Mr. Peperium recently tried (and failed) to apply a little TLC to the reputation of  Gen. George “Little Mac” McClellan. Interestingly enough, today is the anniversary of the birth, in 1814, of Little Mac’s (second) replacement as Commander of the Army of the Potomac, Gen. Joseph P. “Fighting Joe” Hooker in Hadley, Mass.

In the area of reputational reparation, I am wholly on board with Steven Sears’ analysis of Fighting Joe’s performance in the defeat of the Army of the Potomac at the hands of Robert E. Lee at Chancellorsville in May, 1863.  If my mother is any indication,  Hooker has long been condemned for the Union loss, his nicknamed being seen as nothing but a piece of empty, hot-headed vanity.

However, Hooker’s plan for breaking the stalemate before Fredericksburg by secretly swinging around onto Lee’s left flank upriver was cleverly concocted and (really) brilliantly executed.  Indeed, so stealthily did Hooker slip out of his lines at Stafford Heights across the Rappahanock River from Lee that Lee didn’t even realize the Union army was moving until it had crossed the river to the west.

Of course it’s a leap of “what might have been,” but I would hazard that if Hooker had been going against anyone else in the subsequent battle, he might well have won a crushing victory.  Unfortunately for him, in Lee and Jackson he was up against the Confederate varsity at the top of their game.  All the same, despite the fact that Jackson’s famed flank march  bamboozled and panicked the Federals for a time, ultimately the Union line held.  Furthermore, at the height of the Confederate attacks, the Federals still had large bodies of men unfought in reserve.  Their commanders – Reynolds, Meade and Hancock, were eager to pour into the fray,  but Hooker would not commit.

Why? Hooker was knocked out by a piece of shrapnel when a shell hit his headquarters early on the second day of the battle.  Sears believes that even though Hooker got himself back on his feet, the injury – both physical and mental – from that hit was greater than Hooker or those around him realized.   Whatever the extent of its contribution to his performance, it was at that point that Hooker’s aggressiveness and resolve snapped, that he suddenly became fearful, pokey and hesitant.

Well, you don’t win battles that way.  Rather than swarming out to overwhelm the Confederates – who were stretched thin in a long semi-circle around the Union position – Hooker instead cowered down and allowed himself and his men to be hammered by the Rebs instead.  Eventually, fearing entrapment on the wrong side of the river, Hooker slipped back across the fords to the north bank.

I suppose the point of all this rambling is that Little Mac was just an inherently bad field commander.  Hooker was a good one who, on that day, simply fell victim to the fortune of war.