Manuscripts
Circulars, orders, recommendations
- Description
- The collection consists primarily of military records accumulated by the headquarters of Union Army General Joseph Hooker from October 1861 through September 1864, along with two documents from the 1870s. The papers relate to the battles of Antietam, Brandy Station, Second Bull Run, Fair Oaks, Chancellorsville, Fort Donelson, Fort Henry, the Seven Days Battles, Malvern Hill, South Mountain, and Williamsburg, as well as the Siege of Yorktown. They focus on the Union Army’s Peninsula Campaign of 1862 and Gettysburg Campaign of 1863, with most events taking place in Virginia, Maryland, and Pennsylvania. The records document the movements of the XX Corps of the Army of the Cumberland, the Army of the Potomac, and the III Corps of the Army of Virginia. Materials include correspondence, general orders, dispatches, telegrams, reports, reconnaissance reports, and lists of battle casualties and prisoners taken. The collection contains records involving senior military leaders, including William Averell, Daniel Butterfield, George H. Chapman, Joseph Dickinson, Abner Doubleday, Thomas Eckert, George W. Getty, Ulysses S. Grant, Henry W. Halleck, Samuel Heintzelman, R. B. Marcy, George McClellan, George Meade, Henry Naglee, Alfred Pleasonton, John Sedgwick, Daniel Sickles, Edwin Stanton, George Stoneman, John D. Tidball, William Whipple, and Seth Williams. Other military figures mentioned include George Custer, Jeb Stuart, and James Longstreet. Several items are copies of dispatches and telegrams to and from President Abraham Lincoln, who is also mentioned elsewhere in the papers. The collection documents escaped enslaved people in military camps, including some who worked for the Union Army, as well as enslavers seeking them. Free African Americans and African American troops are also mentioned. Additional subjects include Port Tobacco, Maryland; the Rappahannock River region, Virginia; cavalry operations; Sickles' Excelsior Brigade; the military use of balloons; courts-martials; and disciplinary incidents involving drunkenness, desertion, and other infractions. The collection also contains hand-drawn and printed maps of military movements and battles, several Civil War–related books owned by Joseph Hooker, and a printed series of General Orders.
