by Shelby Foote
He knew his man. Beginning the countermarch October 6, Sheridan reported the following night from Woodstock, forty miles away, that he had “destroyed over 2000 barns filled with wheat, hay, and farming implements; over 70 mills filled with flour and wheat; have driven in front of the army over 4000 head of stock, and have killed and issued to the troops not less than 3000 sheep.… Tomorrow I will continue the destruction of wheat, forage, &c. down to Fisher’s Hill. When this is completed the Valley, from Winchester up to Staunton, 92 miles, will have but little in it for man or beast.” Others attested to his proficiency in destruction, which continued round the clock. “The atmosphere, from horizon to horizon, has been black with the smoke of a hundred conflagrations,” a correspondent wrote, “and at night a gleam brighter and more lurid than sunset has shot from every verge.… The completeness of the devastation is awful. Hundreds of nearly starving people are going north. Our trains are crowded with them. They line the wayside. Hundreds more are coming.” They had little choice, a staff captain noted, having been “left so stripped of food that I cannot imagine how they escaped starvation.”
To hurt the people, the land itself was hurt, and the resultant exodus was both heavy and long-lasting. A full year later, an English traveler found the Valley standing empty as a moor.
By now, although Early was being careful to maintain a respectful distance with his twice-defeated, twice-diminished infantry, butternut cavalry was snapping at the heels of the blue column, and Sheridan took this as continuing evidence of the timidity his own cavalry had shown, just over two weeks ago, after Fisher’s Hill. Approaching that place from the opposite direction, October 9, he gave Torbert a specific order: “Either whip the enemy or get whipped yourself,” then climbed nearby Round Hill for a panoramic view of the result. It was not long in coming. After crossing Tom’s Brook, five miles short of Strasburg, Torbert had Merritt and Custer whirl their divisions around and charge the two pressing close in their rear under Lomax and Tom Rosser, who had recently arrived from Richmond with his brigade. Startled, the gray troopers stood for a time, exchanging saber slashes till their flanks gave way, then panicked and fled southward up the pike, pursued by the whooping Federals, who captured eleven of the dozen rebel guns in the course of a ten-mile chase to Woodstock and beyond, along with some 300 graybacks on fagged horses. “The Woodstock Races,” the victors dubbed the affair, taking their cue from the Buckland Races, staged at Custer’s expense by Jeb Stuart, a year ago this month, on the far side of the Blue Ridge. His temper cooled, his spirits lifted, Sheridan passed through Strasburg and crossed Cedar Creek next morning to put Crook’s and Emory’s corps in bivouac on the high ground, while Wright prepared his three divisions for an eastward march through Ashby’s Gap, as agreed upon beforehand, to rejoin Grant at Petersburg.
They set out two days later, on October 12: only hours, as it developed, before Early reappeared on Fisher’s Hill, five miles to the south. He had been reinforced from Richmond, not only by Rosser’s cavalry brigade, but also by Kershaw’s infantry division, which had been with him last month until it was recalled by Lee on the eve of the Federal strike at Winchester. Aware of these acquisitions, Sheridan was not disturbed, knowing as he did that they barely lifted Early’s strength to half his own. If Old Jubal was in search of a third drubbing, he would be happy to oblige him when the time came.
All the same, he recalled the three VI Corps divisions from Ashby’s Gap next day, deferring their departure until the situation cleared, and set about making his Cedar Creek position secure against attack while he determined his next move. Amid these labors, which included preparations for a horseback raid to break up the railroad around Charlottesville, he was summoned to Washington by Halleck for a strategy conference, October 16. He left that morning to catch a train at Front Royal, and when he got there he was handed a telegram from Wright, whom he had left in command on Cedar Creek, quoting a message just intercepted from a rebel signal station on Massanutton Mountain: “Be ready to move as soon as my forces join you, and we will crush Sheridan.” The signature was Longstreet; which was news in itself, if the message was valid. Little Phil considered it “a ruse,” however, designed to frighten him out of the Valley, and he declined to be frightened. Besides, he had confidence in Wright, who assured him: “I shall hold on here until the enemy’s movements are developed, and shall only fear an attack on my right, which I shall make every preparation for guarding against and resisting.” Aside from calling off the Charlottesville raid, Sheridan did not change his plans. Boarding the train for Washington, he advised Wright: “Look well to your ground and be well prepared. Get up everything that can be spared,” he added, and promised to return within two days, “if not sooner.”
He was right in assuming the intercepted dispatch was a plant, and right as well about its purpose. But he was altogether wrong if he thought his twice-whipped adversary did not intend to try something far more drastic if the invoked ghost of Old Peter failed to frighten him away. In point of fact, so thoroughly had the bluecoats scorched the country in his rear, Early believed he had no choice except “to move back for want of provisions and forage, or attack the enemy in his position with the hope of driving him from it.” Another reason, despite his usual crusty disregard for the opinions of others in or out of the army, was that he had a reputation to retrieve; “To General Sheridan, care of General Early,” cynics had chalked on the tubes of guns sent from Richmond to replace the 21 pieces he had lost in battle this past month, exclusive of the eleven abandoned by the cavalry last week in its panicky flight from Tom’s Brook to Woodstock. Admittedly, with the blue force nearly twice his size, securely in position on high ground, its front covered by a boggy creek and one flank anchored on the Shenandoah, the odds against a successful assault were long. But his predecessor Jackson, in command of these same troops, had taught him how far audacity could go toward evening such odds, and Lee himself, in a letter that followed the sending of reinforcements, had just told him: “I have weakened myself very much to strengthen you. It was done with the expectation of enabling you to gain such success that you could return the troops if not rejoin me yourself. I know you have endeavored to gain that success, and believe you have done all in your power to assure it. You must not be discouraged, but continue to try. I rely upon your judgment and ability, and the hearty coöperation of your officers and men still to secure it. With your united force it can be accomplished.”
Sustained and appealed to thus, Early was “determined to attack.” But how, against such odds, could he do so with any real hope of success? Crippled as he was by arthritis, which aged him beyond his not quite forty-eight years and prohibited mountain climbing, he sent John Gordon, his senior division commander since the fall of Rodes, and Major Jedediah Hotchkiss, a staff cartographer inherited from Jackson, atop Massanutton to study the enemy position, which lay spread out below them, facing southwest along Cedar Creek. Crook’s two divisions were nearest, on the Federal left, then Emory’s two, beyond the turnpike, and finally Wright’s three, on the distant right, where most of the blue cavalry was posted, obviously in expectation that if an attack was made it would come from that direction. Hotchkiss had discovered and recommended the route for the movement around Hooker’s flank at Chancellorsville, but what he and Gordon saw from their high perch this bright fall morning, October 18, was an opportunity for an end-on strike that might outdo even Stonewall’s masterpiece. A night march around the steep north face of Massanutton, following a crossing of the Shenandoah near Fisher’s Hill, would permit a recrossing of the river beyond its confluence with Cedar Creek, and this in turn would place the flanking column in direct confrontation with the unsuspecting Union left, which could be assaulted at first light in preparation for further assaults on Emory and Wright, once Crook’s position had been overrun. Gordon, in fact, was so confident of success that when he came down off the mountain to urge the adoption of the plan, he offered to take all responsibility for any failure that occurred.
Early had never been one to avoid responsibility, nor did he delay approval of the plan. He would march tonight and strike at dawn, he announced at a council of war called that afternoon. Gordon would be in charge of the turning column made up of his own and the divisions of Ramseur and Rodes, the latter now commanded by its senior brigadier John Pegram, recently recovered from the leg wound he had taken in the Wilderness. Kershaw would move through Strasburg, also under cover of darkness, and attack on the right of the Valley pike, crossing lower Cedar Creek to join the flanking effort as soon as he heard Gordon open fire, and Brigadier General Gabriel Wharton — successor to Breckinridge, who had been recalled to eastern Virginia on the eve of Fisher’s Hill — would advance along and to the left of the turnpike, accompanied by Rosser’s troopers, to menace and fix the Federals in position on the far side of the creek while the massed Second Corps, with Kershaw’s help, struck their flank and drove them north across his front. Rosser then would take up the pursuit, as would Lomax, whose horsemen were to come upon the field by a roundabout march through Front Royal in order to cut off the blue retreat this side of Winchester, fifteen miles beyond Middletown, which was close in the Union rear. The plan was elaborate, involving a convergence by three columns, but it seemed pat enough to Early and his lieutenants, who went straight from the meeting to prepare for the various night marches designed to yield revenge for the two defeats they had recently suffered, here in the Valley from which their army took its name. The first of these — Third Winchester — had occurred exactly a month ago tomorrow, and this made them and their butternut veterans all the more eager to get started on the observance of that anniversary.
Aided by the light of a moon only three nights past the full, Gordon’s column set out shortly after dark, the men of all three divisions having left their cooking utensils and even their canteens behind to avoid any give-away clink of unnecessary metal, and was in position in the shadows close to Bowman’s Ford before daybreak, half a mile beyond the confluence of Cedar Creek and the river, prepared to splash across on signal. Similarly, accompanied by Early and his staff, as well as by most of the army’s guns, Kershaw moved undetected around Strasburg to the near bank of the creek, across which he could see low-burnt campfires glowing in the darkness. Wharton followed, turning off to the left of the macadamized pike, preceded by Rosser, whose troopers rode at a walk to muffle the sound of hoofbeats on the stony ground. At 4.30, after an hour’s wait on the creekbank, Early told Kershaw to go ahead and cross. He did, and while he was getting his men back into column on the other side, the boom of Rosser’s horse artillery came from well upstream, along with the rattling clatter of picket fire nearby on the right, where Gordon was fording the Shenandoah just off the unalerted Union flank. The surprise was complete, if not quite overwhelming at the outset. “As we emerged from a thicket into the open,” one of Kershaw’s South Carolinians later wrote, “we could see the enemy in great commotion. But soon the works were filled with half-dressed troops, and they opened a galling fire upon us.”
Kershaw charged, and as he did so, racing uphill through the spreading dawn, Gordon struck the left rear of the hastily formed blue line, which promptly broke. Elated (for these were Crook’s men, the so-called West Virginians who had flanked them unceremoniously off Fisher’s Hill four weeks ago) the Confederates surged forward on a broad front across the turnpike, pursuing and taking prisoners by the hundreds. With only a bit more time for getting set, Emory’s corps fared little better, its unbraced ranks plowed by shells from rebel batteries massed on a hill beyond the creek. Fugitives from the four routed divisions fled northward through Wright’s camps, in rear of which his Potomac veterans were falling in for battle. By now the sun was rising, alternately bright and pale as drifts of smoke blew past it, and the graybacks — joined at this stage by Wharton, who had been left with nothing in his front — came on yelling as they drove Wright’s troops northeast across the open fields, first to a second and then to still a third position nearly two miles in rear of Middletown, where Jackson had captured Banks’s wagon train in May of ’62. This seemed to some a comparable achievement, while others went further afield in search of a parallel triumph. “The sun of Middletown! The sun of Middletown!” Early kept exclaiming, as if to say he had found his Austerlitz.
It was now past 9 o’clock, and he was delighted that within a scant four hours he had driven seven infantry divisions from the field with only five of his own, taking in the process more than 1300 prisoners, 18 guns, and an uncounted number of flags.
He was delighted; but he was also satisfied, it seemed. “Well, Gordon, this is glory enough for one day,” he declared on meeting the Georgian near the front soon afterward. They stood looking across the fields at the Yankees reduced to stick men in the distance. “This is the 19th,” he went on. “Precisely one month ago today we were going in the opposite direction.” Gordon too was happy, but his thoughts were on the immediate future, not the past. “It is very well so far, General,” he replied, “but we have one more blow to strike, and then there will not be left an organized company of infantry in Sheridan’s army.” His chief demurred. “No use in that. They will all go, directly.” The Georgian was doubtful, and said so, indicating the bluecoats on the horizon. “This is the VI Corps, General. It will not go unless we drive it from the field.” Once more Early shook his head. “Yes, it will go directly,” he insisted as he continued to wait for the whipped Federals to withdraw.
Gordon said no more just then, but he later wrote: “My heart went into my boots.” He was remembering “that fatal halt on the first day at Gettysburg,” as well as Old Jube’s daylong refusal, back in May, to let him strike Grant’s unguarded flank in the Wilderness, which he believed had cost the Army of Northern Virginia the greatest of all its victories.
His heart might have sunk still deeper if he had known what was happening, across the way, while he and his chief stood talking. Sheridan had just arrived and was reassembling his scattered army for an all-out counterattack. True to his promise to return from the capital in two days, “if not sooner,” he had slept last night in Winchester and had heard the guns of Cedar Creek, some fifteen miles away, while still in bed this morning. Dismissing the cannonade as “irregular and fitful” — most likely a reconnaissance-in-force by one of Wright’s brigades — he tried to get back to sleep, without success. At breakfast, the guns still were muttering in the distance, faint but insistent, and he ordered his staff and cavalry escort to saddle up without delay. On the way out of town, he noticed “many women at the doors and windows of the houses, who kept shaking their skirts at us and who were otherwise markedly insolent in their demeanor.” It occurred to him that they “were in rapture over some good news,” mysteriously received, “while I as yet was utterly in ignorance of the actual situation.” What was more, the sound of firing seemed to be moving to meet him; an ominous development. But it was not until he crossed Mill Creek, beyond Kernstown, and reached the crest of a low hill on the far side, that he and his staff and escort saw their worst fears confirmed by “the appalling spectacle of a panic-stricken army.”
His first notion was to rally what was left of his command, here if not still farther back toward Winchester, for a last-ditch stand against the rebel force, which might or might not include Longstreet and his famed First Corps. With this in mind, Little Phil ordered his staff and escort to form a straggler line along the crest of the hill: all, that is, except two aides and a score of troopers, who would proceed with him toward Cedar Creek to find out what had happened.
In the course of the twelve-mile ride — “Sheridan’s Ride,” it came to be called — his purpose changed. Partly this was because of his aggressive nature, which reasserted itself, and partly it was the result of encountering groups of men along the roadside boiling coffee. That did not seem to indicate demoralization; nor did the cheers they gave when they saw him coming up the turnpike. “As he galloped on,” one of the two aides later wrote, “his feature
s gradually grew set, as though carved in stone, and the same dull red glint I had seen in his piercing black eyes when, on other occasions, the battle was going against us, was there now.” Grimness then gave way to animation. He began to lift his little flat-topped hat in jaunty salute, rather as if in congratulation for a victory, despite the contradictory evidence. “The army’s whipped!” an unstrung infantry colonel informed him, only to be told: “You are, but the army isn’t.” He put the spurs to Rienzi — an undersized, bandy-legged man, perched high on the pounding big black horse he had named for the town in Mississippi where he acquired him two years ago — and called out to the retreaters, “About face, boys! We are going back to our camps. We are going to lick them out of their boots!” He kept saying that, shouting the words at the upturned faces along the pike. “We are going to get a twist on those fellows. We are going to lick them out of their boots!”
And did just that: but not with the haste his breakneck manner had implied. Arriving about 10.30 he found Crook’s corps disintegrated and Emory’s not much better off, though most of it at least was still on hand. Wright’s, however, was holding firm in its third position, a couple of miles northwest of Middletown, its line extended southeast across the turnpike by Merritt’s and Custer’s horsemen. Sheridan got to work at once, concentrating on getting Emory’s troops, together with a trickle of retreaters who were returning in response to the exhortations he had shouted as he passed them on the pike, regrouped to support Wright in his resistance to the expected third assault by Early’s whooping graybacks. Nor was he unmindful, even at this stage, of the fruits a sudden counterstroke might yield. “Tell General Emory if they attack him again to go after them, and to follow them up, and to sock it to them, and to give them the devil. We’ll have all those camps and cannon back again.” Emory got the message, and reacted with a sort of fervid resignation. “We might as well whip them today,” he said. “If we don’t, we shall have to do it tomorrow. Sheridan will get it out of us sometime.”
