Hooker takes command of the Army of the Potomac, January 1863

In January 1863 the Union's Army of the Potomac changed commanders. Ambrose Burnside told Abraham Lincoln that if his orders against the officers who had undermined him were not accepted, he would resign. Lincoln relieved Burnside instead and put in his place Joseph Hooker, the man Burnside resented most, then wrote Hooker a letter of praise and warning. The National Park Service tells the story.

Major General Joseph Hooker takes command of the Army of the Potomac, January 26, 1863. Image from the Library of Congress, via the National Park Service's page.

An army that had lost faith

After the defeat at Fredericksburg, some Federal officers openly doubted Burnside's ability to command. In late December Brigadier Generals John Newton and John Cochrane went to Washington, used political connections to see Lincoln, and warned him that any movement Burnside planned was doomed because the army had lost faith in its commander. Burnside was furious when he learned of it, and no one angered him more than Major General Joseph Hooker. Since Burnside took command in November, Hooker had been outspoken about Burnside's abilities, and the failed Mud March strengthened his opinion. As weary soldiers returned to camp, Hooker spoke loudly and often to newspaper reporters about his frustrations.

Ambrose Burnside, who hit rock bottom after the failed Mud March. Image from the Library of Congress, via the National Park Service's page.

Burnside's orders

Burnside reached his breaking point on January 23, 1863. He wrote to Lincoln asking to see him alone after midnight about some very important orders he had prepared. In Washington he showed the President a draft of General Orders No. 8, which dismissed or sent away the officers he thought were the ringleaders of insubordination:

• Hooker was to be dismissed from the service for unjust and unnecessary criticism of his superiors and the authorities, for trying to create distrust among officers, and for habitually disparaging other officers.
• Brigadier General W. T. H. Brooks was to be dismissed for complaining of the government's policy and using language that tended to demoralize his command.
• Newton and Cochrane were to be dismissed for going to the President with criticism of their commander's plans.
• Major General W. B. Franklin, Major General W. F. Smith, Brigadier Generals Samuel D. Sturgis and Edward Ferrero, and Lieutenant Colonel J. H. Taylor, along with Cochrane, were to be relieved of duty and ordered to report to the Adjutant-General.

Burnside told the President that if the orders were not accepted he would resign. Lincoln thought it over and relieved Burnside of command of the Army of the Potomac, but did not remove him from the army. Burnside was moved to an administrative post in the Department of the Ohio, and later led the Ninth Corps again at Knoxville and in the Overland campaign. The change was made official on January 26, when Burnside told the soldiers in his farewell to be true in their devotion to their country and the principles they had sworn to maintain.

The new commander and Lincoln's letter

Lincoln appointed Hooker. A West Point graduate who had resigned from the army in 1853, Hooker had come from California to Washington when the war broke out and lobbied for a place in the army, and in August 1861 he got the command he sought. He had done well in the Peninsula Campaign and at Antietam and had become one of the army's most respected leaders. His ambition, though, was known to get the better of him.

Hooker would work relentlessly to prove himself capable of the command. Image from the Library of Congress, via the National Park Service's page.

Lincoln made his reservations plain in a letter dated January 26, 1863. He wrote that he believed Hooker a brave and skillful soldier who did not mix politics with his profession, and that his self-confidence and, within reasonable bounds, his ambition were valuable. But he said Hooker had thwarted Burnside as much as he could, a great wrong to the country and to a meritorious brother officer, and that he had heard Hooker say the army and the government needed a dictator. "Only those generals who gain successes, can set up dictators," Lincoln wrote. "What I now ask of you is military success, and I will risk the dictatorship." He warned that the spirit of criticizing a commander, which Hooker had helped spread, might now turn on him, and ended: "beware of rashness, but with energy, and sleepless vigilance, go forward, and give us victories."

Lincoln's letter to Hooker, which the page calls an honest glimpse of the Commander in Chief's opinion of Hooker and of the army's problems. Image from the Library of Congress, via the National Park Service's page.

Hooker treasured the letter. The journalist Noah Brooks later recalled that Hooker showed it to him in camp and said it was just such a letter as a father might write to a son, that Lincoln had been harder on him than he deserved, and that he loved the man who wrote it. Hooker knew the army's morale was nearly at bottom as he took over, and set about transforming it.

Sources

• National Park Service, "Hooker Takes Command" (https://www.nps.gov/articles/000/hooker-takes-command.htm), Fredericksburg and Spotsylvania National Military Park. The page's documents are Burnside's January 23, 1863 letter and General Orders No. 8 (Official Records), Lincoln's letter to Hooker (Library of Congress) and Noah Brooks's 1896 Washington in Lincoln's Time. Lincoln's 1863 words are quoted in part.
• National Park Service's page; rewritten in hubnx's own words.