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Thanks to @Saphroneth humoring me in his own thread about an 1862 Overland, I thought it prudent to create my own thread about an 1863 campaign.
So the point of divergence I have in mind is Reynolds with 1st Corps arrives in time to assume the right-rear of Howard's 11th Corps, securing Hooker's flanks. Jackson's flank attack fails as a result and, when Sedgwick successfully storms Marye's Heights on May 3rd, Lee is compelled to withdraw; Hooker still abandoning Hazel Grove enabling enabling the ANV to still re-unite and then move to Spotsylvania Court House. Once it becomes clear the Confederates have retreated, Hooker's confidence slowly begins to restore itself and the Army of the Potomac begins to cautiously pursue. From there, we have an Overland Campaign in 1863.
One important issue that will differentiate the campaign from 1864 is the issue of the declining strength of the Army of the Potomac. To quote from Gettysburg by Sears:
So the point of divergence I have in mind is Reynolds with 1st Corps arrives in time to assume the right-rear of Howard's 11th Corps, securing Hooker's flanks. Jackson's flank attack fails as a result and, when Sedgwick successfully storms Marye's Heights on May 3rd, Lee is compelled to withdraw; Hooker still abandoning Hazel Grove enabling enabling the ANV to still re-unite and then move to Spotsylvania Court House. Once it becomes clear the Confederates have retreated, Hooker's confidence slowly begins to restore itself and the Army of the Potomac begins to cautiously pursue. From there, we have an Overland Campaign in 1863.
One important issue that will differentiate the campaign from 1864 is the issue of the declining strength of the Army of the Potomac. To quote from Gettysburg by Sears:
IN HIS RELUCTANT planning for a renewed offensive, sent to the president on May 13, General Hooker had pointed to an especially thorny problem—the need for what he termed a "partial reorganization" of the Army of the Potomac. This was necessary because of an ongoing, massive, and unavoidable reduction in his forces. During the next two months the Potomac army would have to come to terms with the mustering out of no fewer than fifty-three infantry regiments, 30,500 men. This came to better than 27 percent of the foot soldiers that had made the Chancellorsville fight. 16
In the first weeks of the war, two Northern states, New York and Maine, had signed up volunteer regiments for two years of service rather than the three-year standard in other states. Spring 1863 saw these two-year men— thirty-one regiments of New Yorkers and two regiments from Maine— scheduled for mustering out. At the same time, 16,700 short-termers—nine months' men from Pennsylvania and New Jersey, enlisted for service during the Peninsula-Second Manassas crisis times in August and September of 1862—were also preparing to start for home. "The dull monotony of camp life," Corporal James Latta entered in his diary on May 24, was enlivened by "the occasional distant shouts of troops whose terms of enlistment has expired and may be heard day after day." According to General Sedgwick, every day, day after day, a thousand men were leaving the army. 17
In mid-May, as Hooker and the president discussed the pros and cons of renewing the offensive on the Rappahannock, Hooker observed that his former numerical superiority over the enemy was shrinking alarmingly. "My marching force of infantry is cut down to about 80,000...," he explained on May 13. This reflected both the casualties of Chancellorsville and the tidal wave of departing men whose time was up, and the downward spiral of the numbers was not finished. No fewer than twenty-five regiments were due to be mustered out during June. Even an immediate advance would still leave troops of dubious motivation in the ranks. As General Sedgwick had observed of the same situation before Chancellorsville, "No troops with but a few days to leave are going to risk much in a fight." Unless it was reinforced, the Army of the Potomac, on July 1, would have nearly 48,000 fewer men than it had had on May 1.
These departures produced serious gaps in the army's organization. In the First Division of the First Corps, for example, an entire brigade, five regiments of nine-months' men, was slated for mustering out, and a second brigade in the division would lose three of its four regiments. The Second Corps saw nine regiments depart, resulting in the loss of a brigade and a general pruning. The Third Corps was reduced from three divisions to two as a result of its Chancellorsville losses and losing men whose time was up. Meade's Fifth Corps was hardest hit, losing thirteen regiments of shorttermers and two-year men. Meade had to break up one of his divisions as a result, losing its commander, Andrew A. Humphreys, to another corps. "I am very sorry to lose Humphreys," Meade told his wife. "He is a most valuable officer, besides being an associate of the most agreeable character." 18
Hooker requested reinforcements to make good at least some of these losses, but that only produced a steady diet of haggling with General Halleck. Of cordial cooperation between general-in-chief and general commanding there was none. The enmity between the two men dated back to their days in the old army in California, and when he assumed command of the Army of the Potomac in January, Hooker had made but a single stipulation—that he not have to deal with Halleck, but only with the president. He told Lincoln that neither he nor his army "expected justice" at Halleck's hands. This awkward arrangement had worked well enough, so far as Hooker was concerned, while he was reforming and reinvigorating the Potomac army and planning his Chancellorsville campaign. Now, however, stigmatized by defeat and with few allies, Joe Hooker had lost that upper hand.
Henry Halleck was a master of bureaucratic subterfuge and circuitous paper-shuffling, talents he displayed when asked by Secretary of War Edwin M. Stanton what replacements the Department of Washington might furnish to the depleted Army of the Potomac. After numerous paragraphs of hedging and cautionary foreboding, Halleck's answer was ... not a man could be spared. There was, to be sure, a "movable force" of 8,600 men attached to the Washington garrison, but in the general-in-chief's opinion, no matter which direction General Hooker might move (or, indeed, which direction General Lee might move), this force must stay where it was. After all, should it go on active service, "we should then have no movable force to throw upon any point which should be seriously threatened." In due course, there would be reinforcements for the Army of the Potomac, but not all in time to be put to use, and none in time for Hooker's benefit. In the meanwhile, General Halleck quietly laid his snares for an unwary Fighting Joe.