Terrible Swift Sword (24 page)

 

THE ARMY OF THE Shenandoah poured into Winchester, and Crook took Sheridan to Rebecca Wright's home. The schoolteacher heard “sabers clanking against the porch” and found a group of Union officers waiting outside. She welcomed them with handshakes, and when they came inside, Sheridan told her it was “entirely on information [Wright] had sent him that he had fought the battle.” He promised never to forget her “courage and patriotism.”
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Sheridan sat down at Wright's desk and composed his battle report. He later sent a telegram to Grant announcing the great victory. His army had captured 2,500 to 3,000 prisoners, five artillery pieces, and nine battle flags. It had sustained 4,500 casualties, and Sheridan estimated Early's total dead and wounded to be comparable. In their hasty retreat to the south, toward Fisher's Hill, the Rebels had left behind 3,000 wounded. “We just sent them a whirling through Winchester, and we are after them tomorrow. The army behaved splendidly,” Sheridan wrote.

Grant replied the next day: “I have just received the news of your great victory and ordered each of the Armies here to fire a salute of one hundred guns in honor of it at 7 a.m. tomorrow morning.—If practicable push your success and make all you can of it.” Grant's bland congratulatory note did not begin to convey his exultation—and relief—over the victory. It was, wrote Brigadier General Horace Porter of Grant's staff, no less than “an entire vindication of Grant's judgment” in bringing Sheridan to the Shenandoah Valley despite the doubts of Lincoln and Edwin Stanton.

The president and war secretary telegraphed Sheridan their own laudatory messages; their previous reservations about him were gone. Stanton made Sheridan's temporary appointment as commander of the Middle Military Division a permanent one. He also promoted Sheridan to brigadier general in the regular army, making his general rank permanent and not brevet. Lincoln simply wrote, “God bless you all, officers and men. Strongly inclined to come up and see you.”
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In his report to Robert E. Lee, Early wrote that he “had already defeated the enemy's infantry, and could have continued to do so, but the enemy's very great superiority in cavalry and the comparative inefficiency of ours turned the scale against us.”
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SHERIDAN'S TROOPS BROKE OFF their pursuit of Early during the early evening of September 19. The next day, the army marched to Strasburg, fifteen miles to the south, where the Shenandoah Valley split into two smaller valleys: the Luray on the
east side of Massanutten Mountain and the Shenandoah on the west side. Early was five miles beyond Strasburg in the western valley, in strongly fortified positions on Fisher's Hill.

Fisher's Hill, three and a half miles wide, commanded the western valley's northern approaches. The jagged ridge extended west from Massanutten Mountain to Little North Mountain, a spur of the Alleghenies. Rising from the bed of Tumbling Run Creek, it appeared invulnerable to direct attack from the north. Assault troops would have to cross Tumbling Run under artillery fire and then charge uphill into the breastworks that the Confederates had erected on the ridge crest. Still possessing most of their guns and more than 12,000 men, Early was confident that his army could repulse any Yankee attack on Fisher's Hill.
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But a novel attack plan had suggested itself to George Crook. His VIII Corps would stealthily march during the night to the dense woods and ravines on Little North Mountain. The next day, while VI and XIX Corps ostentatiously prepared for an advance toward Tumbling Run, engaging the Confederates' full attention, VIII Corps would work its way under the forest canopy to the east face of Little North Mountain, from which it could strike the left and rear of Early's entrenched army.

 

THROUGH THE NIGHT OF September 20 into the morning of September 21, VIII Corps crossed Cedar Creek, reaching a stand of timber. Concealed from the Rebels manning the signal station on Three Top Mountain, part of Massanutten Mountain, VIII Corps spent nearly all of September 22 edging into position on Little North Mountain, while VI Corps diverted the Confederates' attention.

Sheridan had added another dimension to the plan. His two cardinal rules were always to act offensively and to follow up any advantage to the utmost—lessons that he had learned in Dennis Hart Mahan's “Science of War” seminar at West Point. In other words, never let a beaten enemy escape—as Early had at Winchester. Sheridan was determined this time to trap and destroy the Rebel army. He sent Torbert with two cavalry divisions to block Early's southward retreat.

At 4 p.m. on September 22, Crook's corps suddenly emerged from the forest in two parallel columns behind the Rebel breastworks. Led by Averell's 2nd Cavalry Division and Colonel Rutherford Hayes's infantry division, VIII Corps swung left, merging with an advancing VI Corps division. With surprising speed, they rolled up Early's battle lines.

It was a rout, plain and simple. This time, Early lost twenty guns and 1,100 prisoners. Confederate major general John Gordon wrote, “To all experienced soldiers the whole story is told in one word—‘flanked.'”
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Sheridan pronounced Fisher's Hill “a most signal victory” in his telegram to Grant that night. Grant quickly replied, “Keep on and your work will cause the fall of Richmond.”
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In a letter to his uncle, Hayes expressed great pride in Crook's clever plan that had so efficiently cracked Early's defenses. “General Crook is the brains of this army,” Hayes wrote. “Intellectually, [Sheridan] is not General Crook's equal,” although Hayes acknowledged that Sheridan was “a whole-souled, brave man.”
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TORBERT, WITH HIS IST and 3rd Divisions, had started up the Luray Valley on September 20 with the intention of getting behind Early and blocking his retreat when Fisher's Hill was attacked. Torbert planned to cross back into the main Shenandoah Valley at New Market, thirty miles south of Fisher's Hill. Before the cavalrymen reached New Market, however, they encountered Rebel horsemen, half as many as Torbert's, barring their way. Unnerving the Rebels by blowing 250 bugles in the fog, Wilson's 3rd Division initially drove Confederate brigadier general William Wickham's division six miles. But when Wickham regrouped and repelled an attack by Custer's brigade, Torbert timidly withdrew to Front Royal. Early's army retreated from Fisher's Hill unimpeded.
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Averell, too, had been singularly unaggressive in his pursuit of Early after rolling up his lines on Fisher's Hill. His 2nd Division had broken off the pursuit after seven miles and gone into camp for the night, letting the VI and XIX Corps infantry do the chasing for fifteen miles.
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The next day, Colonel Thomas Devin's cavalry brigade was fighting the Rebel rearguard at Mount Jackson, awaiting Averell's arrival. Averell got there late, after Devin's brigade had forced the Rebels to retreat. Sheridan reprimanded Averell for his tardiness and gave him explicit orders to do “actual fighting, with necessary casualties, before you retire.” Instead, Averell made camp for the night.

Sheridan was “astonished and chagrined” when he learned that his cavalry had failed to pursue or trap Early. “My disappointment was extreme,” he wrote. Torbert had made “little or no attempt” to dislodge Wickham and “ought to have made a fight.” Sheridan ordered him to redouble his efforts to get behind Early before he got away.

Averell's conduct, however, was not only disappointing but actionable, Sheridan believed. On September 1, Grant, already concerned about Averell's lack of aggressiveness, had authorized Sheridan to dismiss him if it became necessary. Sheridan now did so, citing his “growing indifference.” Averell responded by complaining that Sheridan had sought a pretext for his removal since choosing Torbert to be his cavalry commander, rather than Averell, who was Torbert's senior.
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Twenty-four-year-old Brigadier General George Custer initially became the new commander of Averell's 2nd Division. But a week later, when James Wilson was appointed to command Major General William Sherman's cavalry in Georgia, Custer was given Wilson's 3rd Division. Colonel William Powell of the 2nd West Virginia Cavalry took over Averell's former division.

The 3rd Division's brilliant, colorful new leader would transform it during the war's closing months into the army's most illustrious cavalry unit: Custer's Division. Custer, like many of Sheridan's other lieutenants—Wilson, Merritt, Crook, and later Ranald McKenzie—possessed the winning traits that Sheridan so prized: physical courage, audacity, energy, a knack for improvisation, and relentlessness. They would help shape the postwar army.
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JUBAL EARLY WITHDREW UP the Valley fifty miles to Port Republic. Grant proposed that Sheridan chase him through the Blue Ridge passes to Charlottesville and Gordonsville, where he could wreck the James River canal and the Virginia Central Railroad while advancing toward Richmond.

Sounding uncharacteristically cautious, Sheridan objected. “It is no easy matter to pass these mountain gaps & attack Charlottesville, hauling supplies through difficult passes fourteen miles in length & with a line of communication from 135 to 145 miles in length,” he wrote. Moreover, if he marched on Charlottesville, he said, he must detach Crook's VIII Corps to protect the B&O and Orange & Alexander Railroads. That would leave him with too few troops to complete his mission.
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He instead proposed marching north down the Valley, burning barns and crops and destroying livestock, then traveling by train and boat to join the Army of the Potomac at Petersburg. Disliking Sheridan's plan, Grant nonetheless left the final decision in his hands. Sheridan issued orders to withdraw down the Valley to Strasburg.
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THE TWO DEFEATS, COMING just three days apart, had left Early feeling depressed and frustrated. Sheridan had prevailed despite his manifest failures, Early believed. He had bogged down his army in Berryville Canyon, and his superb cavalry had been unable to cut off Early's retreat and destroy his army. “I have always thought that instead of being promoted, Sheridan ought to have been cashiered,” Early later wrote.
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In his report to Robert E. Lee, Early said that his men were exhausted, and many lacked shoes. He offered a halfhearted apology. “I deeply regret the present state of things, and I assure [you] everything in my power has been done to avert it. The enemy's force is very much larger than mine, being three or four to one.”

Early should in fact have been proud of his little army's outsized accomplishments: striking terror into the Union capital, compelling the Yankees to divert more than 40,000 troops to the Shenandoah Valley, and keeping them guessing for months as to his intentions. But rather than spare a kind word for the herculean efforts made by Early and his Army of the Valley—the Southern public at the moment was clamoring for Early's head—Lee replied with studied coolness: “I have such confidence in the men and officers that I am sure all will unite in the defense of the country.”

Lee promised to send back Kershaw's infantry division and a small cavalry brigade commanded by Brigadier General Thomas Rosser. He advised Early to hold Sheridan in check until he could concentrate his forces and then “strike him with all your strength. . . . . We are obliged to fight against great odds. A kind Providence will yet overrule everything for our good.”
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AUGUST–NOVEMBER 1864

PHILIP SHERIDAN SURVEYED HIS AWFUL HANDIWORK with satisfaction. Plumes of black smoke smudged the Shenandoah Valley's fairytale landscape of rolling green hills and brooks. In places, yellow flames could be seen shooting from a barn's gambrel roof or racing through a grain field. Distance muted the crackle of burning fires, the crash of barns and outbuildings collapsing in heaps of charred timbers, and the cries of women and children as the bluecoats shot down their livestock.

Ulysses Grant had ordered the destruction in his initial instructions to Sheridan. “Nothing should be left to invite the enemy to return,” Grant wrote.
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On August 17, two weeks after his appointment, Sheridan first acted on this directive—when Grant specifically ordered him to burn Loudoun County, the sanctuary of Lieutenant Colonel John Mosby. Mosby's mounted partisans, with maddening regularity, swooped down on Union wagon trains, bushwhacked Yankee couriers and scouts, and then melted back into the populace. Mosby's Rangers had recently attacked one of Sheridan's wagon trains, burning forty wagons, and seizing
430 mules, thirty-six horses, and two hundred head of cattle. “Where any of Mosby's men are caught with nothing to designate what they are, hang them without trial,” Grant instructed Sheridan.

Grant also wanted Sheridan's cavalry to round up the families of Mosby's men and imprison them at Fort McHenry “or some other secure place, as hostages for the good conduct of Mosby and his men”—in other words, he was to establish a Union concentration camp. This never happened; nor did Grant's suggestion that Sheridan's men seize all of Loudoun County's men under the age of fifty. “If not already soldiers they will be made so the moment the rebel army gets hold of them,” Grant had written in explaining this draconian proposal.
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