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Jan 09, 2021
My book enabling for Joe Hooker. It's from 1944 originally (with all that goes along with that) but there has been nothing better since...
My book enabling for Joe Hooker. It's from 1944 originally (with all that goes along with that) but there has been nothing better since...
3 comments
Agree with this recommendation, I read this recently. It is not perfect, but it is about all we have on the subject. A man whose confidence and aggressiveness took him to the top, yet those attributes failed him when he needed them the most. I came away from the book seeing Hooker as rather divisive in his relationships, he had those close to him like Butterfield and his kindred spirit Kearny, yet ended up rather against others like Howard, Stoneman, Averell, and Sedgwick particularly after Chancellorsville and was no friend of McClellan or Stanton. The remark about his headquarters being "a place to which no self-respecting man liked to go, and no decent woman could go. It was a combination of bar-room and brothel" was amusing.
I still have to wonder what Hooker's physical and mental shape was after his wounding at Chancellorsville. He really seems to have been in no condition to make decisions for the army, whether he had a severe concussion or whatever his condition was.
1) I need to get this book. I am 100% #TeamHooker and yup - I think he was exactly how @Darin Weeks often describes him as being the loud, obnoxious guy at the bar BUT he had talent and he deserves waaayyy more credit than what he gets. He created the Army of the Potomac that won Gettysburg.
2) I believe he had a concussion after Chancellorville and it effed him up for a few months afterwards. There's zero way, once whatever it was hit him at Chancellorsville, he was fit to make decisions in not just the hours, but the days and weeks following that. I think once he was out in the Western theatre by the time he fought Lookout Mountain, the old Joe Hooker that fought at Antietam and organized the sh** out of the AOP after Fredericksburg was almost back (I don't think he was ever himself again 100% after Chancellorsville). I've always believed his fight at Lookout Mountain is one of the main reasons the Union was able to take Chattanooga (despite Grant - don't get me wrong, I love Grant - dismissing it as pure romance).
Hooker passes away not long after the Civil War ended and after he has a series of strokes. I think that is most likely to do with his injury at Chancellorsville.
@Mare Hooker becomes one of the "we'll never really know" stories. He gets wounded in his one shot at top command, although the battle was not going well even before his wounding. Perhaps he could have turned things or around, or perhaps his best role really was as a corps commander, we will never know. Some leaders just cannot take that next step to be the army commander. But at the brigade, division and corps level Hooker showed himself to be a hard fighter.