Part 35

MAJOR-GEN. JOSEPH HOOKER,

Commanding United-States Forces on the Rappahannock.

General,--In reply to your communication of the 9th inst., I have the honor to state that it will give me pleasure to afford every facility to relatives and friends of officers killed in the late battles, to recover their bodies; but I have no means of identifying them, or of ascertaining the fields on which they fell. If you will have me informed, I will cause search to be made.

Very respectfully, your obedient servant, R. E. LEE, General.

APPENDIX.

In February and March, 1886, there was delivered at the Lowell Institute, in Boston, a series of lectures upon the late civil war, by the following gentlemen:--

Feb. 16. Introduction. Gen. Charles Devens of Boston. Feb. 19. Pope's Campaign. Col. Jed. Hotchkiss of Staunton, Va. Feb. 23. Antietam. Gen. George H. Gordon of Boston. Feb. 26. Chancellorsville. Col. Theodore A. Dodge, U. S. Army. March 2. Stonewall Jackson. Col. W. Allan of McDonough, Md. March 5. Gettysburg. Gen. Francis A. Walker of Boston. March 9. The Northern Volunteer. Col. T. L. Livermore of Boston. March 12. The Southern Volunteer. Major H. Kyd Douglas of Hagerstown, Md. March 16. Chattanooga. Gen. William F. Smith of Wilmington, Del. March 19. The Wilderness. John C. Ropes, Esq., of Boston. March 23. Franklin and Nashville. Col. Henry Stone of Boston. March 26. The Last Campaign. Col. Fred. C. Newhall of Philadelphia.

These lecturers were well equipped for their task. Earnest study of their respective subjects had been attested by numerous volumes published by them relating to the war. The desire to have the truth told was apparent in the presence of three Confederate officers among the number; and the special feature of the course seemed to be, that not only was the truth spoken in the most unvarnished manner, but that it was listened to with marked approval by overflowing audiences.

Perhaps the most invidious subject fell to my lot. What I said was merely a summary of the foregoing pages. But one point in my lecture aroused the ire of some of Gen. Hooker's partisans, and was made the subject of attacks so bitter that virulence degenerated into puerility. The occasion of this rodomontade was a meeting of Third-Corps veterans, and its outcome was a series of resolutions aimed at the person who had dared to reflect on Gen. Hooker's capacity, and to refer to the question of Gen. Hooker's habitual use of stimulants. The public mention of my name was as sedulously avoided as a reference to his satanic majesty is wont to be in the society of the superstitious; but the exuberance of the attack must have afforded unbounded satisfaction to its authors, as it very apparently did to the audience.

Following are the resolutions, which are of mild flavor compared to their accompanying seasoning of speeches:--

RESOLUTIONS.

The veterans of the Third Army Corps assembled here to-day, soldiers who served under Gen. Joseph Hooker in his division, corps, and army, re-affirm their lifelong affection for their old commander, their admiration for his brilliant achievements as one of the prominent generals of our armies, and protest against the recent revival of unjust assaults made on his conduct at Chancellorsville. Whether, after one of the most noted tactical victories of modern times, having placed the Army of the Potomac across the Rappahannock River on the flank of Lee, he might have gained a still farther advanced position; whether the failure of the cavalry to fully accomplish what was expected of it; whether the disaster to the Eleventh Corps and the delay in the advance of the Sixth Corps,--are to be attributed to errors of judgment of Gen. Hooker or of the subordinate commanders, are points which will be discussed again and again with profit to the military student. But we, who witnessed his successful generalship at Williamsburg, Glendale, Malvern Hill, Second Bull Run, and Antietam, have no language at our command strong enough to express our contempt for any one who, twenty years after the war, affirms that on any occasion in battle, with the lives of his men and the cause of his country in his keeping, Gen. Hooker was incapacitated for performing his whole duty as an officer by either the use of liquor or by the want of it.

We protest against oft-repeated statements that "Fighting Joe Hooker," while one of the bravest and ablest division commanders in the army, was possibly equal to handling a corps, but proved a failure as an independent commander. Assigned to the Army of the Potomac in January, 1863, after the disaster at Fredericksburg and the failure of oft-repeated campaigns, our army demoralized by defeat, desertions, and dissensions, Gen. Hooker re-organized his forces, stopped desertions, brought back to their colors thousands of absentees, and in three months revived confidence, re-established discipline, and enabled his army to take the field unsurpassed in loyalty, courage, and efficiency, as was shown at Chancellorsville and Gettysburg. We say Chancellorsville because, although not a victory for us, the campaign inflicted on the enemy losses at least equal to our own; and we say also Gettysburg because that victory was won by the army Hooker had re-organized, and led with such matchless skill from Falmouth to the eve of the battle.

Whatever ambition he may have had to command armies, it did not prevent his cheerfully serving his country under junior officers, giving them faithful support, and his record shows no instance of his removal from command by his superiors.

Here in his native State, amid the homes of so many of his old brigade, the survivors of the Third Army Corps, all witnesses of his genius, valor, and devotion to duty, indorse his record as a soldier, as a gentleman, and as a patriot, and sincerely believe that history will assign to Major-Gen. Joseph Hooker a place among the greatest commanders of the late civil war.

The italics are mine. "One of the most noted tactical victories of modern times," applied to Chancellorsville, is refreshing. Equally so is the exultant claim that "we inflicted on the enemy losses at least equal to our own." The infliction of loss on the enemy has always been understood by military men to be an incident rather than the object of war.

The following reply in "The Boston Herald" of April 11, 1886, explains itself:--

TO THE EDITOR OF THE HERALD.

In the call for the meeting of the Third Corps Gettysburg Re-union Association, held at Music Hall on Fast Day, was the following clause:--

"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.