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After a disturbing night filled with two different sustained outbursts of explosive noise coming from Atlanta to the north, dawn 150 years ago today found General Sherman and the bulk of his army poised to finish off General Hardee's isolated command. The troops went forward at first light and discovered that Hardee and his men had evacuated during the night and moved off south in the direction of Lovejoy Station.
Whatever had been going on in Atlanta, the noises had stopped around 5 am, so Sherman decided to pursue the fleeing enemy. Throughout the day they marched south and information began to arrive in bits and pieces. First a note from General Schofield, whose troops had been closest to Atlanta, stating that the noises heard during the night were probably General Hood blowing up supplies he was unable to take with him. Schofield concluded that this meant Hood was planning to retreat. Later a runaway slave was questioned and stated that he had seen the rebels marching out of the city. This was encouraging, but not confirming, Sherman was still worried about General Slocum north of the city.
At mid afternoon Sherman's leading elements reached Lovejoy Station and found Hardee's force heavily entrenched in a defensive posture. Probes found no obvious weak points and Sherman ordered that no attack be made until they were certain of what had happened back north. He did not want to become locked into a fight here if news arrived which would have compelled him to have to turn around and race back to Atlanta to save Slocum. Darkness came still without word.
As it developed, Slocum was far from needing saving, in fact, he had pushed forward at daybreak and encountered not the rebel army, but a delegation of citizens led by the Mayor, James M. Calhoun, who offered the surrender of Atlanta along with a plea for its now helpless residents to be treated with civility.
Slocum learned that Hood had begun his evacuation the night before, and that the explosions which had so worried Sherman had been the detonation of scores of railway cars filled with ammunition which since Sherman had seized the railroad, could not be removed. These explosions sent flaming debris flying in a wide arc, starting numerous fires which eventually became a singular roaring inferno, creating the scene so famously portrayed in "Gone With The Wind" as Rhett, Scarlett and Melonie make their escape from the doomed city.
Slocum then telegraphed the War Department, announcing simply "General Sherman has taken Atlanta." Word immediately spread via the wires throughout the North, and in an irony, hundreds of thousands of Americans in the North knew that Atlanta had fallen, while the man who had captured it was still quite unaware. It wasn't until close to midnight that a messenger from Slocum finally caught up with Sherman at Lovejoy Station and delivered the news.
The reaction in the north was immediate, immense, and utterly reversed the sense of doom and defeat which had been hanging over the Yankees for the past month. Church bells rung for the first time since the fall of Vicksburg, celebratory balls and parades were organized. Sherman's picture appeared in every newspaper across the land. At Petersburg General Grant wired his congratulations to his friend and promised that this day the Army of the Potomac would be firing a shot from every gun on the siege lines in tribute. Typical of Grant, not one to waste time and material on ceremony, he ordered that the guns be shotted so that each one was delivering a shell into the rebel lines.
The perception and reaction was actually out of proportion with the accomplishment. Sherman had taken Atlanta, and that was certainly a valuable capture. The city had been a major supply and rail junction for the South's war efforts. On the other hand, Hood and his army had escaped and were still out there somewhere in a position to continue to cause trouble. That did not seem to matter in the slightest to the joy maddened people of the North. The great stalemate had been broken, the high casualty lists seemed justified, and the rebel cause appeared to be on the ropes. The war was being won. It did not matter that the capture of Atlanta had not advanced the war efforts as far as people thought, it only mattered that this is what they thought.
Stunned and thrown into confusion were the Democrats who had just spent three days announcing to the nation that the war was unwinable and needed to be stopped. Now the rug had been pulled out from under their platform and many began to look to their own political survival, defecting from the Peace Democrats and joining those War Democrats who had made common cause with the Republicans under the National Union banner. In the blink of an eye, President Lincoln had gone from likely loser to unbeatable incumbent and he owed it to Sherman and his army.
The reaction in the South was of course the opposite. President Davis was stunned by the loss, the same newspapers which seven weeks ago had been calling for General Johnston's head, now were advocating the immediate dismissal of his replacement. Hood would move SE toward Macon with his army, reunite with Hardee's Corps, and start explaining how it was all everyone's fault save his. Hood divided the fault equally between Hardee and the general absence of proper aggressive spirit which poisoned the Army of Tennessee. The latter required Hood overlooking the 20,000 rebel casualties these insufficiently aggressive men had sustained under his series of furious attacks. It also foreshadowed the tragedy which was to follow at Franklin when Hood determined to prove just what hyper aggression could accomplish.
The defeat of Abraham Lincoln and his replacement by a Democrat willing to negotiate, had been the last idea upon which the South had hung its hopes for independence. Sherman and Atlanta stomped that dream into the ashes, the South no longer had a chance of winning, and from here on out it would just be pointless murder.
Slocum's Troops March Into Atlanta While Destruction Is Still Taking Place in this artist conception. In reality the explosions were over before sunrise.
On this day 150 years ago General Sherman entered the city he had conquered 24 hours earlier without knowing it. Sherman had decided not to pursue General Hood's army in favor of giving his troops a rest while occupying Atlanta. Sherman had more than double Hood's numbers and had no fear of a counter strike to retake the city. The war on this front would now go on vacation so to speak, for at least the next several weeks.
Things were also stable and relatively quiet on the Petersburg front after General Grant had decided to hold on to his present lines rather than continue attempting to extend them as he had been doing for the past month. Both sides needed a break after the serial hammering they had inflicted upon one another for the past four months. Grant and Lee had come as something of a shock to one another. Lee had stunned Grant in the Wilderness, at Spotsylvania and at Cold Harbor, with blows which in the past had been sufficient to send McClellan, Pope, Burnside and Hooker into retreat for regrouping. But tactical defeat seemed not to bother Grant in any manner, he pressed on with the same relentlessness regardless of battle outcomes or huge casualty lists.
Grant's single minded unyielding style had always been sufficient in the west to overcome Floyd, Beauregard, Pemberton and Bragg, but Lee was an entirely different proposition. The man seemed a magician when it came to anticipating enemy moves and intentions. It had been impossible to get him into an unadvantageous position. And the troops under Lee fought with a combination of disciplined skill and reckless enthusiasm which had not typically marked the rebel forces in the west.
In Washington, President Lincoln declared September 5th would be a day of national thanksgiving in honor of Admiral Farragut's conquest of Mobile Bay and Sherman's capture of Atlanta.
The focus of the war would now shift to the Shenandoah Valley where the fun was about to be over for General Early. Orders had arrived from Lee directing that General Anderson's division be returned to the Petersburg front, reducing Early's force from 23,000 to about 18,500. 150 years ago today Anderson and his men departed, but to try and mask the fact that he had been weakened, Early sent a division under General Joseph Kershaw east on a raid against General Sheridan's growing army which had just arrived at and made camp at Berryhill.
Kershaw struck one of Sheridan's divisions under Colonel Joseph Thoburn, drove it back, and in return was counter attacked and forced to retreat. It was not a substantial battle, about 300 casualties on each side. The Union discovery that Anderson and his men had departed was delayed by a few days, but nothing of consequence resulted.
When we last mentioned General John Hunt Morgan, he had redeemed his reputation with a daring escape from a Northern prison. That he had allowed himself and most of his command to be captured in West Virginia had dragged his stock down, the escape brought it back up, but then over the course of the past summer, Hunt's star had once more lost its glitter.
Having lost most of his troops to captivity, he had been forced to try and raise a new fighting force to continue his raiding in Ohio and Kentucky. Like Nathan Bedford Forrest, Hunt had been forced to turn to any source to find men, and like Forrest he had wound up with a questionable collection of draft evaders, deserters, men taken from guardhouses who were serving punishment time for various offenses, and men who signed up purely for the looting opportunities promised.
Unlike Forrest however, Hunt had not installed a personal brand of discipline which converted the mob of misfits, shirkers and criminals into a a true fighting force. During the summer Morgan had resumed raiding in Kentucky with his new command and was unable to exercise much control over them. Military objectives were overlooked in favor of simply finding the best places to rob. Morgan was accomplishing nothing which helped the rebel war effort, but did manage to infuriate Northerners and germinate a furious resolve to see Morgan brought to justice. Even the Confederate government had begun discussions about disowning Morgan and stripping him of rank and command. He had morphed from asset to embarrassment.
150 years ago this morning found Morgan and his 2000 troopers in Greenville, Tennessee, resting for the night on their way to West Virginia where they intended to try and intercept a planned Yankee raid against the lead mines of Saltville. His men were widely spread watching the three roads into the town from the west where any enemy action was expected to originate. Morgan, as was his habit, selected a comfortable house in town and retired for the night.
Unknown to Morgan, Union loyalists in Greenville had slipped word to Federal General Alvan Gillem who commanded a cavalry unit camped 16 miles from town. Gillem wasted no time getting his troopers mounted and advancing through the night for an ambush. They entered the town on a road not guarded by Morgan's men and were led directly to the house where Morgan was sleeping. Morgan was accompanied only by his staff at the house and they began to exchange gunfire with the cavalrymen, awakening Morgan and sending him fleeing out the back door.
Having no stomach for a fight with real Federal cavalry, upon hearing the firing most of Morgan's men posted in or outside the town, simply scattered in all directions, saving their own hides being a far higher priority than protecting their general. Morgan fled from building to building until he was finally cornered in a garden. When the Federals crowded around him, he threw up his hands and yelled "Don't shoot, I surrender."
"Surrender be damned" replied one Union private who raised his carbine and shot Morgan in the back, the bullet emerging from his chest. "I've killed the damned horse thief!" the private was shouting a moment later.
And indeed he had. It was the end of Morgan, and the end of his thug army which simply disbanded via flight and never reformed. He was officially mourned by the Confederate government, but privately they were relieved to have the problem of Morgan removed.
Being shot in the back while in the act of surrendering, turned out to be an excellent final career move for the fame Morgan craved so deeply. While the rebel government might have been glad to see the last of him, his martyrdom cemented him permanently as a romantic cavalier in the minds of the Southern population. He wound up having all sorts of roads, bridges and schools named after him, most heavily in Kentucky and Tennessee. The General Morgan Inn was built on the spot where he was shot.
Private Andrew Campbell, the man who shot Morgan, was promoted to 1st Sergeant. He was an Ireland born life long drinker and brawler, someone who would have fit quite well among the men of Morgan's last command. Campbell had fled Ireland to escape murder charges, served for a time in the Confederate army, then deserted and joined the other side. Campbell survived the war and went on to a life of more drinking, brawling and general failure until his death in 1894. He had made periodic attempts to capitalize on his fame as the man who shot John Morgan, but the cowardly manner in which the deed had been done did not generate any admirers.
General John Hunt Morgan...........................................His Killer Private Andrew Campbell
President Lincoln's use of the pocket veto to dispose of the Wade-Davis reconstruction bill meant that for the time being, his 10 % loyalty oath program was still in effect. 150 years ago today it was utilized for the first time in Louisiana.
Voters who had taken the oath went to the poll to ratify or reject the new state constitution, one which abolished slavery in the 13 parishes which were under Federal control. (The Emancipation Proclamation had liberated the slaves, at least legally, in the parishes still under CSA influence.) Only about 10,000 men were deemed eligible to vote under the guidelines, but they went for the new constitution by vote of 6,836 to 1,566. The new state charter did not go so far as to grant voting rights to blacks, or any other "persons of color" but rather left it to the state legislature to extend or withhold the franchise as they saw fit. In what was hardly a surprise, in the four year life of this document, the legislature declined to include anyone but whites on the voter rolls.
The above was done under Lincoln's E-Z reconstruction plan, and of course all of it would eventually be undone by the Radical Republicans after Lincoln's death. And all of it was done under dubious legal authority, the Constitution of course is silent on the issue of which branch of the government gets to describe the process by which a state which had rebelled, may resume its pre war status.
The image of General Sherman, the one of a heartless, destructive vandal held by the South, was born 150 years ago today.
Before this time Sherman had not been regarded as anything beyond one more successful Yankee army commander. There had been a small preview of his methods at the beginning of the year with his Meridian campaign which had heaped destruction on a relatively small stretch of Mississippi, but to this point General David Hunter's devastation of the Shenandoah Valley had made him the # 1 Yankee pillager in the Southern minds.
Sherman would shove Hunter to the backwaters of Confederate hatred and he got started today with an order which shocked the rebels and raised a huge cry of protest. Sherman ordered that the city of Atlanta was to be evacuated of everyone save US military personnel. The city, Sherman explained, was exclusively required for warlike purposes. Sherman did not want the burden of trying to feed the 22,000 civilians nor the responsibility of protecting them should the rebels make a move to recapture Atlanta. Sherman provided the option of allowing anyone who wanted to move north into Federal held lands, or south if they wished to continue to rely on the Confederacy for their protection.
The reaction was loud and immediate. Atlanta's Mayor Calhoun appealed to Sherman, calling his decision "appalling" and pointing out that it was especially mean to be sending these people from their homes with winter approaching. Sherman's written reply was to become famous.
Quote:
"You cannot qualify war in harsher terms than I will. War is cruelty, and you cannot refine it; and those who brought war into our country deserve all the curses and maledictions a people can pour out. I know I had no hand in making this war, and I know I will make more sacrifices to-day than any of you to secure peace."
Sherman by this time had evolved his own doctrine of making war, one which embraced the entirety of the enemy population as...the enemy. He reasoned that the infrastructure which supported a war, including the people, was as legitimate a target as armies. He saw himself as being cruel to be kind, that wars were ended when one side could no longer tolerate the conditions to which they had been reduced, and that the faster they reached this condition, the sooner the war would be ended. The sooner the war was ended, the sooner they could treat one another with kindness and civility once more.
Naturally this philosophy did not win Sherman any admirers in the South. After the mayor had been dismissed, General Hood stepped up with a series of protest notes, all of which the talkative Sherman answered. Hood's first letter had decried Sherman's decision as "unprecedented in war" and was nothing short of "studied and ingenious cruelty."
Sherman blasted back, making it clear that he was taking an ends justify the means approach. He placed 100% of the blame for the war on Southern hotheads who had misled and betrayed their own people. For that they merited all that was to come.
Quote:
In the name of common sense I ask you not to appeal to a just God in such a sacrilegious manner; you who, in the midst of peace and prosperity, have plunged a nation into war, dark and cruel war; who dared and badgered us to battle, insulted our flag, seized our arsenals and forts that were left in the honorable custody of peaceful ordnance sergeants; seized and made "prisoners of war" the very garrisons sent to protect your people against negroes and Indians long before any overt act was committed by the, to you, hated Lincoln Government
If we must be enemies, let us be men and fight it out, as we propose to do, and not deal in such hypocritical appeals to God and humanity. God will judge us in due time, and He will pronounce whether it be more humane to fight with a town full of women, and the families of "a brave people" at our back, or to remove them in time to places of safety among their own friends and people.
In sum, Sherman was announcing that he intended to make life hell for the rebels until such time that they ceased being rebels. It was entirely justified in Sherman's mind, he wasn't just out to win the war, but to punish the population for having rebelled against a government which Sherman regarded as the least oppressive and most benign in all of history.
Hood, for all his impotent protest, was forced to make arrangements to receive the refugees at Lovejoy Station. And he did not want the responsibility for feeding them either. He immediately wrote to Georgia's Governor Brown and stated that Brown would have to find the means for caring for the people, he could not.
So before his famous march had even been planned, Sherman had already gained a perpetual spot in Southern minds as a barbaric and inhumane man. Of course these same people denouncing Sherman, had a few days ago been mourning the "martyrdom" of General Morgan who had spent the two previous summers indulging in the pillaging of Kentucky, Ohio and West Virginia citizens.
Atlanta Citizens Preparing For Their Forced Exit..Artist Conception
Among the North's three major theater commanders, generals Grant, Sherman and Sheridan, and their commander in chief, 150 years ago today 75 % of them were all thinking about the same thing. That was what can be done in the Shenandoah Valley to eliminate the rebels' continuing use of it both for supply and for threatening the capitol or the surrounding towns with raids?
Things had finally quieted to a stagnant siege on the Petersburg front, and the victorious Union troops occupying Atlanta were resting and refitting for whatever would come next, which was still unplanned. Given this lull, President Lincoln wondered why troops could not now be safely drawn from the Petersburg siege lines and employed against General Early's Valley force. The president conveyed his thoughts in a telegram to General Grant which was received on this day.
Quote:
Executive Mansion, Washington,
Lieut. Genl. Grant Sep. 12. 1864.
Sheridan and Early are facing each other at a dead lock. Could we not pick up a regiment here and there, to the number of say ten thousand men, and quietly, but suddenly concentrate them at Sheridan's camp and enable him to make a strike? This is but a suggestion. Yours truly A Lincoln
The message reached Grant as he was engaged in contemplating exactly that sort of action. Grant had been spending his time drawing up a plan for the final conquest of the Valley and he was now ready to present it to General Sheridan. Grant replied to the president that he had been planning to depart in a few days to go and see Sheridan and "..arrange what was necessary to enable him to start Early out of the Valley." Grant's plan was elaborate and involved driving Early all the way to Richmond, and destroying the Valley's ability to produce crops and war goods.
Grant would depart on the 14th and reach Sheridan on the 16th. At their meeting, before Grant could even begin talking about his ideas, he discovered that Sheridan had also been working on his own plan to achieve those same ends. Grant listened silently while his enthusiastic and aggressive subordinate outlined the first of a series of attacks he would be making on Early now that he had learned that, A) General Anderson's Corps had departed for their return to Petersburg, and B) Early had falsely concluded, as a consequence of the lack of aggression to date, that Sheridan was a timid general and would stay on the defensive, seeing his job as protecting the North, not assaulting the rebels. Based on this misconception, Early had scattered his army rather than concentrating it.
After hearing Sheridan's plans, Grant never even mentioned his own which remained in his pocket unseen. Instead he approved of Sheridan's entire program with a typically terse Grant order. It read in its entirety. "Go in."
September 14th, 1864:
George D. Shadburne was a Virginian who enlisted as a private in 1861 and had risen to the status of super scout/spy. He served in Hampton's Legion and his uncanny ability to gather intelligence on the enemy had caused Hampton to make him his chief of scouts. By many accounts he was the most recklessly brave man in the Confederate army, constantly taking long chances and constantly getting away with it when he did.
Shadburne managed to survive his dangerous work and now in 1864 he was the head of a group Hampton had organized called "The Iron Scouts." These were rebel soldiers who dressed in Yankee uniforms and brazenly rode into the rear areas of the Union siege lines around Petersburg, collecting information and engaging in periodic pieces of sabotage.
Two days earlier Shadburne happened upon a sight that was to trigger another of the war's romantic exploits.
General Lee was having difficulty feeding his troops at this time. The loss of the last 30 miles of the Weldon Railroad had meant that a long wagon trip was needed to complete bringing goods to the rebels at Petersburg. Rations were reduced, then reduced once more. Moral, always a factor tied to hunger, was drooping. Lee was losing ten men a night to desertion so far in September. The men were not fleeing south or west, they were heading east into the Union lines where they surrendered in the hopes of at least getting a good meal. Something needed to be done.
Shadburne supplied that something. On his latest mission behind the lines he had come across a Union cattle herd, 3000 strong, parked on the banks of the James River near Coggin's Point. Far removed from the front lines, no real threat was perceived to the herd by the Federals and only a token guard of 120 soldiers and 30 civilian cow punchers were on hand to guard the steers.
So, when this information was reported to General Hampton, he decided to personally launch a cattle rustlin' expedition. Swinging wide around the left flank of the Federals, 150 years ago this morning Hampton led 2000 hand picked horsemen on a successful clandestine penetration of the Yankee's rear area. Among the selected men were were rebels from Texas, men not only experienced in driving cattle, but also in stealing them.
The raid was a complete success. Hampton surprised the small guard with a 5 am attack on the 16th, took most of them prisoner and started the herd back toward rebel lines. The Federals reacted, dispatching 2,100 troopers under Gen. Henry Davies, Jr. to pursue and catch the rustlers. Hampton divided his command, sending General Rosser with half the force to delay Davies, while Hampton and the rest took the herd across Blackwater Creek two miles to their rear. Rosser held Davies in check and the herd made it back to Confederate lines unmolested for the remainder of their journey.
This was a great morale booster for the troops, and for the southern citizens as well, a throwback to the days when Jeb Stuart was riding rings around the Yankee armies. It was more of a morale booster than an actual solution to Lee's problems. The cattle herd required immense amounts of grain to keep them alive, and the South lacked the means to transport enough grain to Petersburg for this purpose. Consequently, it was a relatively short feast of plenty, the cows all had to be butchered and consumed before they died of starvation. Lee's men ate like kings for a week, but were reduced to their former condition immediately after that.
There is a movie "Alvarez Kelly" starring William Holden and Richard Widmark, which is based on the great beefstake raid. However, only honored is the fact that there was such a raid, the rest of the story features fictional characters and fictional sub plots, all inventions of the screenwriter.
George D. Shadburne...guess he didn't like closeups...well, he was a spy.
The Beefsteak Raid..Route Taken By Hampton's Raiders
150 years ago today marked the final exit from the Civil War scene of our old friend, The Pathfinder, which also meant the removal of one of the few remaining obstacles to the reelection of Abraham Lincoln.
Following his failures as commander of the Missouri Department in the war's early days, and his inept performance as a general in the Valley, Fremont had been on the sidelines of events. His star was revived in late May of 1864 when the most extreme of the Radical Republicans, upset that President Lincoln had yet to fully embrace their vision of immediate freedom and citizenship for all slaves, including the ones being held in the loyal states, got together and formed what was called the Radical Democracy Party. The chief architect was Senator Charles Sumner of Massachusetts, he of the impeccable anti slavery credentials ever since his pre war caning by Congressman Preston Brooks on the floor of the Senate. They met in Ohio and nominated Fremont as their candidate for president, and issued an offer of withdrawing from the race should the Republicans nominate a candidate other than Abraham Lincoln.
Lincoln of course was nominated, and the Republicans pulled the legs out from under the Radical Democracy Party's reason for being by including a plank in their platform which called for a Constitutional amendment to free all slaves on a national basis.
Fremont and his allies recognized that they had no hope of winning, and further realized that at best they could split the Republican vote so as to make the Democrat nominee the winner. They concluded that they would have to back down, but Fremont determined that he wasn't going to go away without first extracting a bit of personal revenge.
Montgomery Blair, the Postmaster General since 1861, was of the politically powerful Blair family which included his father, Francis P. Blair, Sr., editor of the Washington Globe, and brother, Francis Blair Jr, Congressman from Missouri. The Blairs had been bigshots in the Democrat Party during the Jackson era, but had bolted the party in the 1850's and had helped found the Republicans. The Postmaster General cabinet position, one which came with a huge patronage tail, had gone to Montgomery Blair as a reward for the family support of Lincoln in 1860.
In 1861 and early '62, when Fremont was making such a hash of running his Missouri Department, it had been the Blair family which had sent serial reports of the corruption and ineptitude unfolding under Fremont in the west. It was on the recommendation of the Blairs that the president decided to relieve Fremont of his duties.
Fremont had not forgotten, nor forgiven. And now that he had a chance for revenge, he was just petty enough to take it. Fremont extended a clandestine offer to the Republicans, if Montgomery Blair was forced out of his cabinet position, Fremont would withdraw from the race entirely and the Radical Democracy Party would disband.
Had the blackmail been the only reason, Lincoln might have stayed the course, but Blair had been a controversial figure in his cabinet, hot tempered, never the go along to get along sort, and like former Treasury Secretary Chase, had several times presented his resignation in a snit over some imagined slight or failure to get his way. Lincoln had refused the resignation each time and smoothed things over, but he still had the offer on hand. 150 years ago today he decided to accept it, and did so in a typically gentle manner.
Quote:
“My Dear Sir: You have generously said to me more than once, that whenever your resignation could be a relief to me, it was at my disposal. The time has come. You very well know that this proceeds from no dissatisfaction of mine with you personally or officially. Your uniform kindness has been unsurpassed by that of any friend; and, while it is true that the war does not so greatly add to the difficulties of your Department, as to those of some others, it is yet much to say, as I most truly can, that in the three years and a half during which you have administered the General Post-Office, I remember no single complaint against you in connection therewith.â€
Fremont was true to his word and immediately announced his withdrawal from the race. He would return to civilian life in the Hudson Valley and eventually bankrupt his family when a deal to purchase a Missouri railroad went sour. The Pathfinder would be supported by his wife's earnings as an author until his death in 1891.
Blair, though bitter about the manner in which he had been dismissed, honorably placed national goals ahead of personal concerns, and continued to support the Lincoln administration. After the war he would break with the Radical Republicans over reconstruction policy, and return to the Democrat Party. He died in 1883, never regaining elected or appointed office.
Postmaster General Blair...Sacrificed In Order To Get Rid Of......The Pathfinder
So confident was General Grant in the abilities and character of General Sheridan, that after approving of his plans with the brief "Go in" order, Grant felt no need to stick around to see how the campaign developed. This was not because Grant felt that he needed to rush back to Petersburg, rather being the only man in the US Army who could go on leave without asking anyone's permission, Grant headed north to New Jersey for a two day visit with his wife and children who he had not seen since before the Overland Campaign had begun.
Sheridan's force, now called the Army of the Shenandoah, was something of a mongrel collective, patched together from far flung elements. There was General Wright's Corps, borrowed from the Army of the Potomac to meet General Early''s threat to the capitol and never returned. There was the 19th Corps, under General William Emory, formerly of General Banks army. They were shipbound for Petersburg following their escape from the Red River disaster, but then redirected to the Valley for the same reason that Wright's Corps was sent. There was the Army of West Virginia, formerly General Hunter's command, now under General Crook, by coincidence, one of Sheridan's closest pre war friends. Finally, for added punching power, there were 8000 cavalrymen in three divisions, led by General Alfred T. A. Torbert. Sheridan did not have a high opinion of Torbert, but was very much taken by the fighting prowess and hyper aggressive attitudes of two of Torbert's subordinates. One was division commander General Wesley Merritt, the other was General George Custer who led one of Merritt's brigades. Together they numbered 30,000 infantry and 8000 cavalry.
Sheridan had used the previous month, while he and Early played cat and mouse, both avoiding a major engagement, to shape this collective into a cohesive army. It had some star power within it. One division was led by Colonel Rutheford B. Hayes. On Crook's staff was the 21 year old Captain William McKinley and on Wright's was the 23 year old Lt. Colonel Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. Those three would achieve their greatest fame after the war, at the moment the biggest rising star in Sheridan's army was the newly minted Brigadier General Emory Upton.
Upton you may recall was the regimental Colonel at Spotsylvania who conceived and led the break through at the Mule Shoe, employing column attacks. It had inspired Grant to try it again with an entire Corps, leading to the terrible attrition of that day long chaotic fight at close quarters. He had been promoted to General of Volunteers immediately after by Grant, one of the few battlefield promotions Grant ever issued.
Upton was a brilliant student of warfare, a religious fanatic to rival Stonewall Jackson and Oliver Howard, and quite possibly the most ambitious man in the entire Union army, which is saying something when your force includes the likes of Merritt and Custer....and Phil Sheridan.
Sheridan's army was concentrated at Berryville. Ten miles away on the other side of Opequon Creek at Winchester were General Jubal Early and the 12,000 men he had remaining after the departure of General Anderson's division. It was learning of that departure which had set Sheridan to making an aggressive campaign plan to drive Early from the Valley on a permanent basis. The first step was a planned movement that was to get underway at 2 pm 150 years ago today. Sheridan would move to Newton, ten miles south of Winchester on the Valley Pike road. By occupying that, Early would be forced to retreat to protect his rear.
Then an hour before the whole show was scheduled to start, Sheridan received news from his scouts which caused him to junk his elaborate plan completely.
Early had made a mistake. Secure in his belief that Sheridan was a timid, non aggressive general, Early thought that the best strategy was for him was to continue to deceive Sheridan regarding the size of his force. To that end he sent half of his army marching toward Matinsburg to the NW where they would pose a theoretical threat to Sheridan's rear and cause him to have to make a retrograde movement. Early accompanied these troops himself.
Sheridan saw opportunity. Instead of the move to Newton, he would now direct his entire army at the remaining half of Early's force at Winchester, destroy them, and then go after the rest.
So at 2 pm the Army of the Shenandoah was still in place while Sheridan furiously worked on new orders for everyone. The redirected march would begin at 1 am on the 19th.
Map of the Valley...1864:
The battle which was about to erupt would be between two men, neither of whom looked like anyone's idea of a general. If Jubal Early walked into a Hollywood studio, he would have been immediately cast as a fire and brimstone fundamentalist preacher of the old west. Tall and narrow, bushy hair, bushy beard, bushy eyebrows, fiery eyes...
If Sheridan walked into that studio, and he was a bit taller, he would have gotten the types of parts that Lee van Cleef always played. Sheridan stood but 5'4", Long armed, and normal appearing above the waist but cursed with Munchkin length legs. President Lincoln, a man experienced in the world of odd looking men, after meeting Sheridan had commented that if the general wished to scratch his ankle, he could do so without bending over. Completing the oddball appearance was Sheridan's bullet shaped head, the first thing everyone who saw him noticed. It tapered into a conical shape in the back, making it difficult for him to keep a hat on his crown.
At one am 150 years ago this morning, General Sheridan's army moved out for its advance against Winchester. Sheridan was rushing to capitalize on the mistake that General Early had made in dividing his force. In the process, Sheridan made a mistake which would cancel Early's.
In the hurry to change the plan in so short a time, Sheridan had neglected to factor in the nature of the route his army had to take to reach Winchester. Between Berryville and Winchester was a three mile feature called Berryville Canyon, a narrow passage through a rise in the land which funneled a marching column into thin line. Compounding this difficulty was that despite Sheridan's orders to the contrary, General Wright brought his wagon train along with his Corps. This created a monumental traffic jam within the canyon passage and Sheridan's advance slowed to a crawl with the leading elements exiting the canyon in a trickle rather than a flow.
The movement was detected by rebel cavalry and word was rushed to Early who was on the road to Martinsburg with half of his force. Stung by this news of aggression from an opponent Early had concluded was overly cautious, he immediately turned his men around and began racing back to the endangered point at Winchester. The delay suffered by the Federals in passing through the canyon provided Early with just enough time. General Ramsuer's division which had been left at Winchester was able to throw back the morning attacks made by the piecemeal arriving Federal units. About noon, as the remaining elements of Sheridan's force were arriving from the east, Early's men were arriving from the north and filing in on the left of Ramsuer. Sheridan's plan to overwhelm a portion of his foe had been foiled. Now what was left was a choice between frontal attacks, or calling the whole thing off and slinking back to Berryville.
Sheridan may have been demonstrating that he was not a strategic genius, but he was also not the sort to slink away from a fight. He launched his attacks, although with many units still struggling to reach the battlefield. The first attacks pushed back the rebel line, but then a spirited counter attack led by General John Gordon drove back the men in blue. As they fell back, a gap opened up in the Federal line between General Crook and General Emory's Corps. Into this gap Gordon launched an attack and for a moment chaos reigned among the Yankees.
To plug the gap, the division of Gen. David A. Russell was dispatched. They hit Gordon's men, but early in the fight Russell was struck in the chest by a bullet, tried to continue leading the men, but then was hit a second time, this one mortal. The Union counter attack began to falter but then the glory seeking General Upton who led one of Russell's brigades, gave himself a battlefield promotion and took over operational control of the division, this without orders.
Upton pitched his men back into the fight and drove Gordon back. Then Upton was hit by a shell fragment which tore a huge hole in his thigh. Unable to walk, Upton had himself placed on a stretcher and continued to command the attack on his back, having himself carried from one point to another. The rebel line started to give way.
Then at 4 in the afternoon the final blow was struck. Sheridan had massed his cavalry on his right flank. To this point in the war, no one had attempted to employ cavalry against infantry on the main battlefield, not in the close cooperation manner that had marked Napoleonic combat. Sheridan did. His three divisions of horse came thundering down on the Confederate left and broke the defenders there. Their stampede for the rear unhinged the entire line and soon Early's entire army was running for their lives, pursued for miles by the whooping Union horsemen. Ramsuer kept his division in good order and under discipline, consequently they did great service in covering the retreat and preventing a larger roundup of prisoners.
They did not have to run that far and regrouping was easy since they all knew where they were going. A bit less than 20 miles down the Valley Pike to the south was Strasburg, guarded by the 4 mile long Fisher's Hill which had been well prepared in advance as a fall back defensive position. Sheridan collected his victorious army and set out after them there.
The Union had suffered more casualties, about 5000 to Early's 3500, but the rebels had been driven from the field in a disorganized manner and the victor was clear. Sheridan's men, who already thought highly of him because he was the sort who tolerated no inefficiency and endured no red tape when it came to the welfare of those under his command, now were in awe of him after the battle. For whatever reasons, this short, ugly man was more charismatic in a fight than anyone on either side of the war. Memoir after memoir written by the participants describe Sheridan's effect on the men when he arrived at a danger spot as "electric." No one seemed to be able to pin down the exact nature of this effect, but all recognized it. Sheridan could fire up the spirits of fighting men like no other. Men fleeing from the battle turned around and marched back into the thick of things, men hard pressed to hold ground became unmovable fanatics when Sheridan was near. Sheridan was a man with utterly unshakable confidence in himself, and an ability to transfer that attitude toward those he led. Even General Grant, who seemed to care less about rah rah theatrics than anyone in uniform, expressed a measure jealousy over Sheridan's magic with the men.
Sheridan's star was now becoming ascendant, and a catchy phrase he employed in his report to the War Deparment aided in the rise.
Quote:
General,--We fought early from daylight till between six and seven o'clock p.m. We drove him from Opequan Creek, through Winchester, and beyond the town. We captured 2500 to 3000 prisoners, five pieces of artillery, nine battle-flags, and all the rebel wounded and dead. ............We have just seen them whirling through Winchester[/b], and we are after them to-morrow. This army behaved splendidly.
P. H. Sheridan, Major-General Commanding.
"Whirling through Winchester" caught the public's imagination.
There were 14 Union winners of the Medal of Honor from this battle, called Third Winchester or Opequon Creek . A bit surprisingly, General Upton was not one of them despite his bold initiative and high theatrics from the stretcher. He had to settle for being promoted to major general. He would survive his wound and return as a cavalry officer in early 1865. Among the Confederate dead were division commander General Robert Rodes, and regimental commander Colonel George Patton Sr., the grandfather of, well, guess who?
Third Winchester
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