Terrible Swift Sword (20 page)

Sheridan was expected to harry and destroy Confederate lieutenant general Jubal Early's Army of the Valley. Early's army had recently swept the Valley clean of Union troops before marching into Maryland, throwing a scare into Washington, DC, and burning Chambersburg, Pennsylvania. The North was in an uproar.

This was certainly not the first time the 125-mile-long Valley, a dagger aimed at the capital and the rich farmlands of Maryland and Pennsylvania, had proved to be the Union's Achilles' heel—and a drain on its resources. From the first days of the war, Confederates had launched raids and major offensives across the Potomac River into the North from the Shenandoah. The Valley also gave the Rebels a sanctuary
from which to strike at two vital Union transportation links: the Chesapeake & Ohio Canal and the B&O Railroad, the lifeline from Washington to the Midwest.

The Yankees had a dismal record of stopping the armies of Joseph Johnston, Stonewall Jackson, Richard Ewell, James Longstreet, and now Early from using the Valley to counterbalance Union offensives in northern Virginia. The record was replete with Union generals who had failed in the Valley: Robert Patterson, John C. Fremont, James Shields, Nathaniel Banks (driven by Jackson from the Valley in just three days) and, recently, David Hunter and Franz Sigel.

Grant believed the situation could be retrieved with a reorganized military hierarchy and a new, aggressive commander. The Valley fell under four military departments, none with overall responsibility. For months, Grant had wanted to combine the departments into a single division, but the Lincoln administration—not wanting to risk alienating anyone with a close election looming—had demurred.

But Early's alarming sally from the Valley had radically altered the circumstances. President Abraham Lincoln and War Secretary Edwin Stanton now supported Grant's plan to create a Middle Military Division. It would absorb the former departments of Washington, the Susquehanna, Maryland, and West Virginia; the Shenandoah Valley would be its focus. As the question of who would command the Cavalry Corps had produced disunity in March, so too, in July, did the subject of who would lead this new division.
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EARLY'S TRANSFORMATION INTO THE terror of the Shenandoah occurred rapidly and unexpectedly. One of three corps commanders in the Army of Northern Virginia, “Old Jube” had taken command of Stonewall Jackson's former command, II Corps, when Ewell became incapacitated at Cold Harbor. On June 12, Robert E. Lee ordered Early to march with his three infantry divisions and two artillery batteries to the Shenandoah Valley and destroy Hunter's army. Once Hunter was removed from the picture, Early would be free to operate against Washington and Baltimore.
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Rather than meeting Sheridan in Charlottesville as planned, Hunter had proceeded directly south from Staunton toward Lynchburg. At Piedmont, his men defeated Confederate brigadier general William “Grumble” Jones's outnumbered force, and Jones was killed.

Grant had directed Hunter to make the Valley “a desert as high up as possible,” but Hunter was in too much of a hurry. At Lexington, however, his men paused long enough to burn down the home of Virginia governor John Letcher, as well as the Virginia Military Institute—the source of so many Confederate leaders. The
Yankees looted Washington College and stole its statue of George Washington. These symbolic gestures rankled with the Confederates; Early called them “outrages.”

From Lexington, Hunter continued south to Lynchburg. The southwestern Virginia city was a long-coveted Union objective, serving the Confederacy as a railroad hub, manufacturing center, and Rebel food and supply depot.

On June 17, Hunter's 18,000 men reached Lynchburg's outskirts to find Major General John Breckenridge's division blocking the Yankees' path. Although probably numbering no more than 4,000, the Rebel force was large enough to fill the cautious Hunter with trepidation; he stopped for the night to contemplate the situation. By the next morning, it had gotten worse: Early and 5,000 men had arrived by train during the night.

Hunter attacked, and Breckenridge's and Early's veterans flung him back. Believing he was outnumbered when he in fact enjoyed a two-to-one advantage, Hunter marched away into the Allegheny Mountains and thence into West Virginia, with Early's army following him. Hunter's army was out of the war for weeks; it did not reach Charleston, West Virginia, until July 2.
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With Hunter removed from the Shenandoah Valley, Lee and his staff recognized a rare strategic opportunity: Early could strike at Washington. The threat would compel Grant to shuttle reinforcements from his army outside Petersburg to the capital. If Grant were significantly weakened, Lee might counterattack. Moreover, Lincoln's reelection prospects would be harmed by the specter of the enemy at Washington's gates after three years of war. If Lincoln were defeated, his successor might negotiate a peace with the Confederacy that would leave it intact. The Confederate command liked the possibilities presented by a march on Washington by Early.

Early ended his pursuit of Hunter after three or four days and returned to Lynchburg, where he combined his II Corps with Breckenridge's division to form the Army of the Valley. Before the army began its descent upon the largely undefended lower Shenandoah and Washington, Early led his 14,000 men through Lexington to honor the dead hero Stonewall Jackson. As a band played a dirge, Jackson's former corps marched past its captain's grave with heads uncovered and arms reversed. From their homage march, the men drew the inspiration to withstand the rigors of the coming campaign.
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General Franz Sigel, derisively called “the Flying Dutchman” by the Confederates, still commanded Union troops in the lower Valley, despite Major General Henry Halleck's attempt to have him sacked after his defeat at New Market in May. Halleck had written Grant, “He will do nothing but run. He never did anything else.” True to form, when Early approached Martinsburg, West Virginia, Sigel fled before the Army of the Valley's 10,000 infantry and 4,000 cavalry and artillery, barricading himself on the heights at Harper's Ferry.

Early crossed the Potomac, entered Frederick, Maryland, and at the Monocacy River crushed a small, cobbled Union force of 7,000 under Major General Lew Wallace, the future author of
Ben Hur
. In defeat, however, Wallace's men served the crucial purpose of delaying Early's reaching Washington by one day. On July 11, the Army of the Valley stood before Washington's outer defenses at Fort Stevens, less than ten miles from the Capitol Building. Panic spread through the city.

Early's tired, dusty army, reduced to 10,000 effectives by the long march's rigors, surveyed the massive fortress and its intimidating gun ports, ditches, palisades, and abatis. Then, in the distance, the Rebels observed columns of blue-clad soldiers marching out of the city toward the fort. With their field glasses, the Confederates were able to identify the Union troops by their insignia; they belonged to Horatio Wright's veteran VI Corps—two divisions rushed to Washington from Petersburg. Scouts then reported that the rest of the VI Corps as well as XIX Corps were also en route. Early prudently called off an attack that he had planned for dawn on July 12.
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Wright invited the president to Fort Stevens that day to watch one of his brigades launch an assault on the Rebels, who lingered outside the fort all day, sniping at the Yankees inside. Lincoln, who liked to see his army in action, readily accepted. When the attack began, the president stood on the parapet, all six feet, four inches of him, with his stovepipe hat adding another eight inches and presenting a profile familiar to millions.

Rebel bullets spattered around Lincoln, knocking down an officer standing three feet away. “Get down, you damn fool, before you get shot!” someone shouted. Amused by the rebuke, Lincoln complied. The warning shout had come from twenty-three-year-old Captain Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr., the future US Supreme Court justice.
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Assistant War Secretary Charles Dana watched the proceedings with consternation. He telegraphed Grant that while Early's army had been prevented from entering Washington, he was certain there would be no pursuit of him. “There is no head to the whole, and it seems indispensable that you should at once appoint one. Hunter will be the ranking officer if he ever gets up, but he will not do.”

Dana's July 12 message might have revived in Grant's mind the idea of a unified command under a dynamic leader to remove the ubiquitous Rebel threat from the Shenandoah. The public frustration with the enemy eruptions from the Valley was reflected in the
New York Times's
cutting summation: “The old story again—the back door, by way of the Shenandoah Valley, has been left invitingly open.”
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THAT NIGHT, EARLY WITHDREW from Washington and returned to the lower Shenandoah Valley. At Kernstown on July 24, Early sent Major General George
Crook's West Virginians flying back into West Virginia with 1,185 casualties. Crook had disregarded warnings from his subordinate commanders about Early; after the battle, he blamed his subordinates for the defeat.

On July 20, Crook's cavalry, under Brigadier General William Averell, had defeated Stephen Dodson Ramseur's division, left by Early at Winchester, and then occupied the town. With Crook's defeat, it was now Early's turn to reoccupy Winchester, whose citizens had become almost blasé about the frequent changes. One of Hunter's staff officers observed that since July 1861, when Union major general Robert Patterson's army had abandoned the Valley, “annually since that date, we have been driven out. Here we are in 1864 in the same position.”
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Early learned that in his absence Hunter had returned to the Valley from West Virginia and burned the homes of prominent Virginians, among them state senator Andrew Hunter; Alexander Boteler, a former member of the US and Confederate congresses; and Edmond Lee, a relative of Robert E. Lee. Hunter's actions were retaliation for the recent burning in Maryland by Early's men of the homes of Postmaster General Montgomery Blair and Maryland governor A. W. Bradford—which had been retribution for the Lexington outrages.

The new incendiary attacks on Southern civilians filled Early with cold rage. “I now came to the conclusion that we had stood this mode of warfare long enough, and that it was time to open the eyes of the people of the North to its enormity, by an example in the way of retaliation,” he wrote. His chosen target was Chambersburg, Pennsylvania.

On July 30, two Rebel cavalry brigades rode into Chambersburg and demanded $100,000 in gold and $500,000 in currency as compensation for the destruction of Southern homes. It was a reprise of Jeb Stuart's October 1862 raid on the city, which had netted his raiders nothing because the bank funds had been removed. This time, though, the Confederates warned that if the $600,000 were not paid, they would burn Chambersburg to the ground. The townspeople defiantly replied that they were unafraid of whatever the Rebels might do. The raiders promptly lit fires that destroyed most of the town of 3,000 people.

This act, following Early's shocking appearance outside Washington, pushed the Lincoln administration to agree to Grant's proposed shake-up of the Shenandoah Valley command.
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SHERIDAN WAS GRANT'S THIRD choice to command the new Middle Military Division. Grant again proposed Major General William Franklin, his former West Point classmate. But Stanton and Lincoln, as they had when Grant nominated
Franklin for the Cavalry Corps, vetoed his choice; Franklin's clash with Ambrose Burnside at Fredericksburg had not been forgotten in the War Department. “General Franklin would not give satisfaction,” Halleck told Grant, reminding him that Lincoln had wanted to put Franklin on trial for negligence and disobeying orders.
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