Hooker On The Lower Potomac

Wherein you realize you've been duped again by "hooker" in the post title

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It's been a busy weekend for your blogger, so a post light on effort in the meantime while he puts off a longer post on the latest Beauregard-Davis bru-ha-ha. It's the October 31 report by Joe Hooker that is interesting for two reasons. First, Hooker describes his success at setting up a temporary battery with Parrott guns commanded by Lt. Colonel George W. Getty. The guns are much too small to be an effective battery to control the Potomac, but as you will read, Hooker still had fun with them. Second, it provides a sense of the attentiveness Hooker always paid to care for the men in camp. Unlike many generals of his day, Hooker had very modern scruples about things like cleanliness and nutrition, and units he lead always had better health than their fellow units. Additionally, the mistakes about rations is part of a larger scandal that would come to a head in January.

In the Southern camp, acting Secretary of War Judah P. Benjamin spent October 31 meddling in the affairs of Joe Johnston's army again. This time, it was a communication directly to Maj. General Earl Van Dorn, who Johnston believed commanded a division in Maj. General G.W. Smith's Second Corps, and who Benjamin believed commanded the First Division in Johnston's corps-less army. Van Dorn was an old Mississippi friend of Jefferson Davis, who the provisional President had asked to train the Confederate cavalry, and subsequently promised could command all the cavalry in Johnston's army as well as infantry. Johnston didn't like the idea based on two principles: 1) that the cavalry was dispersed for scouting duty and therefore a major general would effectively command no more than a brigade of infantry and, 2) that Jeff Davis should keep his nose out of Johnston's army.

And there's one other major thing that happened on October 31, but you're going to have to wait until tomorrow so I can do that one justice.