Diary of Gideon Welles: Thursday, August 4, 1864

This day is set apart for fasting, humiliation, and prayer. There is much wretchedness and great humiliation in the land, and need of earnest prayer.

General Hooker has arrived from Atlanta, having left in a pet because General Howard was given McPherson's position. He is vain, has some good and fighting qualities and thinks highly and too much of himself.

SOURCE: Gideon Welles, Diary of Gideon Welles, Secretary of the Navy Under Lincoln and Johnson, Vol. 2: April 1, 1864 — December 31, 1866, p. 93

Diary of Colonel Rutherford B. Hayes: May 7, 1863

Another movement of the army of the Potomac, this time under General Hooker, a man of energy and courage. Whether able and skilful enough to handle so great an army is the question. He is confident and bold. His crossing the Rappahannock was sudden and apparently successful. It looked a little like separating his army. The great fighting [at Chancellorsville] was on Saturday and Sunday, reported vaguely as “indecisive.” Again this suspense — “with us or with our foes?” All day Sunday I was thinking and talking of the battle. The previous news satisfied me that about that time fighting would be done.

SOURCE: Charles Richard Williams, editor, Diary and Letters of Rutherford Birchard Hayes, Volume 2, p. 408

Diary of John Hay: September 9, 1863

Dined with Wise.  Met Hooker, Butterfield and Fox. Hooker was in fine flow. Before dinner we talked about Halleck and his connection with Hooker’s resignation. He says he was forced to ask to be relieved by repeated acts which proved that he was not to be allowed to manage his army as he thought best, but that it was to be manoeuvred from Washington. He instanced Maryland Heights, whose garrison he was forbidden to touch, yet which was ordered to be evacuated by the very mail which brought his (H 's) relief. And other such many.”

At dinner he spoke of our army. He says: “It was the finest on the planet. He would like to see it fighting with foreigners. It gave him an electric feeling to be with it. It was far superior to the Southern army in everything but one. It had more valor, more strength, more endurance, more spirit; the rebels are only superior in vigor of attack. The reason of this is that, in the first place our army came down here capable of everything but ignorant of everything. It fell into evil hands — the hands of a baby, who knew something of drill, little of organisation, and nothing of the morale of the army. It was fashioned by the congenial spirit of this man into a mass of languid inertness destitute of either dash or cohesion. The Prince de Joinville, by far the finest mind I have ever met with in the army, was struck by this singular, and as he said, inexplicable contrast between the character of American soldiers as integers and in mass. The one active, independent, alert, enterprising; the other indolent, easy, wasteful and slothful. It is not in the least singular. You find a ready explanation in the character of its original General. Stoneman is an instance of the cankerous influence of that staff. I sent him out to destroy the bridges behind Lee . He rode 150 miles and came back without seeing the bridges he should have destroyed. He took with him 4,000 men; he returned with 4,500. His purposeless ride had all the result of a defeat. He claimed to have brought in an enormous train of negroes and other cattle. He brought 30 contrabands and not a man or a mule. He is a brave, good man, but he is spoiled by McClellan.

“After the battle of Malvern and after the battle of Fair Oaks we could have marched into Richmond without serious resistance, yet the constitutional apathy of this man prevented.”

Says Butterfield: — “On the night of the battle of Malvern I saw the red lights of Meyer's signal officer, blazing near me, and I went to him to gain information. He told me he had just received a despatch from Gen'l McClellan asking where was Gen'l F. J. Porter, he wanted news. I volunteered a despatch: — ‘We have won a glorious victory, and if we push on and seize our advantage, Richmond is ours.’ The day of Gaines' Mills, I had taken my position when Porter ordered me out of it into a hollow where I was compelled to assume a strictly defensive position. I once or twice terribly repulsed the enemy, but my orders peremptorily forbade pursuit. I had to keep up the spirits of the men by starting the rumor that McClellan was in Richmond. I am sure I thought he would be there that day. In the night, going to Gen'l McClellan's head-quarters, he asked me what about our Corps. I told him that with a few strong divisions we could attack and drive the enemy. He said he hadn't a man for us.”

[Fox] said that the night before the evacuation of Yorktown he staid in McClellan's tent. McC. said he expected to bag 78,000 of them. “You won't bag one,” replied Tucker. And he didn't.

Hooker says:— “Marcy sometimes sent important orders which McClellan never saw. On one occasion when I had advanced my pickets very near Richmond I received an order through Heintzelman, — “Let Gen^l Hooker return from his brilliant reconnoissance. We cannot afford to lose his division.” I did not see how my division could be lost, as in that country there was no cutting me off. I started back, however, and soon met McClellan himself who asked me what it meant, my withdrawal. I showed him his own order. He said he had never seen it, and I ordered my men back. I returned over the swamp, and held my position for weeks afterwards.”

Hooker and Butterfield both agree as to the terrible defeat the rebels suffered at Malvern and the inefficiency which suffered them to escape without injury. They say there was a Corps, fresh and unharmed, which might have pursued the rebels and entered Richmond in triumph (Franklin’s).

. . . . Hooker drank very little, not more than the rest, who were all abstemious, yet what little he drank made his cheek hot and red, and his eye brighter. I can easily understand how the stories of his drunkenness have grown, if so little affects him as I have seen. He was looking very well to-night. A tall and statuesque form— grand fighting head and grizzled russet hair— red-florid cheeks and bright blue eye, forming a fine contrast with Butterfield, who sat opposite. A small, stout, compact man, with a closely chiselled Greek face and heavy black moustaches, like Eugene Beauharnais. Both very handsome and very different. . . .

SOURCES: Clara B. Hay, Letters of John Hay and Extracts from Diary, Volume 1, p. 95-9; For the whole diary entry see Tyler Dennett, Editor, Lincoln and the Civil War in the Diaries and letters of John Hay, p. 84-6.

Diary of Sir Arthur James Lyon Fremantle: Wednesday, April 15, 1863

I slept well last night in spite of the tics and fleas, and we started at 5.30 P.M. After passing a dead rattlesnake eight feet long, we reached water at 7 A.M.

At 9 A.M. we espied the cavalcade of General Magruder passing us by a parallel track about half a mile distant. McCarthy and I jumped out of the carriage, and I ran across the prairie to cut him off, which I just succeeded in doing by borrowing the spare horse of the last man in the train.

I galloped up to the front, and found the General riding with a lady who was introduced to me as Mrs. –––, an undeniably pretty woman, wife to an officer on Magruder's staff, and she is naturally the object of intense attention to all the good-looking officers who accompany the General through this desert.

General Magruder, who commands in Texas, is a fine soldierlike man, of about fifty-five, with broad shoulders, a florid complexion, and bright eyes. He wears his whiskers and mustaches in the English fashion, and he was dressed in the Confederate grey uniform. He was kind enough to beg that I would turn back and accompany him in his tour through Texas. He had heard of my arrival, and was fully determined I should do this. He asked after several officers of my regiment whom he had known when he was on the Canadian frontier. He is a Virginian, a great talker, and has always been a great ally of English officers.

He insisted that M'Carthy and I should turn and dine with him, promising to provide us with horses to catch up Mr. Sargent.

After we had agreed to do this, I had a long and agreeable conversation with the General, who spoke of the Puritans with intense disgust, and of the first importation of them as “that pestiferous crew of the Mayflower;” but he is by no means rancorous against individual Yankees. He spoke very favourably of M'Clellan, whom he knew to be a gentleman, clever, and personally brave, though he might lack moral courage to face responsibility. Magruder had commanded the Confederate troops at Yorktown which opposed M'Clellan's advance. He told me the different dodges he had resorted to, to blind and deceive the latter as to his (Magruder's) strength; and he spoke of the intense relief and amusement with which he had at length seen M'Clellan with his magnified army begin to break ground before miserable earthworks, defended only by 8000 men. Hooker was in his regiment, and was “essentially a mean man and a liar.” Of Lee and Longstreet he spoke in terms of the highest admiration.

Magruder was an artilleryman, and has been a good deal in Europe; and having been much stationed on the Canadian frontier, he became acquainted with many British officers, particularly those in the 7th Hussars and Guards.

He had gained much credit from his recent successes at Galveston and Sabine Pass, in which he had the temerity to attack heavily-armed vessels of war with wretched river steamers manned by Texan cavalrymen.

His principal reason for visiting Brownsville was to settle about the cotton trade. He had issued an edict that half the value of cotton exported must be imported in goods for the benefit of the country (government stores). The President had condemned this order as illegal and despotic.

The officers on Magruder's Staff are a very goodlooking, gentlemanlike set of men. Their names are — Major Pendleton, Major Wray, Captain De Ponté, Captain Alston, Captain Turner, Lieutenant-Colonel M'Neil, Captain Dwyer, Dr Benien, Lieutenant Stanard, Lieutenant Yancey, and Major Magruder. The latter is nephew to the General, and is a particularly good-looking young fellow. They all live with their chief on an extremely agreeable footing, and form a very pleasant society. At dinner I was put in the post of honour, which is always fought for with much acrimony — viz., the right of Mrs. ——. After dinner we had numerous songs. Both the General and his nephew sang; so also did Captain Alston, whose corpulent frame, however, was too much for the feeble camp-stool, which caused his sudden disappearance in the midst of a song with a loud crash. Captain Dwyer played the fiddle very well, and an aged and slightly-elevated militia general brewed the punch and made several "elegant" speeches. The latter was a rough-faced old hero, and gloried in the name of M'Guffin. On these festive occasions General Magruder wears a red woollen cap, and fills the president's chair with great aptitude.

It was 11.30 before I could tear myself away from this agreeable party; but at length I effected my exit amidst a profusion of kind expressions, and laden with heaps of letters of introduction.

SOURCE: Sir Arthur James Lyon Fremantle, Three months in the southern states: April-June, 1863, p. 29-33

Lieutenant-Colonel Theodore Lyman to Elizabeth Russell Lyman, September 29, 1864

Headquarters, Army Of Potomac

September 29, 1864

The 6.45 P.M. train, which bore me, on Monday, from the ancient town of Beverly, did arrive in very good season in Boston, where I hired a citizen, in the hack line, to convey me with speed and safety to the Worcester depot. With an eye to speculation the driver took in also a lone female, who looked with a certain alarm on me, doubtful as to whether I might not be in the highway-robbery line. She had evidently been on a sea-shore visit, and bore a small pitcher with a bunch of flowers therein. By a superior activity I got a place in the sleeping-car, for it seems to be the policy to have about half room enough for the sleepy passengers, so that those who don't get places may look with envy on t'others and determine to be earlier next time. Geo. D____ was along. The canny man had got a good berth, in the middle of the day, and you should have seen his traveller's fixings: a blanket, a sort of little knapsack, and finally a white handkerchief to tie over his head; “For,” said he, “perhaps the pillows are not very clean.” With martial indifference I took off boots and blouse, got on an upper shelf (not without convulsive kicks), and composed myself to the fitful rest which one gets under such circumstances. There was, as the conductor truthfully observed, “a tremendous grist of children in the car” — of all sizes, indeed, from a little one that publicly partook of its natural nutriment, to youths of some twelve summers. The first object I saw, on wakening in the morning, was an attentive Ma endeavoring to put a hooped skirt under the dress of a small gal, without exhibiting to a curious public the small gal's legs; which attempt on her part was a lamentable failure. I was glad to get out of the eminently close locomotive dormitory and hop with agility on the horse-car, which landed me, a little before seven A.M., at the Astor House. Here I partook of a dollar and a quarter's worth of tea and mutton-chop, and stretched my legs by a walk to the Jersey ferry, and there, as our pilgrim fathers would have said, took shipping for the opposite shore. I should not neglect to say that at the Astor I had noticed a tall man, in the three buttons of a Major-General, whom I at once recognized as the original of the many photographs of General Hooker. I was much disappointed in his appearance: red-faced, very, with a lack-lustre eye and an uncertainty of gait and carriage that suggested a used-up man. His mouth also is wanting in character and firmness; though, for all that, he must once have been a very handsome man. He was a passenger for Washington and sat near me. Next me was a worthy minister, with whom I talked; he, I do remember, delivered a prayer at our chapel last winter, at Headquarters. He was like all of that class, patriotic and one-sided, attributing to the Southerners every fiendish passion; in support of which he had accumulated all the horrible accounts of treatment of prisoners, slaves, etc., etc., and had worked himself into a great state. Evening. 10 P.M. I have got to Baltimore and can't go a step farther; for all day have I been on the Weldon railroad with General Meade, and I must slap to bed, for I am most sleepy, though all right.

SOURCE: George R. Agassiz, Editor, Meade’s Headquarters, 1863-1865: Letters of Colonel Theodore Lyman from the Wilderness to Appomattox, p. 229-31