Terrible Swift Sword (23 page)

 

ON SEPTEMBER 17, SHERIDAN rode to Charles Town and met with Grant. Captain John De Forest of the 12th Connecticut was strolling nearby when a sergeant pointed out two “undersized men, rather squarely built.” They were walking together and talking quietly. Grant, “blond and sandy-bearded,” listened as Sheridan spoke “in a low silvery voice . . . . his elbows pressed to his sides, but gesturing slightly with his fingers. The sergeant gazed silently at Grant for a moment, then said to De Forest, ‘I hate to see that old cuss around. When that old cuss is around there's sure to be a big fight on hand.'”
⁷

By now, Sheridan had a thorough working knowledge of the area's topography and good maps. He drew one out of a side pocket and proceeded to show Grant the locations of roads, streams, and the camps of the two armies.

Since receiving Wright's note, Sheridan and his staff had been working intensively on a plan to attack Early's four remaining divisions east of Winchester and not only to defeat but to destroy them by blocking their escape up the Valley Turnpike. Sheridan spread out his map and explained to Grant how he proposed to “whip them.”

Before leaving City Point, Grant had drawn up an attack plan of his own for Sheridan. “But, seeing that [Sheridan] was so clear and so positive in his views and so confident of success, I said nothing about this and did not take it out of my pocket,” Grant later wrote.
⁸

Impressed by Sheridan's plan and his contagious enthusiasm, Grant ordered him to attack on Tuesday, September 20. Sheridan replied that if Grant approved, he wished to launch the assault on September 19.

“Go in,” Grant told Sheridan. The general in chief departed the next day.
⁹

 

IN THE SHENANDOAH VALLEY, possibly just Harper's Ferry held greater strategic importance than Winchester—both as a springboard for invasions north and south and as a stronghold from which to repel those invasions. Coveted because it was a crossroads city of 4,400, as well as a railroad and mercantile center, Winchester had changed hands more than seventy times during the war—once, a dizzying thirteen times in one day. There had been a dozen full-fledged occupations. Battles had been fought up and down Main Street. Winchester's homes and buildings had been looted, burned, and made to serve as hostels, military headquarters, and hospitals.

The Confederate army had won the two major battles fought at Winchester in 1862 and 1863. The first time, Stonewall Jackson's army had beaten Major General Nathaniel Banks's forces and driven him completely out of the Shenandoah; a year later, Richard Ewell had expelled a Union occupying force prefatory to Robert E. Lee's Gettysburg invasion.

On September 18 Sheridan and his commanders completed their plan to eject Early from Winchester and destroy his army.

 

SCOUTS REPORTED THAT EARLY had left Winchester with two infantry divisions for Martinsburg, across the border in West Virginia, evidently in the hope of gaining a strategic advantage. Sheridan exulted at this opportunity: if he moved quickly, he might defeat the two divisions remaining in the Winchester area while Early and his two other divisions were beyond supporting distance. There was no time to waste. The assault was scheduled to begin at 3 a.m. on Monday, September 19.
¹⁰

 

ALTHOUGH SHERIDAN DID NOT know it, his window for attacking Early's army while it was so divided was swiftly closing. When Early reached Martinsburg, he learned at the telegraph office that Grant and Sheridan had been seen in Charles Town the previous day. Instantly recognizing that the meeting likely portended an imminent attack, Early ordered his two division commanders, Major Generals John Gordon and Robert Rodes, to turn their troops around and return immediately to Winchester.

Early was worried, and with good reason. On a plateau a mile and a half east of Winchester was Major General Stephen Ramseur's unsupported infantry division. Its 2,000 men blocked the Berryville Turnpike, which descended a narrow canyon as it proceeded eastward, connecting Winchester and Berryville. Early knew that Ramseur's troops would stand little chance against Sheridan's seven divisions at Berryville.
¹¹

At Stephenson's Depot, five miles north of Ramseur's troops, was Early's fourth infantry division, commanded by Major General Gabriel Wharton. Early alerted Wharton to be ready to reinforce Ramseur quickly if necessary.
¹²

SEPTEMBER 19, 1864–WINCHESTER, VIRGINIA—SHERIDAN'S plan called for his divisions in Berryville to march west up the Berryville Turnpike and envelope and destroy Ramseur's division just east of Winchester, while two cavalry divisions simultaneously converged from the north on the Rebels.

After crossing Opequon Creek in the predawn darkness, Brigadier General James Wilson's 3rd Cavalry Division rode into a narrow canyon, closely bordered by steep, densely wooded hills. Behind Wilson came VI and XIX Corps and their more than 25,000 infantrymen. Crook's smaller VIII Corps remained at the foot of the defile, with orders to later cut off Ramseur's avenue of retreat.

Ramseur's division was entrenched in fields of ripe corn at the head of the canyon. As Wilson and the infantry divisions advanced on Ramseur from the east, approaching from the north were the Army of West Virginia's cavalry, renamed the 2nd Division and commanded by Brigadier General William Averell, and Wesley Merritt's 1st Division—Alfred Torbert now commanding all of Sheridan's cavalry.

While Wilson, Crook, Merritt, and Averell swarmed around Ramseur's flanks and rear, VI and XIX Corps would attack him head-on. Had everything gone according plan, Ramseur's division, outnumbered twenty to one, would not have stood a chance.

 

WILSON'S 3,500 CAVALRYMEN PASSED up the canyon quickly and drove in Ramseur's pickets. Dismounting, they took up positions to shield the infantrymen marching behind them.

A major problem developed in the canyon. Inexplicably, Major General Horatio Wright, the commander of VI Corps, had decided to bring along his ammunition train. It was a huge mistake. The long line of lumbering, mule-drawn wagons clogged the narrow canyon, blocking the path of XIX Corps.

The lightning strike at Ramseur bogged down. Six hours were lost getting the army through the three-mile-long canyon. The jam was broken only when Sheridan, angrily and with great profanity, ordered Wright's train run into the ditches.

By then it was 11 a.m., and the divisions of Rodes, Gordon, and Wharton were joining Ramseur's infantrymen, who had held their ground against Wilson's dismounted troopers. The fresh Confederate divisions rushed into positions to Ramseur's left and rear and pitched into the fighting that now raged along a ninety-degree arc from the Berryville Pike east of Winchester to the Martinsburg Pike on the city's north side.

 

NOW FACING EARLY'S REUNITED army rather than just Ramseur's division, Sheridan had to improvise a new plan, and he wasted no time in doing so. Placing VI
and XIX Corps in a line facing the Confederate positions, at about noon Sheridan ordered the infantrymen to advance on Early's fully reassembled army of more than 12,000 men. The attack faltered, a gap developed between VI and XIX Corps, and Gordon's and Rodes's two divisions charged into the gap.

During the intensive fighting, Rodes fell mortally wounded, and Sheridan lost Brigadier General David Russell, commander of the 1st Division of VI Corps, as he tried to stop the Rebel counterattack. Russell had been Sheridan's captain in the old 4th Infantry in Oregon, and Sheridan mourned his death. “He was my captain and friend,” he wrote.
¹³

The 1st and 2nd Cavalry Divisions attacked from the north, driving Fitzhugh Lee's cavalry before them. Sheridan summoned the cavalrymen to help execute the next phase of his new plan, a “half wheel” to the left by the entire army. Crook's corps, brought up from the foot of Berryville Canyon and placed to the right of XIX Corps, would lead the movement. If the plan worked, the Rebels' left flank would be shattered and Early's army driven from the field.

Sheridan sent word to Wilson, southeast of Winchester, to ride to the Valley Turnpike and block Early's retreat if possible. Under Sheridan's original plan to envelop Ramseur's division with a combination of infantry and cavalry, Crook's 8,000 men were supposed to have aided Wilson in barring Ramseur's flight. However, with Crook leading the main attack, Wilson, with just 3,500 men, was now expected to block the retreat of Early's entire army.
¹⁴

 

SHERIDAN RODE ALONG THE VI and XIX Corps lines, periodically stopping to lean forward and address his men. His eyes burning with intensity, he told them, “Kill every son of a bitch!”

At one point, a shell screeched through the air, plowed into the ground beneath Rienzi, and exploded. Sheridan emerged from the smoke and dust and remarked, “Damn close, but we'll lick hell out of them yet!” The men cheered wildly.

Sheridan galloped up to Brigadier General Cuvier Grover, who commanded a division of XIX Corps, and said, “Now is the time to go in.”

The infantry divisions advanced across a field toward the Confederate positions, “a rare opportunity to witness the precision with which the attack was taken up from right to left,” Sheridan wrote. As Crook's infantrymen began their “half wheel” to the left, Sheridan ordered his five cavalry brigades to charge the Confederates' flank and get in the rear of Early's army. The open ground, Sheridan noted, “offered an opportunity such as seldom had been presented during the war for a mounted attack.”
¹⁵

The 7,000 horsemen formed three lines. Then, the dense, half-mile-wide phalanx of horses and men rumbled toward the left and rear of the Rebel infantry. Brigadier General George Custer, commanding one of the brigades, wrote that as
bands played inspiring martial music, the advancing formation “presented in the sunlight one moving mass of glittering sabers. This, combined with the various and bright-colored banners and battle-flags, intermingled here and there with the plain blue uniforms of the troops, furnished one of the most inspiring as well as imposing scenes of martial grandeur ever witnessed upon a battle-field.”

The rare sight of a massive cavalry charge transfixed soldiers in both armies. “I never saw such a sight in my life as that of the tremendous force,” a Virginian later said. “Guidons fluttered and sabers glistened,” wrote Major James Kidd, who led the 6th Michigan Cavalry. Captain John De Forest, who was advancing on the Rebel line with XIX Corps, described “a faraway, dark line of eager horsemen—fleeting over a broad grey slope of land, and dashing into a swarm of refugees.”

The Rebels launched a preemptive attack against the charging cavalry, but it caused the Yankees to pause only momentarily. Early's small army was outnumbered and without hope of reinforcement.

The Confederate left flank drew back as Crook's VIII Corps crashed between Wharton's and Gordon's divisions and as VI Corps broke Rodes's division and pushed back Ramseur. Confederate colonel George S. Patton, grandfather of the legendary World War II general, was mortally wounded while futilely urging his Patton's Brigade to withstand the cavalry's onslaught.

Hearing the Union cavalry firing in its rear, Early's army retreated, hurtling through Winchester. John Gordon's wife, Fanny, who was staying in Winchester, exhorted the Rebels from a friend's front porch to turn back. A short time later, with shells and musket balls dropping around her, Fanny Gordon fled the city in her carriage with her six-year-old son and two wounded Rebel officers.

 

KIDD WAS IMPRESSED BY Sheridan's inspired use of cavalry and infantry in support of one another. It was, he said, “the first time that proper use of [the cavalry] had been made in a great battle during the war.” Indeed, in his first major battle as an independent commander, Sheridan had sent Early's combat veterans reeling from the one-two punch of a combined cavalry charge and infantry attack.

Colonel Rutherford B. Hayes, who began the battle as brigade commander in VIII Corps and ended it commanding a division, was equally impressed. “Sheridan's cavalry is splendid. It is the most like the right thing that I have seen during the war.” Custer clapped one of his officers on the shoulder and said, “Major, this is the bulliest day since Christ was born!”

Slowed by rough terrain, a determined Rebel rearguard, and then darkness, Wilson's 3rd Division was unable to block the Valley Turnpike, and Early's army escaped to fight another day. Still, Jubal Early, who had recently thrown Washington into a panic, had been decisively beaten in the arena that he had lately so dominated.

At the Third Battle of Winchester, Sheridan's army reversed the train of major defeats that had dogged Union armies in the Shenandoah Valley since Stonewall Jackson's heyday.
¹⁶