Ol’ Joe Hooker, won’t you come out of the Wilderness?
Come out of The Wilderness, come out of the Wilderness?
Ol’ Joe Hooker, won’t you come out of the Wilderness?
Bully boys, hey! Bully boys, ho!If you want to have a good time, jine the cavalry!
Jine the cavalry! Jine the cavalry!
If you want to catch the Devil, if you want to have fun,
If you want to smell Hell, jine the cavalry!
Today, 150 years ago, on the second bloodiest day of the War of Northern Aggression, General “Stonewall” Jackson lay wounded, having been hit by friendly fire the previous night during a recon of the battle lines after dark. Command of his corps, that had routed so much of the Army of the Potomac the previous day, fell to General A. P. Hill, who also fell wounded in turn.
General Rodes was next in line to take command, but by mutual agreement, General J.E.B. Stuart, the glamorous cavalry comander, took charge instead. It was his first time commanding infantry, but by all accounts he acquitted himself more than manfully, continuing to push the advantage that Jackson had gained on the 2nd. Said Stephen W. Sears,
It is hard to see how Jeb Stuart, in a new command, a cavalryman commanding infantry and artillery for the first time, could have done a better job. The astute Porter Alexander believed all credit was due: “Altogether, I do not think there was a more brilliant thing done in the war than Stuart’s extricating that command from the extremely critical position in which he found it.”
Stuart also spontaneously invented a new verse to the his theme song, “Jine the Cavalry,” which mocked the Union Commander, “Fighting Joe” Hooker, and Stuart sang the song all day while leading Jackson’s men into battle.
Hooker spent a good portion of the morning unconscious from an artillery blast that blew him off the porch of his command post, and accordingly, probably did not hear Stuart’s musical embellishments first hand.
