With Malice Toward None

The Abraham Lincoln Bicentennial Exhibition    

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Lincoln Redirects Hooker’s Strategy

Lincoln Redirects Hooker’s Strategy (167.00.00)

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Although invigorated by reviewing and talking with the troops, Lincoln had traveled to the Army of the Potomac’s encampment principally to meet with General Hooker. Early in the war, the president, acutely aware of his limited experience in military matters, had tended to defer to his generals. By 1863, however, he was armed with knowledge gained from his study of military science—and from his own, and his generals’, costly mistakes. After Hooker spoke repeatedly of moving against the Confederate capital, Richmond, Lincoln wrote a memorandum to the general pointing out that the Army of the Potomac and Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia were “face to face with a narrow river between them,” and stressing that Hooker’s main objective must be to "harrass and menace" and, when the opportunity arose, “pitch into” Lee’s Confederate force.

(Transcription)

our prime object is the enemie's army in front of us, and is not with, or about, Richmond—at all, unless it be incidental to the main object.


Although invigorated by reviewing and talking with the troops, Lincoln had traveled to the Army of the Potomac’s encampment principally to meet with General Hooker. Early in the war, the president, acutely aware of his limited experience in military matters, had tended to defer to his generals. By 1863, however, he was armed with knowledge gained from his study of military science—and from his own, and his generals’, costly mistakes. After Hooker spoke repeatedly of moving against the Confederate capital, Richmond, Lincoln wrote a memorandum to the general pointing out that the Army of the Potomac and Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia were “face to face with a narrow river between them,” and stressing that Hooker’s main objective must be to "harrass and menace" and, when the opportunity arose, “pitch into” Lee’s Confederate force.