The Real Custer (27 page)

Marvin later found refuge in the nearby house of an old woman, who said, “Have no fear; I had three of Custer's men in my house when Mosby's men were all over it, looking for them; and I had two of Mosby's men concealed in my house when Custer's men were here looking for them. Any one who comes to me for assistance gets it, if I can give it to them.” Marvin was joined by one of the other men they tried to execute, who had been wounded and played dead. In time it turned out even twice-shot Bennett survived. So of the seven condemned Custer men, only the three who were hanged actually died.
³²

Mosby sent a note to Sheridan explaining that the intended executions were direct and proportional retaliation for the killings of his own men. “Since the murder of my men not less than 700 prisoners, including many officers of high rank, captured from your army by this command, have been forwarded to Richmond,” Mosby wrote, “but the execution of my purpose of retaliation was deferred in order, as far as possible, to confine its operation to the men of Custer and Powell.” He noted that future prisoners “will be treated with the kindness due to their condition, unless some new act of barbarity shall compel me reluctantly to adopt a course of policy repulsive to humanity.”
³³

Mosby's letter had its intended effect. The tit-for-tat killings, at least the official ones, stopped. This was mostly in the Union's interest, since Mosby could take prisoner many more boys in blue than Sheridan could find Mosby men. A no-quarter policy was more deadly for Union troops than rebels.

Sheridan continued his operations in Mosby's Confederacy, though he refrained from revenge killings and to some degree paid more respect to the people in the area. In late November he sent three brigades on a
scorched-earth mission, significantly more troops than the single regiment he earlier claimed could do the job. They “scoured the country completely between the Blue Ridge and Bull Run mountains.”
³⁴
Sheridan explained to Major General Halleck that he would have had to employ “ten men to his one” to “break [Mosby] up,” and instead sought to make “a scape-goat of him for the destruction of private rights.” Sheridan believed there would be “an intense hatred of him in that portion of this Valley which is nearly a desert” and that he would soon punish Loudoun County, “and let them know there is a God in Israel.”
³⁵
But he ordered Merritt, who commanded two of the brigades, that “no dwellings are to be burned, and that no personal violence be offered the citizens.” He was to confine his activities to forage, barns, mills, and livestock. “This destruction may as well commence at once,” he wrote, “and the responsibility of it must rest upon the authorities at Richmond, who have acknowledged the legitimacy of guerrilla bands.”
³⁶

This campaign also failed. Some of Mosby's companies relocated for the winter, but they returned in the spring. Mosby was wounded in a fight but never captured, and Sheridan could only take solace in periodic and erroneous reports that he was dead. Later, in his official report on the Valley Campaign, Sheridan rationalized his failure, claiming incredibly that he had “constantly refused to operate against [Mosby's] bands,” since they “prevented straggling and kept my trains well closed up, and discharged such other duties as would have required a provost guard of at least two regiments of cavalry.”

The counterinsurgency in Virginia was one of the darker episodes of the war, noted on both sides for its brutality. Walt Whitman, who described the back-and-forth atrocities in his essay “A Glimpse of War's Hell Scenes,” wrote,

            
Multiply the above by scores, aye hundreds—verify it in all the forms that different circumstances, individuals, places,
could afford—light it with every lurid passion, the wolf's, the lion's lapping thirst for blood—the passionate, boiling volcanoes of human revenge for comrades, brothers slain—with the light of burning farms, and heaps of smutting, smouldering black embers—and in the human heart everywhere black, worse embers—and you have an inkling of this war.
³⁷

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

“CUSTER IS A TRUMP”

I
n the fall of 1864, George Custer was at the top of his game. In three and a half years of war, he had risen from being a second lieutenant to a brevet major general. He had fought in countless engagements large and small, some of which were among the great battles of the war, and in which he played a significant role. He had married the love of his life and was nationally known and acclaimed. In November, Private George Perkins of the 6th New York Independent Battery gave his assessment of Custer in part of a regular series of reports he wrote for the
Middlesex Journal
:

            
In the whole of the campaign which commenced with the battle of Winchester, no general has won more praise than Custer, and in this last fight he has fairly doubled his laurels. He is a great favorite and everybody claims that he has nobly
earned the second star on his shoulder. He seems to possess all the fire and courage of Kilpatrick, but infinitely more judgment. In personal appearance he is the very model of a dashing cavalry officer. His figure is slight and elegant and he sits on his horse most gracefully. His costume is a dark red velvet cavalry jacket, with pants of a light drab. His long yellow hair flows out from beneath a broad brimmed hat, and streams in ringlets far behind him as he rides along at a swift canter. His features are strongly marked and pale. His voice is heavy yet musical. The members of his old brigade always cheer him when he passes, and he always returns the compliment by waving his hat above his head. No wonder he is admired when to graces of person he adds excellence of mind. When he lifts his hat his fair complexion and hair, and fine contour of head give him the look of a young Apollo.
¹

The back-and-forth continued between the cavalry in the valley through the fall. Custer and Rosser continued to spar, and at times the contests seemed to take on a personal quality. During one fight, Custer spied Rosser's battle flag among retreating enemy troops and led a regimental charge to try to seize it. The charge lost momentum before the riders could overtake the flag bearer, but Custer and three other men kept riding hard for the banner and almost took it.
²

As the year waned, the two armies settled into winter quarters. The weather was severe, with frequent snow and bitter cold. “The rigor of the season was very much against the success of any mounted operations,” Sheridan recalled. But the winter was especially punishing for the besieged Confederates in Richmond, and Grant wanted to increase their misery by breaking up the railroads that fed the gloomy capital.

On December 19, two Union cavalry columns set off south. The larger, Merritt's and Powell's divisions led by Torbert, headed east through Chester Gap with orders to skirt the edge of the Blue Ridge Mountains south of Charlottesville, disrupting the Virginia Central Railway lines there, then moving on to Lynchburg and breaking that supply line as well. The second column, with Custer's division, would proceed straight down the valley as a diversionary force, engaging the Confederate units there and pushing on to link up with Torbert at Lynchburg 175 miles from Winchester. The columns were traveling light, with no artillery or wagons, carrying their supplies with them. “Nothing but extremely bad weather will prevent good results,” Sheridan wrote optimistically to Grant.
³

Early was holed up in Staunton, with a reduced force and uncertain will to fight. Custer was confident that he would be in Lynchburg for Christmas. But it was hard going for the men and their horses. Cold temperatures, ice, snow, and sleet slowed the column and did nothing for morale.

Two days later Custer's men were bivouacked at Lacey Springs, about sixty miles south of Winchester, outside of Harrisonburg. In the predawn hours, word came from the picket line that rebels were advancing. Custer began to ready his men, and just as they were going to horse, “a yell and a simultaneous volley, and the flash of rebel carbines and rifles, gave warning that the enemy was already in their camp in large force.” In the darkness Rosser's cavalrymen had infiltrated the Union perimeter wearing Federal wool overcoats. Troops fired almost randomly with pistols and carbines, while rebels engaged hand-to-hand with drawn sabers. Union troops fell back, re-formed, and charged the enemy. But between the darkness, the intermingled units, and the Confederates in blue, it was unclear how the contest was going. “The only way to distinguish friend from foe was by the sound of the voice,” one report read.
“It finally came to a fight like that of the Irishman, every man ‘on his own hook.'”
⁴
In the confusion, troops from both sides would make for camp with prisoners to find themselves among the enemy. At Custer's headquarters a rebel soldier came up and asked him which regiment it was. “Take off that blue overcoat,” Custer ordered, and took the man prisoner.
⁵

The weight of battle turned against them, and the Union troops withdrew, many men riding bareback because they had not had time to saddle their mounts. Custer captured two battle flags and took twenty-seven prisoners, but lost two killed, twenty-two wounded, and twenty prisoners to Rosser. Meanwhile, Torbert's column was checked by Lomax's cavalry and some infantry sent from Richmond near Gordonsville, and the two columns returned to Winchester, with hundreds of men frostbitten and with little to show for their efforts.
⁶

As the winter of 1864–65 drew to a close, the war was looking bleak for the Confederacy. Around the same time Custer was being run out of Lacey's Springs, General Sherman arrived in Savannah, completing his march through Georgia. By mid-February he was in Columbia, South Carolina, and pressing north, sparring as he went with rebel General Joseph E. Johnston's weary troops. The siege of Richmond continued, and Jubal Early's command had been pared down to furnish defenders for the Confederate capital. At year's open he could only muster a few thousand troops to defend the Shenandoah Valley, and many of them were young boys and other replacements.

The valley was ripe for the taking. On February 20 Grant wired Sheridan, “As soon as it is possible to travel I think you will have no difficulty about reaching Lynchburg with a cavalry force alone.” This movement, coupled with massed cavalry actions in Tennessee, Mississippi, and
Alabama, along with Sherman “eating out the vitals of South Carolina—is all that will be wanted to leave nothing for the rebellion to stand upon.”
⁷

Sheridan's force faced little opposition as they moved south. “Parties of the enemy made their appearance on our flanks,” he wrote, “but no attention was paid to them.”
⁸
Early's defensive force at Staunton consisted of “a local provost guard, and a company of reserves, composed of boys under 18 years of age.”
⁹
Rosser attempted a delaying action but failed, and with the road to Staunton open, Early evacuated the city and fired the bridge over Christian's Creek.

Sheridan's force occupied the town on March 2, and he immediately ordered Custer to give chase to Early to prevent him from withdrawing to Richmond. Early had drawn up his forces, two brigades of infantry and Rosser's cavalry, in an entrenched defensive line outside the town of Waynesboro, ten miles east on the road to Charlottesville. The weather was inclement, cold and rainy. Early intended only to delay the Union forces while he withdrew his artillery, for which he had no horse teams.

The rebels had formed a line on the outskirts of the town, the left anchored near a bow in the South River. As Custer approached with his column, he noted that the flank was exposed in front of the river, inviting an attack. He hurriedly sent three regiments against Early's weak left while he assaulted the center with two brigades, swiftly breaking the line. “The rebels fired one volley,” the
New York Herald
reported, “and then fled like sheep.”
¹⁰
The 8th New York and the 1st Connecticut Cavalries charged through the town, “sabering a few men as they went along,” and seized the river crossing at the opposite end, cutting off the main Confederate escape route. “The enemy threw down their arms and surrendered,” Sheridan noted, “with cheers at the suddenness with which they were captured.”
¹¹
Early lost 9 pieces of light artillery, 13 battle flags, and over 1,200 of the 1,600 men he commanded.