No new books so when I came home I picked one off the bookshelf, Chancellorsville 1863...Wow, according to the inside flap I bought that book in 1994...Opened it pretty much at random, read some of the pages I had tabbed and then wanted to get to the "good" part. Didn't get there. What happened to Hooker?:
In boyhood games and in the White House, he had advanced himself by puffing his chest and saying "Look at me." In the field, from Mexico onward, his performance had backed up his bluster. But it is easier, in a way, to ride a white horse out front in battle, where all can see, than it is to command from an army headquarters. Out front, the display of bravery is seen as bravery itself. There a man can subdue inner doubts by putting himself where hesitation would be obvious to all, and so impermissible. There the enemy is shells and ranks of soldiers, brightly visible with regimental flags; before them, impetuosity is cheered more than calculation.
Like that you mean! I focused on the first clause of that first bolded sentence and it immediately struck me as true, or plausible, for a certain "type," Holmes' word, like Humphreys and Abbott, the type that's really secretly scared shitless but who sees a battle as an "opportunity" (Humphreys word, on F-burg) to prove one's "manhood" (both Humphreys and Abbott at F-burg), to their doubters, one's father (Abbott) and preeminently oneself. We've all heard guys say "I ain't scared-a nuthin!"
They are the type who then go out and murder nine people and maybe get killed themselves. False bravado. Fake courage. To expose yourself gratuitously to getting killed is not courage, or it's beyond courage, it is to act as a "maniac." That is the word of somebody who observed Humphreys at F-burg.For that "type," I could see acting as did Humphreys and Abbott, who were of that type!
But then I read the second clause of that first sentence, "...than it is to command from an army headquarters," and I instantly grasped the applicability to "Fighting" Joe:
At headquarters, a commander is surrounded by other officers, but he is alone in command.
Can't you just see Hooker sitting there--alone--with the bottle, liquid courage...
...and it hitting him all of a sudden: Lee is out there, not just an abstract "enemy," but Robert E. Lee himself. Gulp, gulp, gulp, gulp. And Jackson!
Hooker, especially, was alone with the knowledge that now at last, the battle was his own to win or lose. There would be no one above for him to blame later. He had given himself such a buildup that his soldiers and his country expected great things from him.
He had outmaneuvered the vaunted Lee, and led the applause for himself...But Hooker hesitated, waiting for still more reinforcements. While he waited, Lee acted. When Hooker then moved on May 1...Hooker himself, in his mind, met Robert E. Lee.
At the moment of truth, he folded.
"You can go forward, then." Now...back to the good part.
In boyhood games and in the White House, he had advanced himself by puffing his chest and saying "Look at me." In the field, from Mexico onward, his performance had backed up his bluster. But it is easier, in a way, to ride a white horse out front in battle, where all can see, than it is to command from an army headquarters. Out front, the display of bravery is seen as bravery itself. There a man can subdue inner doubts by putting himself where hesitation would be obvious to all, and so impermissible. There the enemy is shells and ranks of soldiers, brightly visible with regimental flags; before them, impetuosity is cheered more than calculation.
They are the type who then go out and murder nine people and maybe get killed themselves. False bravado. Fake courage. To expose yourself gratuitously to getting killed is not courage, or it's beyond courage, it is to act as a "maniac." That is the word of somebody who observed Humphreys at F-burg.For that "type," I could see acting as did Humphreys and Abbott, who were of that type!
But then I read the second clause of that first sentence, "...than it is to command from an army headquarters," and I instantly grasped the applicability to "Fighting" Joe:
At headquarters, a commander is surrounded by other officers, but he is alone in command.
Can't you just see Hooker sitting there--alone--with the bottle, liquid courage...
...and it hitting him all of a sudden: Lee is out there, not just an abstract "enemy," but Robert E. Lee himself. Gulp, gulp, gulp, gulp. And Jackson!
Hooker, especially, was alone with the knowledge that now at last, the battle was his own to win or lose. There would be no one above for him to blame later. He had given himself such a buildup that his soldiers and his country expected great things from him.
At the moment of truth, he folded.
"You can go forward, then." Now...back to the good part.
