Terrible Swift Sword (19 page)

From Rebel prisoners Sheridan learned that General Hunter was not on his way to Charlottesville but marching to Lynchburg, “away from instead of toward me,
thus making the junction of our commands beyond all reasonable probability.” Moreover, Breckenridge's infantry division was reportedly lingering in the Charlottesville vicinity, and there were reports that Lieutenant General Richard Ewell's corps—led by Jubal Early because Ewell was disabled by illness—was coming west from Richmond to engage Hunter.

The Cavalry Corps's five hundred wounded and five hundred prisoners were problematic, and it had enough ammunition for just one big battle. Sheridan believed his troopers would have to fight more than one to reach Charlottesville, with Hampton, Lee, and Breckenridge barring the way—and with Hunter's 20,000 men beyond supporting range.
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After pondering these stark facts, Sheridan elected to end the mission and turn back. It was a disappointment, but the risks appeared to outweigh the potential rewards. By pressing on alone to Charlottesville, where he would likely face enemy cavalry and infantry in great numbers, he would risk destroying his Cavalry Corps—for the purpose of wrecking bridges, canals, and railroad tracks. One might imagine the Cavalry Corps, on the run with its ammunition gone, having to leave its wounded behind.

A “return by leisurely marches,” as Sheridan described his new plan to Grant, might yet accomplish the goal of keeping the Rebel cavalry occupied—and continue to deprive Lee's army of its “eyes”—while the Army of the Potomac crossed the James. Moreover, Sheridan would be able to bring out his wounded and preserve his divisions to fight another day.

On June 12, Sheridan ordered Gregg's division to rip up the rails between Trevilian Station and Louisa Court House to the east. He sent Torbert's division west toward Gordonsville and Charlottesville to secure Mallory's Ford, where Sheridan planned to cross the North Anna and take a shorter route back to Grant's army.

Two miles west of Trevilian Station, Torbert's division ran into Hampton's dismounted cavalrymen, who were dug in along a railroad embankment, with dense woods all around. As the two sides began fighting, Fitzhugh Lee's division joined Hampton. Torbert attacked repeatedly—seven times in all, the last attempts made with the aid of one of Gregg's brigades. But the Yankees were unable to dislodge the Rebel cavalry.

Rather than expend his remaining ammunition fighting another battle, Sheridan chose to recross the North Anna at Carpenter's Ford, the way that he had come. After a day's rest, the Cavalry Corps began the long march back to Grant's army. Hampton's and Lee's divisions shadowed the Cavalry Corps from the river's south bank. Sheridan left behind ninety of his men who were too badly wounded to travel, as well as the wounded Rebels in his care.
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Sheridan had not rendezvoused with Hunter or destroyed any of the bridges, canals, and railroad tracks between Charlottesville and the Shenandoah Valley. Southern newspapers pronounced Trevilian Station a Confederate victory, and Robert E. Lee sent congratulations to Hampton. Yet Sheridan's expedition had diverted the Rebel cavalry for three weeks during its march to and from Trevilian Station. Lacking his “eyes,” Lee lost track of Grant's army for two critical days, and the 100,000-man Army of the Potomac safely crossed the James River between June 14 and 17. With the Yankees now east and southeast of Petersburg and Richmond, the siege that Lee had dreaded was about to become a reality.
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THE INTENSE SUMMER HEAT and two weeks without rain made the return march over roads “deep with dust” a cheerless slog for man and beast. The Cavalry Corps's destination, the supply depot at White House on the Pamunkey River, lay one hundred miles distant. The column moved slowly—ten miles per day on average, with frequent halts—because its Rebel prisoners were afoot and the hundreds of wounded required dressing changes and refreshment. The disabled rode in old buggies, family carriages, and carts—anything on wheels that could move in all conditions. “The suffering was intense,” wrote Sheridan, “but our means for mitigating their distress were limited.” He was impressed by the wounded men's stoic forbearance. “The fortitude and cheerfulness of the poor fellows under such conditions were remarkable, for no word of complaint was heard.”
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The Cavalry Corps lived off the land. The bitter residents disparagingly called the foragers “Sheridan's Robbers,” a sobriquet some of the men embraced. They stripped the country and its inhabitants of everything useful, although the booty was sometimes pitiable, or worse. Guerrillas pounced on stray foragers and hanged them, mutilating their bodies.

The worn-out, overheated horses collapsed in the dust and were shot by the cavalrymen at a dismaying rate of about a dozen per mile—an estimate some historians have deemed too conservative. Surgeon Elias W. H. Beck wrote to his wife, “So terrible to see every time a poor horse would give out by sheer exhaustion—out with the pistol & shoot him—break up the saddle & walk on.” The cavalrymen replaced their mounts with horses taken from Virginia civilians, further poisoning the people's feelings toward them.
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In addition to the wounded and the Rebel prisoners, another group also joined the Cavalry Corps column: 2,000 blacks, most of them runaway slaves. The men, women, and children had first appeared near Trevilian Station with bundles containing all their worldly goods. On Sheridan's march east, their numbers grew daily.
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The procession passed through the Spotsylvania battlefield, where the marchers did not see another living person. They shuddered at the macabre, revolting sights everywhere: putrefying bodies, charred corpses, ghastly mass graves partially excavated by scavengers. Everywhere were splintered trees and wrecked buildings. The soldiers were relieved to put the scenes of desolation behind them.

 

ON JUNE 20, THE Cavalry Corps crossed the Pamunkey River to White House Landing, where the men found plentiful food and new clothing. New, unwelcome orders awaited Sheridan: to break up the supply depot and escort the wagon train southward across the peninsula to the Army of the Potomac.
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Sheridan grumbled that the train “ought never to have been left to the cavalry to escort, after a fatiguing expedition of three weeks.” The depot's stockpiles filled nine hundred wagons.

Sheridan's two divisions began shepherding the ponderous cavalcade across the peninsula. The weary Union troopers scrupulously guarded the long line of wagons against Hampton's and Fitzhugh Lee's cavalrymen, hovering like wolves on its flanks, looking for openings.

With his instinct for roads and terrain, Sheridan believed there had to be a short cut to the Chickahominy River that would get the supply train to its destination more quickly. He told his staff he was certain that a road connected New Kent Court House to a crossing called Providence Forge. But none appeared on the army's maps, and local citizens solemnly averred that none existed.

“There
was
a road,
must
be a road,” Sheridan insisted. Stubbornly pointing the supply train in the direction where he believed the road should be, he sent Brigadier General George Getty of VI Corps and a staff officer to locate it. Amazingly, they found a wood road just where Sheridan had said it must be; it led directly to the Chickahominy.
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South of the river, Lee's and Hampton's divisions attacked the wagon train on June 24 near Samaria Church—St. Mary's Church on Union maps. Gregg's men, serving as the wagon train's rearguard, managed to repel three attacks and hold off the Rebel cavalry for two hours, at a cost of 357 Yankees killed, wounded, or captured. The Rebels were delayed long enough for the train to get clear.

Blocked by the enemy from crossing the James River pontoon bridge at the stipulated place near Malvern Hill, Sheridan led the column southeastward through Charles City Court House. Ferries met the procession on the north river bank and transported the wagons and Sheridan's corps to the south bank.
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WHILE THE CAVALRY CORPS'S 1st and 2nd Divisions were crossing to the south bank, James Wilson's 3rd Division, which had remained with Grant's army these past three weeks, was riding into trouble. Certain that Fitzhugh Lee's and Hampton's
cavalry divisions would stick with Sheridan, Grant had sent Wilson and Brigadier General August Kautz's small cavalry division from the Army of the James on a long, daring raid nearly one hundred miles around the south of Petersburg. At the place where the Southside Railroad intersected the Richmond & Danville Railroad thirty miles southwest of Petersburg, Wilson and Kautz were to destroy the railroads as far as possible in both directions. This would prevent supplies from the Carolinas and Georgia from reaching Petersburg and Richmond.

Even as the 6,000 cavalrymen set out on June 22, two days before Sheridan reached the James, Meade had misgivings. They might fend off General William H. F. “Rooney” Lee's cavalry division, but what if Fitzhugh Lee and Hampton returned and joined Rooney Lee against Wilson and Kautz?

Wilson's expedition reached the railroad junction unmolested. The bluecoats were wrecking mills, burning crops, driving off the slave labor, and ripping up the tracks when Rooney Lee attacked them. Then, to Wilson's dismay, the divisions of Fitzhugh Lee and Hampton also appeared. Suddenly, the Union cavalry was in trouble, outnumbered and one hundred miles from Grant's army.

Wilson and Kautz made a dash for safety, with the Rebel cavalry snapping at their flanks. At Ream's Station on the Nottoway River, the three Rebel cavalry divisions, aided by two infantry brigades with artillery, hemmed the Union raiders and inflicted heavy casualties. Wilson burned his supply trains, abandoned his artillery, and broke out, in the process becoming separated from Kautz.

On June 30, Grant and Meade, alerted to Wilson's danger, sent Sheridan on a rescue mission, but Wilson appeared the next day without his help. Wilson's division returned from its nine-day raid without its artillery and wagon train or the services of 1,445 men who had been killed, wounded, or captured—fully one-fourth of its force. Yet all of the mission's objectives had been achieved: the Union cavalry had struck a blow in Confederate-controlled territory, it had entirely disarranged the early summer harvest, and the damage inflicted on the railroad tracks halted northbound rail traffic into Petersburg for nine weeks.
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FOR THE FIRST TIME in fifty days, Sheridan's men had time to rest and refit. “In the campaign we were almost always on the march, night and day, often unable to care properly for our wounded, and obliged to bury our dead where they fell,” wrote Sheridan. Camped at Light House Point, the Cavalry Corps was idle from July 2 to 26.

Fifteen hundred replacement horses arrived from the Cavalry Bureau's Washington corrals. But the Cavalry Corps had lost so many horses that even with these remounts, some cavalrymen remained afoot and had to be reassigned to infantry units.

It had been the most successful period in the Cavalry Corps's history. Sheridan's men were the equals, if not the betters, of the vaunted Confederate cavalry that had embarrassed the armies of McClellan, John Pope, Ambrose Burnside, and Joseph Hooker. Time, better resources, and improved leadership had immensely benefited the Union cavalry, while time and losses had eroded the Rebel cavalry's once unquestioned superiority.

In the Wilderness, the Union cavalry had flexed its muscles; at Yellow Tavern it had delivered a shattering blow to Jeb Stuart's legendary cavalry and deprived the Confederacy of its great cavalry leader. At Haw's Shop and Cold Harbor, Sheridan's dismounted troopers had grittily flung back Rebel attacks and driven the enemy from the field. It had lured the Confederate cavalry to Trevilian Station so Grant could cross the James without interference and had there fought to a bloody draw. The spectral procession that arrived at White House Landing, encumbered by wounded and in large part dismounted, bespoke the high cost that the Trevilian raid had exacted on Sheridan's legion.

But as Sheridan, Grant, Abraham Lincoln, and William Sherman well knew, the Cavalry Corps's losses in men and horses could be made good relatively quickly, while the Confederacy, with its vanishing pool of available soldiers, struggled to find replacements—and sometimes did not. Attrition had begun to enforce its iron law on the South.

One replacement agreeable to both Robert E. Lee and Jefferson Davis was Wade Hampton as the new commander of the Army of Northern Virginia's Cavalry Corps. Hampton's conduct at Trevilian Station and his harrying of Wilson's division outside Petersburg had convinced them he was a worthy successor to Jeb Stuart.

 

THE UNION ARMY'S OVERLAND Campaign ended on June 16, when a planned lightning attack on Petersburg instead unfolded with maddening slowness and was easily repelled. Casualties during the “Forty Days” were the highest ever recorded on US soil—more than 60,000 Union soldiers killed, wounded, and captured, while the Rebels sustained more than 30,000 casualties. After all the bloodletting, peace remained elusive. Grant, however, had correctly observed after the Battle of the Wilderness that his men “had passed through the ‘beginning of the end.'”
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AUGUST–SEPTEMBER 1864

UNION ARMY HEADQUARTERS, CITY POINT, VIRGINIA—Since May 4, Philip Sheridan's horsemen had fought and raided from the Wilderness to the James and from Haw's Shop to Trevilian Station. Thus, Sheridan was surprised when Ulysses Grant summoned him to his headquarters cabin on July 31 to tell him that he was being sent to an entirely new arena—the Shenandoah Valley, the graveyard of so many Union hopes and generals' careers.