Originally aired on April 26, 1996 - In part 87 of our Civil War series, Virginia Tech history professor James Robertson tells us why no figure better personifies the Peter Principle than Confederate General John B. Hood.
#87 – General Hood (Peter Principle)
The Peter Principle is a modern-day belief that a man is promoted in life until he attains his level of incompetence – that is, he continues to climb up the ladder of success one step beyond his ability. No figure in the Civil War more personified that misfortune than Confederate General John B. Hood.
He was born into Kentucky aristocracy in 1831. At West Point, Hood discovered how limited his intellectual gifts ere. He almost flunked out of the academy because he could never master mathematics, that staple of the curriculum there. Although Hood managed to graduate in 1849, he stood near the bottom of his class.
Twelve years of uneventful soldier life followed in the West. The one pleasant acquisition for Hood was a lifelong attachment for Texas and its people. When that state left the Union in 1861, Hood journeyed to Richmond in search of a Confederate command. It came with the colonelcy of the 4th Texas Infantry. Hood molded the regiment into a first-class unit and demonstrated in the process a talent for discipline and high morale.
His appearance was certainly an asset. Magnificently built, the handsome Hood stood 6 feet, 2 inches tall. Hair and full beard were auburn in color, with a conspicuous cowlick sweeping back on his head. In the middle of a long and lean face were large blue eyes that appeared sad until battle caused them to sparkle.
For the first half of the war, Hood’s career was an integral part of the history of the Army of Northern Virginia. He became a brigadier general in March, 1862, and led all Texas units in the Virginia army. At Williamsburg and Gaines’ Mill, Hood showed that only A. P. Hill could equal his as an aggressive fighter. At Second Manassas, Antietam, and Fredericksburg, Lee employed Hood and his men as shock troops for insertion into the most desperate situations. Promotion of Hood to major general came in the autumn.
Gettysburg brought Hood his first crippling wound. He was shot in the left arm and never regained use of that limb. Three months later, at Chickamauga, Hood’s right leg was so mangled that it had to be amputated. At the age of thirty-two, he clumped about on crutches with one arm dangling uselessly at his side. To ride horseback, Hood had to be strapped to the saddle. Still, he continued to display gallantry at the head of a corps.
In mid-July, 1864, with Confederate forces having been shoved into earthworks of Atlanta, Hood too command of the Army of Tennessee. He quickly launched a series of ill-conceived, soundly defeated attacks on the Union army. Atlanta fell in September.
Hood took his battered army into Tennessee, where he was first outmaneuvered and then outfought. His foolish attacks at Franklin were almost suicidal. In mid-December, Federals assailed his position at Nashville, turned both Confederate flanks, and sent what was left of the Southern army fleeing southward in one of the most overwhelming setbacks of the war.
As a divisional or corps commander, John Hood put together some of the best combat units the South had; but at the head of an army, he was too impulsive, too aggressive, too lacking in administrative skills, too blind to the big picture, to be a success. He demonstrated that courage and competence do not always go hand in hand.
Hood made his postwar home in New Orleans. In August, 1879, he, his wife, and a daughter perished in a yellow fever epidemic. Hood left behind heavy debts and ten orphaned children who became wards of the South. For years afterward, Confederate survivors sang Hood’s epitaph to the tune of The Yellow Rose of Texas:
You may talk about your Beauregard,
And tell of General Lee,
But the gallant Hood of Texas
Played hell in Tennessee.
