplishments in Mexico seemed to confirm that martial blood ran in his veins. Hell, with his steel blue eyes and the way his broad frame filled out a uniform, he even looked like a conqueror. But California’s charms weaned him off the army. Stationed there in the wake of the Mexican War, he settled in Sonoma and began spending his meager officer’s salary at the card table. In 1851, he acquired a two-year leave of absence and an old rancho to settle on, where he gave farming a try (unsuccessfully) and ended up selling the timber off his land for a modest profit. Formally resigning his commission in 1853, he dabbled in local politics, acquired an appointment as superintendent of military roads up in Oregon, and became a colonel of California militia. Money remained an issue, however; by 1861 he was broke.
Naturally, he hoped to fix that back east by offering his services to the North as a general. But Winfield Scott, now general in chief, made that a difficult proposition, and Hooker observed the first months of the war as a civilian. It wasn’t until after Bull Run, when he secured a personal interview with the president and informed him of the army’s dreadful mismanagement, that he was able to get his foot in the door. Lincoln was impressed by the boastful fellow, and a commission as brigadier general of volunteers soon followed.
It is significant that Hooker acquired his post and began his Civil War career with a meeting in which he berated other officers. Such slandering, in addition to gulping whiskey and leading troops with relative efficiency, essentially became his modus operandi. He went with McClellan to the Peninsula, where he led a division in the van of the march on Richmond and fought effectively in the Seven Days’ Battles. He was with his division in the defeat at Second Bull Run and was then given a corps to command. By now known popularly as “Fighting Joe” Hooker, he lived up to the moniker at Antietam when he rode with his First Corps against the Confederate left, the flanking assault that initiated the day’s furious bloodletting and that climaxed in a cornfield that became one of the most notorious killing grounds in American history. While astride his horse during the struggle, Hooker took a bullet through the foot, putting him out of action for the day. His mauled corps soon followed, falling back with 2,500 casualties. The attack on that part of the battlefield petered out an hour later, leaving the second and third acts to be decided farther south.
Convinced after Antietam that the army’s leadership was lackluster at best and that he was one of the very few who knew his business, Hooker began complaining to anyone who would listen. That he was fond of drink didn’t do anything to help keep his mouth shut, and it was soon common knowledge that Hooker had a low opinion of his superiors. The tragedy that unfolded next only poured fuel on the fire. Watching his troops get shot to pieces on the fields beyond Fredericksburg was more than many could handle. For Hooker, it was the last straw. He had hated Burnside’s Fredericksburg plan to begin with; now, having seen it fail in biblical fashion, he openly inveighed against Burnside and virtually everyone else in authority—including the administration. Indeed, it was widely known that Hooker advocated a military dictatorship to successfully prosecute the war.
To the hotheads in the U.S. Congress Joint Committee on the Conduct of the War, before whom he testified against Burnside, Hooker looked like the sort of man who could fix the carnival of errors that the Union war effort had become. Fighting Joe was just as good at impressing newspapermen and politicians as he was at holding his hooch, and his hard line—on fumbling Union generals and Confederate enemies both—had endeared him to the radicals, in and out of Congress, who fretted over Lincoln’s founderingleadership. Having done well enough on the battlefield to attract favorable attention, spoken out against all the right demons, and escaped the scandalous failures that had doomed the likes of McClellan and Burnside, Hooker became that most peculiar of Civil War generals: the politically inescapable appointee. Lincoln, though aware of Fighting Joe’s ability, was personally disgusted by his insubordinate behavior, particularly toward Burnside. But with so much pressure to promote him from influential folks who needed to be satisfied, the president had little choice but to bow to popular opinion. “Hooker talks badly,” remarked a world-weary Lincoln, “but the trouble is, he is stronger with the country today than any other man.” And so it went. After Burnside’s removal, the bourbon-slugging mudslinger from Massachusetts would lead the Army of the Potomac.
Rarely has a head of state voiced so much reluctance in the commissioning of a commander. “I have placed you at the head of the Army of the Potomac,” began Lincoln’s famous letter to Hooker. “Of course I have done this upon what appear to me to be sufficient reasons. And yet I think it best for you to know that there are some things in regard to which, I am not quite satisfied with you.” The document is a delicious window on the moment, the men involved, and the perils faced by those in civilian government forced to crawl into bed with military men from whom they must have victory for survival. “I much fear that the spirit which you have aided to infuse into the Army, of criticizing their Commander, and withholding confidence from him, will now turn upon you,” chided the chief executive. And yet, the new commander was to “go forward, and give us victories.” Not exactly a pep rally.
Lincoln needed his general to understand him, and it seems as if he succeeded. But in this awkward relationship, both parties had what they wanted: Fighting Joe had an outlet for his vision of victory, and Lincoln had a warlord who sincerely believed in the marrow of his bones that Robert E. Lee was about to meet his match. Not for Fighting Joe the quavering doubtfulness of Burnside. Hooker did not lack confidence. “May God have mercy on General Lee,” he puffed, “for I will have none.” And though many critics North and South thought Hooker’s appointment a bad idea, he set about proving them dead wrong. With his reorganization of the Army of the Potomac, his attention to the needs of the rank and file, and his injection of professionalism, Fighting Joe acquired the nickname “Administrative Joe.” The army bounced back from the nightmares of Fredericksburg and the Mud March, acquiring a level of efficiency and élan that it had thought impossible since Little Mac had first sharpened its resolve. Great things were possible again.
And not for lack of indulgence. Hooker had long been a drinker and a carouser, and his headquarters became a sanctuary for officers who couldn’t see the point in moderate behavior or abstinence. But amidst the saturnalia emerged a plan of unimpeachable brilliance—a strategy worthy of the reluctant confidence placed in him. Fighting Joe meant to wheel his great army around Lee’s left like the sweeping arm of a hurricane, maneuvering counterclockwise behind the Army of Northern Virginia’s flank and scooping it up like so much storm debris. Using stealth and aggressiveness, the Army of the Potomac would cross the Rappahannock well west of Lee’s positions, then swing eastward to destroy him while he was busy with a diversionary effort made around Fredericksburg.
It was great stuff. And it even caught the wily Lee by surprise, at least at first, partly because of the impenetrable forest known as the Wilderness that would prove as much a bane to Hooker as a shield. As the Army of the Potomac moved south toward its quarry, it ran into the dark expanse of the Wilderness, negating much of the superiority in numbers that Hooker enjoyed over his opponent. Alerted to the move by Jeb Stuart’s cavalry, Lee shifted west to meet the challenge and used the confusion of the Wilderness to his advantage. Once the two armies met near the crossroads of Chancellorsville, everything that defined Joe Hooker—his chutzpah, confidence, domination over events—simply vanished. It was as if Robert E. Lee possessed a pin that Hooker’s balloon hadn’t counted on. Sensing his enemy’s hesitation, Lee sent Stonewall Jackson to crash into the Union right, collapsing what little remained of Hooker’s confidence. A cannonball did much to finish Joe off, smashing through a pillar that he was leaning on at his mansion-headquarters and knocking him senseless for a time. Chancellorsville could easily have been the end of the Army of Northern Virginia and a vindication of Joe Hooker’s otherwise insufferable self-promotion. Instead, it was Robert E. Lee’s finest hour. And the Army of the Potomac was bundled back beyond the Rappahannock once again.
It is hard not to compare our subject to the playground bully whose delusions of tyranny are dashed by the one clever kid bold enough to challenge him and defuse his inflated self-image. Nevertheless, Joe Hooker still had a few cards left to play. Replaced byGeorge Meade just days before the climactic Battle of Gettysburg, Hooker ended up leading two corps west to help deal with the crisis there in the wake of Chickamauga. In the western theater, he led like the hero he used to fancy himself as, particularly at the charge up Lookout Mountain outside Chattanooga. But at Atlanta, Sherman promoted a subordinate of Hooker’s to command the Army of Tennessee in the wake of James McPherson’s death. Fighting Joe, insulted beyond hope of repair, insisted on being relieved and was promptly satisfied. He was reassigned to the Midwest and finished the war as far as possible from the action he hoped to shape decisively. Spending much of his remaining life disagreeing with the history being written about himself and his fellow officers, he died in 1879 a symbol of Union controversy.
FRESH START
In January 1853, Joe Hooker ran into trouble while gambling over a game of cards. Failing to pay his losses, Hooker was taken to court. But because gambling debts were not honored by the state, he was let off the hook and left with only a smudge on his honor.
Such behavior was apparently routine for Hooker during his California days before the war. He was constantly wanting for funds. William Sherman and Henry Halleck both claimed later that they had loaned him money out west that was not repaid. The outbreak of war found him destitute just at the time he needed money to get back east. In fact, he would never have gone on to greater glory at all were it not for an extraordinary act of charity. While in San Francisco, he happened into the popular tavern owned by Billy Chapman, whom he knew. Taking note of his patron’s pathetic demeanor, Chapman approached and asked if anything was wrong. After hearing Hooker’s plight, the tavernkeep asked him how much he thought he needed to get back east. His reply was $700. Chapman disappeared and returned with $1,000 in bills. He even made sure that Hooker’s cabin in the upcoming sea voyage was liberally stocked with cigars, free of charge. With friends like that, who needs guardian angels?
Please Don’t Feed the Animals
With an abortive effort at farming, a constant lack of profit, and no shortage of gambling debts, Hooker’s attempt at playing the country squire out in California didn’t fool anyone. Even the wildlife was uncooperative. Once, while hunting near his Sonoma property, he happened upon a bear. Hooker discharged his rifle, missed, and the great beast charged. In the tussle that followed, the two disappeared over the precipice of a canyon, very nearly killing them both. A search party later found the future commander of the Army of the Potomac hanging like somebody’s bloody laundry in the limbs of a redwood tree.
COURAGE IN A BOTTLE
Joe Hooker most likely didn’t drink when he graduated from West Point in 1837. But things change, and for him they changed in California. While still in the army, Hooker started hanging out at an infamous Sonoma haunt called the Blue Wing Inn, where whiskey brought the frontier’s disparate elements together under one riotous roof. He soon acquired a reputation for enthusiastic imbibing that endured his entire life. During the Civil War, his habits were put to song. Early in the war, William B. Bradbury wrote a patriotic tune called “Marching Along,” which became quite popular throughout the North. Its chorus went:
Marching along, we are marching along,
Gird on the armor and be marching along;
McClellan’s our leader, he’s gallant and strong;
For God and for country we are marching along. Soldiers in Hooker’s command sang a slightly different version—they switched out the third line with, “Joe Hooker’s our leader, he takes his whiskey strong.”
The subject of alcohol even came up after the defining failure in Hooker’s life, the Battle of Chancellorsville. Though some in Congress were concerned with finding out whether the general had been soused during the battle, others of a more cynical bent turned the question on its head: It was well known that Hooker had given up drink as soon as the Chancellorsville campaign commenced, and plenty of officers wondered if there would have been a victory in the Wilderness had Fighting Joe’s nerve been buttressed by its usual medicinal aid. Oh well. Damned if you do, damned if you don’t.
IF THE SHOE FITS
“Fighting Joe” was a pretty flattering nickname as far as such things go for a general. But Hooker hated it, believing that it made him sound like some quarrelsome malcontent. Besides, he acquired the sobriquet under the silliest of circumstances. Reporting in 1862 on the furious combat near Williamsburg in which Hooker’s division was playing a leading role, a New York newspaper flashed the following terse headline: “Fighting—Joe Hooker.” Within weeks the line had become a name, and the rest is history.