On Wednesday, June 24, 1863 Union General Joseph Hooker wrote the War Department in Washington, D.C. that he would send a corps or two across the Potomac River, making Washington more secure and positioning himself on Robert E. Lee’s probable line of retreat once Lee decided to return to Virginia.
Who or what would force Lee to retreat seems not to have entered Hooker’s mind, as the general requested orders from the War Department while acknowledging, except for his relation to his own army, “I don’t know whether I am standing on my head or feet.”
One has to believe that Hooker’s lack of confidence was the last straw for Abraham Lincoln. Two days later Lincoln would remove Joseph Hooker as commander of the Union Army of the Potomac.