Baldy Smith and the Pursuit of Lee’s Army after Gettysburg

Maj. Gen. William Farrar “Baldy” Smith is an interesting fellow. I’ve learned to appreciate just how interesting a fellow he is from my work on the emergency militia forces that gathered in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania to defend the Keystone State against the Confederate invasion in 1863. I had never looked at any of what I’m about to discuss until a couple of weeks ago, when I decided that one of the things that I wanted to focus on in the book on the retreat from Gettysburg was the role played by Smith’s command, which has never been given any sort of a detailed treatment anywhere. Consequently, I immersed myself into this, and boy, did I find some interesting stuff when I did.

Baldy Smith was a West Pointer, and was, by all accounts, a brilliant engineer. He was also a good soldier, but for his penchant for not knowing when to keep his big mouth shut. Smith, a Vermonter, was the first colonel of the 3rd Vermont Infantry. Before long, he was the commander of the First Vermont Brigade, and by the time of McClellan’s Peninsula Campaign, he was a major general commanding a division of the 6th Corps. His date of commission is May 4, 1862.

After McClellan was relieved of command and Burnside took command of the Army of the Potomac, Burnside instituted the Grand Division organizational scheme for the Army of the Potomac. Each Grand Division consisted of two corps of infantry. The 6th Corps was part of the Left Grand Division, which was commanded by Maj. Gen. William B. Franklin, who had been Smith’s corps commander int he 6th Corps. When Franklin was promoted to Grand Division command, Smith was promoted to command the 6th Corps.

Smith, however, was his own worst enemy. After the twin debacles at Fredericksburg and Burnside’s Mud March, Smith and Franklin sent a letter to the War Department complaining bitterly about Burnside and seeking his removal from command. Although Burnside was eventually relieved at his own request, that letter sealed the fates of both Franklin and Smith. When Joseph Hooker took command of the Army of the Potomac, Smith was relieved of command of the 6th Corps and sent home to wait for orders.

In June 1863, when the Confederate invasion of Pennsylvania began, Maj. Gen. Darius N. Couch, whose commission as major general also dated back to May 4, 1862, was sent to Harrisburg, Pennsylvania to assume command of the Department of the Susquehanna. Couch, who had commanded the 2nd Corps at Chancellorsville, ended up in de facto command of the Army of the Potomac when Hooker was dazed by an artillery shell that struck the wooden post where he was standing, leaving him sick and concussed. Disgusted by Hooker’s bungling at Chancellorsville, Couch, the army’s senior corps commander, refused to serve under Hooker’s command, and asked to be relieved of command of the 2nd Corps. His request was granted, and he was instead sent to Harrisburg.

Smith, aware of the crisis, and wanting to help his old friend Couch, volunteered his services, even offering to serve as a lieutenant if that’s what Couch wanted him to do. Couch was assembling a large force of raw militia from New York and Pennsylvania. These men were emergency troops, had virtually no training, had no experience soldiering, and were not good for much other than as cannon fodder. Couch gladly accepted Smith’s offer and placed him in command of these troops. Smith now commanded about 4,000 of the worst troops the American Civil War had to offer, and it’s no surprise that they made little impact on the Gettysburg Campaign.

After the Union victory at Gettysburg, the Army of the Potomac followed Lee’s beaten army to the banks of the flooded Potomac, and Smith’s ragtag command was ordered to march to Maryland to join the army. Maj. Gen. George Gordon Meade, the commander of the Army of the Potomac, needed every able body he could get, experienced or not.

These orders horrified Smith. After commanding the 6th Corps–now commanded by Maj. Gen. John Sedgwick, his junior, Smith now led troops that he himself described as useless. “If you send an order for this command to report to Meade, will you at the same time order me to return to you, leaving [Brig. Gen. Joseph] Knipe in command?” Smith begged Couch on July 6, 1863. “You can appreciate how unpleasant it would be for me to serve under existing circumstances with the Army of the Potomac.” Couch denied the request, and Smith, a good soldier, pressed on with his thankless duty and suffered the inevitable personal humiliation that undoubtedly accompanied his return to the Army of the Potomac at the head of a useless command.

His command finally reached the main body of the Army of the Potomac on July 11. It’s interesting to note that Smith outranked George Meade, whose date of commission as major general was in November 1862 (in fact, Henry Slocum also outranked Meade, but Slocum had specifically agreed to serve under a junior officer). Had Smith been anything but a good soldier, he could have made a big kerfuffle about serving under someone junior to him. However, and to his credit, he did not do so. Instead, Smith tolerated some pretty humiliating circumstances and performed admirable duty under some extremely difficult circumstances.

Smith certainly had his faults, but it’s hard to fault such selfless service as he performed during the Gettysburg Campaign. It’s episodes like this that demonstrate why I find the Gettysburg Campaign so fascinating, and why I find the pursuit of Lee’s army, in particular, intriguing.