The Real Custer (28 page)

Early and his general officers escaped the net, along with Rosser's cavalry. “It has always been a wonder to me how they escaped,” Sheridan said, “unless they hid in obscure places in the houses of the town.”
¹²
In fact, Early had been cut off from his command by Custer's sudden movement, and, climbing a hill outside of Waynesboro to view the battle, he said he “had the mortification of seeing the greater part of my command being carried off as prisoners.”
¹³

Custer pushed across the Blue Ridge through Rockfish Gap toward Charlottesville, fighting muddy roads and cold, driving rain. The city fathers met his mud-spattered troops outside of town and surrendered it without a fight. Custer paused there for a few days as the rest of Sheridan's force came up, and set about destroying the locks of the James River canal connector and tearing up the rail lines heading east, west, and south.

While in town Custer's men commandeered the presses of a local newspaper and published the
Third Cavalry Division Chronicle
, which contained the general's official reports of the recent days' actions. A notice called for people to furnish “donations” of provisions to Custer's division and was signed “Jubal Early, commissary for General Sheridan's army.” An advertisement offered “Two Dollars Reward, Confederate Currency,” for information concerning the whereabouts of a runaway slave, “Jube, answering to the name of Early,” and a one-cent reward for Rosser.
¹⁴

Rosser's house was nearby, and his wife, Betty, invited Custer in for a brief visit. She knew it would be her husband's wish to show some hospitality even though “she never supposed she could bring herself to speak to, much less invite a Yankee officer into her home.”
¹⁵
As he was leaving, George held out a gold pen to her baby Sarah, whom she was holding, saying, “Give this to your Papa dear, and tell him it is from a friend who whipped him yesterday.” Mrs. Rosser said no, but Sarah
grasped the pen, and by the time Betty got it from her, “the Yankee was down the steps and in the saddle in a flash.”
¹⁶

With no strong force opposing him, Sheridan chose to move east rather than toward Danville and Sherman beyond, tearing up railroads and hunting the remains of Early's forces. Custer's division moved to Frederick Hall Station to break tracks, piling up railroad ties and heating rails on top, then wrapping the red-hot rails around telegraph poles. Custer inspected the telegraph office at the station and found a dispatch from Early to Lee indicating he was planning a surprise cavalry attack on Sheridan's forces near Goochland using 150 men of the 1st Virginia Cavalry under Colonel Morgan. Custer immediately set out to find and destroy them.

The chase was lively; when Early saw the Federal cavalry approaching in the distance, he knew he had been found out and scattered his force. Federal horsemen surged ahead with a whoop, and Custer shouted that the man who brought in Early would receive a thirty-day furlough. At one point Captain Burton of Custer's staff closed to within a few yards of Early and his orderly, but given the orderly's more pristine uniform, took him for the general and demanded he surrender. The orderly responded by shooting Burton's horse. Early finally escaped over the South Anna River, fleeing on foot; he was saved by the onset of night.
¹⁷
With a heavy heart, Robert E. Lee relieved “Old Jube” of command on March 30. With the destruction of Early's army complete and the valley secure, Sheridan remarked, “Custer is a trump.”

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

“FIGHTING LIKE A VIKING”

S
heridan's cavalry rejoined the eastern army for the final push on Richmond. Torbert took command of the rump of the Army of the Shenandoah to maintain security in the valley, and Sheridan elevated Merritt to corps command over Devins's, Crook's, and Custer's divisions.

Richmond's last remaining supply lines were the Danville and Southside Railroads. Grant planned to swing forces four miles west of the rebel works around Petersburg, seize the ford over Hatcher's Run, then cut the Southside Railroad near Sutherland's Station. He could then move north and bottle up Lee's army and the Confederate government, ending the war. Grant's greatest fear in the weeks leading up to the campaign was that Lee would sense the growing danger, abandon Richmond, and move west to unite with Johnston's army in North Carolina. But the symbolic importance of Richmond kept Lee in place.

Sheridan began the movement on March 29 with the Cavalry Corps and infantry from II and V Corps. He was hampered by strong rains and muddy roads, and the going was slow. A key objective was the strategic crossroads of Five Forks, just south of the Hatcher's Run ford, which Merritt's scouts learned was lightly defended. He pushed two cavalry brigades forward against the mud and stubborn fire from rebel pickets, reaching the objective by mid-morning on the thirty-first.

But the Confederates had gotten wind of Sheridan's plan and were already on the move. A force of ten thousand men under Major General George Pickett crossed Hatcher's Run and swept down on Merritt's overmatched cavalry, pushing them south toward Dinwiddie Courthouse.
¹
Pickett had three brigades of cavalry under Rosser, Fitzhugh Lee, and W. H. F. “Rooney” Lee (second son of the Confederate commander); the three infantry brigades from his division; and two more from Bushrod Johnson's. After a check administered by Gregg's and Gibbs's brigades, Pickett reformed and continued to push south.

Custer had been at the rear with the baggage train as the battle developed. As Pickett's men drove the Union troops, Sheridan sent riders back to bring Custer forward on the double. “Custer never required more than simple orders on such an occasion,” Sheridan's adjutant general, Colonel Frederick C. Newhall, recalled, “for he had in himself the vim which insured a prompt response to the wishes of the commanding general.”
²
He rushed to the front with Capehart's and Pennington's brigades following, and when he arrived, “a scene of the wildest excitement prevailed,” a reporter wrote.
³
Custer set the band to play “Garryowen” to rally the retreating cavalry and ordered dismounted troopers of Capehart's brigade to tear down fences to assemble breastworks.
⁴

Pickett's troops soon emerged from the woodline across a long field, in a “handsome and imposing line of battle” according to Major Henry E. Tremain of Crook's staff. Union guns brought them under long-range fire, but the “long, single, unsupported line of infantry [swept] over the
undulating plain and scarcely deigning a reply to the warning compliments from our artillery.”
⁵

Custer set his available command to horse and assembled them for a charge. After conferring with Sheridan, he rode to his men, but Sheridan called him back.

“General! General!” Sheridan said firmly. “You understand? I want you to
give
it to them.”

“Yes, yes, I'll give it to them,” Custer replied hurriedly.
⁶
He readied his line for the saber charge and set out. But the ground was soft from the days of rain, and the horses became stuck, some falling, others throwing their riders. A charge was impossible, and Custer would have to find another way to “give it to them.”

The rebels came on. “They were the flower of the Army of Northern Virginia,” Chaplain Charles A. Humphreys of the 2nd Massachusetts Cavalry recalled, “and were led by one of its best fighting Generals—Pickett. They seemed to us utterly reckless of death. In the face of our severest fire they would swoop down upon us across an open field with such a careless swing, it seemed as if they enjoyed being on the skirmish line, and we suspected that they had such a miserable time of it in camp that they preferred standing up to be shot at.”
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The Union line firmed up with the arrival of Pennington's brigade, and the troopers prepared for contact behind their hastily erected defenses.

As Pickett's men came on, Sheridan, Merritt, Custer, and their staffs galloped down the Union line, hats aloft and colors flying, as the band played “Hail Columbia.” The troops cheered wildly. Rebel sharpshooters took long-range shots at the party, scoring some hits among the junior staff and wounding
New York Herald
correspondent Theodore C. Wilson (who was “out of place,” Sheridan observed gleefully).
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The rebels advanced in the teeth of fire from Union horse artillery, but the outnumbered cavalrymen lay low behind their breastworks until Pickett's men were within yards of their position. “Then they opened,”
Sheridan wrote, “Custer's repeating rifles pouring out such a shower of lead that nothing could stand up against it.” The Confederates “recoiled in dismay” and pulled back quickly to the safety of the wood line. “For that night, at least,” Chaplain Humphreys recalled, “Dinwiddie was safe.”
⁹

Sheridan was uncertain whether Pickett would continue the advance the next day, but he was ready for him if he did. Pickett's force was extended beyond the Confederate line, leaving his left flank vulnerable. Sheridan rushed word to Warren commanding V Corps, east of Dinwiddie, to “attack instantly and in full force” if the rebels advanced, and even if they didn't, to “attack anyway” at first light. Sheridan would hold the front with Custer while Warren swept in behind, and they would bag the lot of them.
¹⁰

But Pickett understood the danger as well and pulled back to a position around Five Forks. An order came down from Robert E. Lee to “
hold Five Forks at all hazards.
Protect road to Ford's Depot and prevent Union forces from striking the south-side railroad. Regret exceedingly your forced withdrawal, and your inability to hold the advantage you had gained.” But even Five Forks was too far extended. Pickett was about four miles out from the end of the rebel works with no flank support. The Five Forks defense did not allow him to anchor on Hatcher's Run, which was two miles to his rear. Fitz Lee believed that “Pickett's isolated position was unfortunately selected” and thought it would have been better to establish a “line behind Hatcher's Run or at Sutherland Station [that] could not have been flanked.”
¹¹
But his uncle's order to Pickett was unambiguous, and the rebels dug in. “I immediately formed line of battle upon the White Oak Road and set my men to throwing up temporary breastworks,” Pickett wrote. “Pine trees were felled, a ditch dug and the earth thrown up behind the logs.”
¹²
As one report described it, “they fortified this empty solitude as if it had been their capital.”
¹³

The next morning a thick, cold fog lay on the Dinwiddie battlefield. When the mist had lifted enough to see to their front, Custer's men
spotted some soldiers but could not tell who they were, friend or foe. Some thought they were Pickett's command, others believed they were troops from Warren's V Corps that had moved between them and the rebels in the early morning darkness. After some debate, one of Custer's staff said he saw “most unmistakably blue, and dashed boldly down toward a mounted officer” who was riding between the lines. There followed a challenge, some questions, then the report of a pistol. Custer's officer came galloping back to report that the opposing line was “positively gray—a very gray gentleman having shot at him and called him some highly improper names.”
¹⁴

Pickett's skirmishers were still to Custer's front, and hours into the morning there was no indication that Warren had launched his attack. Sheridan went off to investigate, but by midday there was still no sign of battle. On the Confederate side of the field, Pickett was also surprised, having expected Union forces to have moved against him sooner. His defenses prepared, he accepted an invitation from Rosser for a shad bake along Hatcher's Run, a tradition among the Tidewater Virginians.

Meanwhile, Sheridan angrily confronted Warren over the delay in launching the attack.
¹⁵
V Corps was disorganized; bad maps and poor communications had left Warren's divisions out of position and uncertain where to strike the rebel line. Sheridan righted matters and got the attack going by 4:00 p.m. But flawed intelligence on Pickett's location led Brigadier General Samuel W. Crawford's division to march past the point of contact, and Brigadier General Romeyn B. Ayres's division suffered flanking fire when he thought he was moving to hit the rebels head-on. The momentum of the assault slowed. Sheridan, dissatisfied with Warren's performance, took personal control of the battle, and later would relieve Warren of command. Sheridan rode to where the fight was most critical and, with his command standard in hand, jumped his horse into the rebel works, where surprised enemy troops immediately gave up. The Confederate left began to break. Pickett, who had learned
too late that the battle was under way, rushed under fire to the front to try to rally his beleaguered troops.