GETTYSBURG Chapter Three

 

I imagine the Florida and Mississippi boys – they called each other “boys” - regretted mocking the New York engineers that Tuesday afternoon, The stronger voiced had bellowed the 350 yards across the Rappahannock River, urging the brawny union men to come rest in the shade of the trees on the southern side of the river.  

But about 1:00 p.m., when 4 batteries of Federal artillery finally arrived and begun to blast away, the laughter ceased. While rebel sharpshooters killed 6 sons of New York and wounded 18 more, the engineers persisted in unloading 10 pontoon boats at the river's edge. 

Then 2 companies of Vermont boys rushed to the river, and in broad daylight the engineers paddled them across the open water to the Confederate shore.

By now the Florida and Mississippi skirmishers had been reinforced, but the granite state boys charged with the the bullets whistling over their heads. As the engineers returned for more men, the 2 companies of Union troops captured the Confederate rifle pits, and 6 officers and 84 men. Surprisingly, the Vermont boys suffered just 7 wounded in the head-on assault. 

The Army of the Potomac may have suffered humiliating defeat in its last 2 major encounters with the Army of Northern Virginia, but on this day, 5 June, 1863, it displayed audacity and a pugnacious spirit. 

By evening there was a full brigade of Vermont boys on the southern side of the river, and the New York engineers were stringing the pontoon boats together to assemble  2 bridges at Fredrick's Crossing (above) above where  Deep Run Creek (above, far left)  joined the Rappannock River, just below Fredricksburg, Virginia.

Six months earlier, at the end of January 1863, President Abraham Lincoln, had sent a very curious letter to the new commander of the Army of the Potomac, Major General Joseph “Fighting Joe” Hooker. Usually such notes after promotions were designed to inspire confidence, but having suffered through two rounds of the arrogant George McCellan – both ending in failures -  the foolishness of General John Pope - culminating in the Second Battle of Mananasas – and the blundering of Ambrose Burnside – ending in the blood soaked disaster at Fredricksburg – Lincoln was more sanguine about the Massachusetts General's abilities.

After reminding Hooker he was responsible for guarding Washington, D.C. as well as Harpers Ferry, Virginia, the President warned Hooker (above),  “...I am not quite satisfied with you. I believe you to be a brave and a skillful soldier, which, of course, I like. I also believe you do not mix politics with your profession, in which you are right...You have confidence in yourself ..You are ambitious, which, within reasonable bounds, does good rather than harm." But, added the President ". ..I have heard...of your recently saying that both the Army and the Government needed a Dictator. Of course it was not for this, but in spite of it, that I have given you the command. Only those generals who gain successes, can set up dictators. What I now ask of you is military success, and I will risk the dictatorship...” 

Hooker had rewarded the president during the first week of May with the debacle of Chancellorsville, 18,000 Federal casualties, and a retreat back behind the Rappannock. Lincoln describe Hooker as acting like a "...duck hit on the head".  “Fighting Joe” had not been relieved of his command at once because he still displayed a talent for taking care of his men. It was Hooker who had rebuilt the army after the bloody failure at Fredricksburg, by improving the supply lines, and sanitary conditions in the camps. 

And he formalized the system of  24 and 48 hour passes in all units, even those in Washington, D.C. - where the workers in the legal houses of prostitution became known as “Hooker's Division”  The new army was so improved that within a month of Chancellorsville, it could display both e'lan and competency at Fredrick's Crossing. And it was Joe Hooker himself who had dreamed up that cross river punch  And now he wanted to go further.

General Hooker (above) had not informed his superiors of his intention to cross the river until two hours before launching the attack.  He justified his aggressiveness by balloon observations that several rebel camps on the west bank had disappeared. If, as Hooker suspected, Lee was moving north, Fighting Joe saw an opening.  "I am of the opinion,” he telegraphed his bosses, “that it is my duty to pitch into his rear...” Hooker suggested a “rapid advance on Richmond”, adding that the capture of the rebel capital would be “the most speedy and certain mode of giving the rebellion a mortal blow.”

Appalled, Lincoln replied at 4:00 p.m. that same Tuesday. The Illinois lawyer tried desperately to explain military reality to the West Point graduate. “If he (Lee) should leave a rear force,” telegraphed Lincoln, “it would fight in entrenchments and have you at (a) disadvantage”. Lincoln then Americanized Napoleon's principles of warfare, explaining an army fighting with the Rappahannock at its back was “...like an ox jumped half over a fence and liable to be torn by dogs front and rear, without a fair chance to gore one way or kick the other. If Lee would come to my side of the river, I would keep on the same side, and fight him...” 

Forty minutes later a telegram from Hooker's military superior, General Halleck, asked “Would it not be more advantageous to fight his movable column first, instead of first attacking his entrenchments, with your own forces separated by the Rappahannock?” Latter Hooker asked by telegraph if Halleck  agreed with the President's military assessment. Halleck quickly assured Hooker, “I do.”

And that was the end of any talk about an assault on the rebel capital. Still, Hooker remained reluctant to lose the dream, and insisting on holding onto his new bridgehead “for a few days”. Then something else arose which drew the attention of the Massachusetts native.

 Commander of a Federal cavalry division, Brigadier General John Buford, reported evidence that J.E.B. Stuart and his entire Rebel cavalry corps, about  6,000 troopers (above),  had concentrated near Brandy Station in Culpeper County, Virginia.. Given the strain such a concentration of horses and men would place on the rebel supply train, it seemed obvious General Stuart must be preparing another large cavalry raid, probably into Maryland.

Reading the same reports overall Federal cavalry commander, Major General Alfred Pleasonton  (above) suggested he take his 7,000 blue coated cavalry along with 4,000 infantry south of the Rappahannock to break up the rebel raid before it started. On 7 June, 1863, General Hooker approved the operation, to “disperse and destroy" the rebel cavalry.

What neither Hooker nor Pleasanton,  nor even John Buford,  knew was that not only were the rebel cavalry gathering in Culpeper county, but so were the infantry corps of Generals Richard Ewell and "Old Pete" Longstreet -  54,000 men still in northern Virginia,  preparing for an invasion of Pennsylvania. The Federal cavalry was about to poke their nose right into that hornet's nest. 

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