Sheridan’s Ride

As the 1864 presidential election approached, President Abraham Lincoln’s optimism from the preceding year, fortified by recent victories at Gettysburg and Vicksburg, now seemed wishful thinking. Bloody spring campaigns in Virginia, including The Wilderness, Spotsylvania Courthouse, and Cold Harbor, had turned public opinion in the North against the conflict. Adding insult to injury, in July, Confederate Gen. Jubal Early had marched 14,000 troops to the outskirts of Washington, exchanging artillery fire with Union defenders at Fort Stevens, just 5.5 miles from the White House.

Early soon withdrew his troops as Union reinforcements arrived, but he returned to the nearby Shenandoah Valley, where he continued to threaten the North. On July 30, he ordered Gen. John McCausland to burn the town of Chambersburg, Penn., when the town leaders would not pay a $500,000 “tribute” payment. The country was shocked, and The New York Times editorialized “The backdoor, by way of the Shenandoah Valley, has been left invitingly open.”

Early’s campaign was part of the Confederates’ strategy. After three and a half years, the South had realized that if the war could not be won on the battlefield, it might yet be won at the polling booth. In the North, Peace Democrats had nominated Gen. George McClellan to oppose Lincoln, and even Lincoln himself despaired of being re-elected. With a few timely Union losses, and some additional Confederate incursions, public opinion might be swayed enough to affect the election. A McClellan victory would ensure the Confederacy’s ability to negotiate an honorable peace that would permanently separate North from South.

And so, even as Gen. Ulysses S. Grant pressed into central Virginia, he recognized the need to rid the Shenandoah Valley of Confederates. Not only was it an open door to the North, but its fertile farms were a vital source of food for the Southern armies. Absolute destruction was in order. On July 14, 1864, Grant wired Army Chief of Staff Henry Halleck in Washington that a force should be assembled in the valley “to eat out Virginia clear and clean … so that crows flying over it for the balance of the season will have to carry their provender with them.” To accomplish that purpose, Grant recommended to the War Department the consolidation of four military departments into a single army, staffing it with 32,000 seasoned troops: the formidable Army of the Shenandoah. Now it needed a capable commander.

That man, Grant soon decided, would be Maj. Gen. Philip Sheridan, a pugnacious and aggressive general who had impressed Grant mightily in the Western theater. “Give the enemy no rest,” Grant told him. “Do all the damage to railroads and crops you can. Carry off stock of all descriptions, and negroes, so as to prevent further planting. If the war is to last another year, we want the Shenandoah Valley to remain a barren waste.”

Sheridan soon got to work. After several inconsequential skirmishes with Early’s troops, he routed the rebels at the Battle of Third Winchester, and the follow-up Battle of Fishers Hill. Each of these engagements served to push Early deeper up the Valley. Then, in a short, violent campaign known to this day among Valley folk as, simply, the Burning, Sheridan led his troops on a 13-day rampage through the region, beginning on Sept. 26. The swath of destruction spanned 70 miles long and 30 wide. The men were ordered to spare homes, empty barns, the property of widows, single women and orphans, and to refrain from looting – but everything else was fair game.

By mid-October, with over 1,400 barns still smoldering, and General Early on the run, Sheridan’s army made camp alongside the winding Cedar Creek, at the base of Massanutten Mountain, 20 miles south of the strategic Valley town of Winchester. Sheridan himself left for Washington to meet with Secretary of War Edwin Stanton and General Halleck, believing the threat from Early was minimal. Upon returning the night of Oct. 18, Sheridan spent the night in Winchester.

Earlier that day, General Early and his staff held a strategy meeting. Gen. John Gordon proposed a desperate plan: With an army less than half the size of Sheridan’s, an overnight march around Massanutten Mountain would surprise Sheridan’s army, and give Early his only chance of success. The plan was implemented that very night.

Early on Oct. 19, after an all-night march, Early’s troops materialized like vengeful ghosts from a dense, cold fog to attack the Union camp at Cedar Creek. Catching many Northern soldiers still sleeping in their tents, the Confederates overran the Union Eighth Corps and then the 19th Corps. Only the Sixth Corps was able to put up a semblance of defense. By sun up the union army was in full retreat, companies being separated and men hastily leaving weapons and supplies by the road so as not to impede the speed of their retreat.

Early and his officers rushed into the abandoned camps, ecstatically grabbing whatever supplies they could. Over the objection of some of his senior officers, Early now made a grave mistake. Having captured over 1,000 Union prisoners and more than 25 cannons, he stopped to consolidate his gains, allowing his exhausted troops to rest and loot the union camps for food, clothing and supplies. Had he pursued the retreating Army of the Shenandoah, Sheridan’s army could have been all but destroyed.

That same morning, in Winchester, Sheridan awoke to the distant rumbling of artillery. He rode the 20 miles in a couple of hours, so fast, said a member of his staff, “ that the devil himself could not have kept up.” Arriving at the field in the late morning, Sheridan passed stragglers and retreating soldiers, and realized a disaster was overtaking his army. He rode up and down the line of soldiers, waving encouragement and rallying the troops. Wild cheers from enlisted men and officers alike greeted him and his black horse, Rienzi.

Within hours Sheridan had reorganized his army, and he gave orders at 4 p.m. to counterattack. The reinvigorated Union troops rolled over Early’s much smaller army, capturing over 1,200 Confederate prisoners, retrieving all of the lost artillery pieces and capturing 24 Confederate cannons as well. Early’s army was shattered, leaving union control of the Shenandoah Valley for the remainder of the war. The immediate loss of the Valley’s food resources and supplies slowly added to the deprivation of Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia. Less than six months after Cedar Creek, Robert E. Lee surrendered his Army at Appomattox Courthouse.

Generals often get credit for victories where a twist of fate or a blunder by the opponent hands victory to a less than deserving commander. But Philip Sheridan at Cedar Creek truly snatched victory from the jaws of defeat. Grant himself declared: “Turning what bid fair to be a disaster into a glorious victory stamps Sheridan what I have always thought him, one of the ablest of Generals.”

“Sheridan’s Ride” was celebrated in music and poetry, and made “Little Phil” famous for the remainder of his life. Like a 19th -century Forrest Gump, Sheridan always seemed to show up at important moments of history. As an emissary from President Grant, in 1870 he witnessed the surrender of Napoleon III in the Franco-Prussian War. In 1871 Sheridan was present for the great Chicago Fire, and was temporarily placed in charge of the city when the mayor declared martial law. And throughout the 1870s and ’80s, he was a personal champion for Yellowstone National Park, using his political influence and his military offices to protect the fledgling park from developers: In 1883, as the commanding general of the Army, he ordered the First Cavalry into the park to protect and operate it, which it did until creation of the National Park Service in 1916. In his honor, a peak overlooking Heart Lake in Yellowstone was named Mount Sheridan.

But the greatest consequence of the victory at Cedar Creek was the immediate and much needed boost to Union morale, helping pave the way for an eventual landslide victory for President Lincoln just three weeks later. With his re-election secure, the Union could redouble its efforts to end the war. As Lincoln himself later declared “let us strive on to finish the work we are in.”

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Sources: The War of the Rebellion: A Compilation of the Official Records of the Union and Confederate Armies, Vol. XLIII; Harpers Weekly, Nov. 5, 1864; Cedar Creek: Then and Now, Civil War Trust; H.W. Brands, “The Man Who Saved the Union: Ulysses Grant in War and Peace.”

Jed Morrison is a lawyer and Civil War enthusiast in San Antonio.