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By Rob Sherwood,
Events Coordinator.
Blue Ridge Civil War Round Table
After the debacle and slaughter of the Battle of Fredericksburg on Dec. 13, 1862, in which the Union had 12653 casualties to the South’s loss of 5377, President Lincoln had to cast around once more for a man to lead the Grand Army of the Potomac against Robert E. Lee. On Jan. 25, 1863, he accepted the resignation of General Ambrose E. Burnside and offered the army command to 48-year-old Major General Joseph Hooker, a man who was rash, ambitious, vain, and a tireless critic of his superiors.
So why pick Hooker? Throughout 1862, despite Union defeats, Hooker had forged a reputation as a commander who would fight the enemy—a quality Lincoln desperately wanted after two years of waffling, hesitancy, and defeat. In fact, Hooker had even acquired the dashing sobriquet “Fighting Joe”—but few knew its origin was a typesetter’s error in a New York newspaper headline during he Peninsula Campaign earlier in 1862.
In an extraordinary candid letter to his new pick to command the main Union army, Lincoln made it clear that Hooker had a cloud hanging over his reputation: “There are some things in regard to which I am not quite satisfied with you but you have taken counsel of your ambition, and thwarted (Burnside) as much as you could, in which you did a great wrong to the country.. The spirit which you have aided to infuse into the army, of criti
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