by Bruce Catton
Fully a year later, an English traveler wrote that the Shenandoah Valley looked like one vast moor.8
Heavy smoke, and blackened earth, and unending fires at night: and with the army as it moved there was an increasing stream of refugees, as if some strange emigrant train were off on an unimaginable journey. At many houses, as the cavalry approached, people were all packed and waiting. They could ride in army wagons, perhaps, and with the army there would be food, and if they were asked where they wanted to go they would reply: “Anywhere, to get out of this.” Many of the Dunkers and Mennonites were setting out to join relatives in Pennsylvania, and there were scores and hundreds of contrabands who were departing for no one could imagine what goal. They had been told that the Yankees killed colored people, but with every barn for sixty miles going up in flames it seemed to them that they ought to leave.
These contrabands had many children, who looked in wide-eyed wonder at the odd things that were going on. The surgeon of the 77th New York reined in once by a rickety old cart drawn by an even more rickety horse. The cart seemed to be absolutely brimming over with small children, and the surgeon asked the bandannaed mammy who was driving: “Aunty, are these all your children?” She looked at him in mild surprise and protested: “They’s only eighteen of ’em.”9
Early pressed close behind the rear guard, and his cavalry struck whenever it found a chance. But things had changed since the early days of the war, when Confederate troopers could ride rings around the Yankees. The Rebel supply of horses was running out, and manpower was getting low, and the squadrons that came in on turnpike and field to harass the blue files no longer had the old advantage. A Confederate officer confessed glumly that Sheridan’s cavalrymen nowadays “were more to be feared than their infantry—better soldiers all through.”10
Sheridan grew irritated by the unending rear-guard actions, and at last he called in Torbert and told him to end the nuisance once and for all: “Whip or get whipped.” On October 9 Torbert sent Custer and Merritt back for a head-on fight, and their seasoned divisions broke the Confederate mounted line to bits and chased the fragments up the Valley for twenty miles and more, capturing men and horses and eleven guns and inflicting, as one of the Southern riders confessed, “the greatest disaster that ever befell our cavalry during the whole war.” 11 The Union army continued to retire at its leisure, smoke and flames still marking its passage, and by the middle of October Sheridan put it in position on a chain of low hills behind a little stream known as Cedar Creek, a little north of the town of Strasburg, twenty-odd miles south of Winchester.
For a few days the army rested in this camp. Early was not far away, but his army had been beaten twice in the past month and his cavalry had been thoroughly routed within the week, and the Yankees seem to have assumed that there was not much fight left in him—a risky assumption to make where Jubal Early was concerned, for he was as pugnacious a man as ever wore Rebel gray. And since there was a three-way disagreement between Grant, Sheridan, and the War Department as to what Sheridan ought to do next, Sheridan suspended the order transferring the VI Corps to Petersburg, put Wright in temporary command of the army, and went off to Washington for consultation. The situation of the rival armies seemed stable, and nothing much was apt to happen in his absence.12
Actually, the situation was highly unstable, principally because the destroying Yankee host had done its job so thoroughly. Early had perhaps 15,000 men with him, and the one thing these men could not do was stay where they were. The Valley had been so completely devastated that they could get no supplies of any kind from the surrounding country. Every mouthful of food for man and beast had to come up by wagon train, via Staunton and Waynesboro, and it was a hard pull for the worn-out Confederate transportation system. Early could either leave the Valley altogether, ceding the whole territory to the Yankees for the rest of the war—or he could attack.
To attack an army whose combat strength was twice his own would be, of course, to take fantastic risks. But the Confederate situation was desperate, and if fantastic risks were not taken the war was as good as lost. Early appears to have figured that Sheridan’s force was not quite as solid as it looked anyway. The VI Corps was very good, but Confederate intelligence put a much lower estimate on the other two corps. Also, a good part of Sheridan’s strength was in his cavalry, which did not ordinarily cut much of a figure in an infantry battle. Altogether, the odds could be worse.
In addition, there were two other encouraging factors. One was the obvious fact that nobody on the Federal side had any notion that the Confederates might take the offensive. The other was the position of the Union army.
Cedar Creek came down from the northwest to join the north fork of the Shenandoah River, and the chain of hills just behind the creek, on which the Federals were camped, ran from northwest to southeast. The VI Corps was on the Federal right, roughly a mile from where the Valley Pike crossed the creek and climbed through the higher ground. Next to it, north and west of the pike, was the XIX Corps. Southeast of the turnpike, anchoring the Union left, was Crook’s corps. It was in a good position to knock down any force which tried to come up along the main highway, but there was open ground nearly a mile wide between its own left and the point where creek and river met. Since the river just there lay in what looked like an impassable gorge, it seemed unlikely that the Confederates would be able to get across and make any trouble for this exposed flank.
Unlikely, except to soldiers who had to take fantastic risks anyway—the desperate, fifty-to-one sort of gamble that led Washington to take his army across the Delaware to attack the Hessian camp at Trenton. To Jubal Early the exposed Federal left looked like opportunity. He studied the ground carefully, and it seemed that an army corps could be led along that impassable gorge if the man who led it was thoroughly familiar with the layout and did not mind marching his entire command within 400 yards of the Yankee picket line.13
To lessen the risk, Early sent his cavalry and part of his infantry over to the west, thrusting them forward as if he planned to attack the Yankee right flank. He put some more men in place where Wright’s and Emory’s men could see them, and he organized a third column to stand by for an advance directly along the turnpike. Then, with everything ready, he had General John B. Gordon take his army corps down into the gorge to get in behind the Federal left and open the attack. It meant an all-night hike, much of it in single file, and the men left canteens, cooking utensils, and everything except weapons and ammunition in camp so that no rattling or clanking of equipment would give them away.
So the army moved. Very early on the shivery, misty dawn of October 19, with fog hanging in the low places and the darkness lying thick in the graveyard hour between moonset and dawn, the Confederates rose up out of the gorge and came in yelling and shooting on the drowsy flank of Sheridan’s army.
The day before, certain election commissioners from Connecticut had come into the Yankee lines to take the presidential vote of Connecticut soldiers, and they remained in camp overnight as special headquarters guests. They liked what they saw of army life, and to their hosts at supper they expressed regret that they could not see a fight before they went home. The officers who were entertaining them said they would like to accommodate them, but there just wasn’t a chance: “it seemed very certain that Early would keep at a respectful distance.” 14
So here before reveille there was a popping and a racket off at the extreme left, and while nobody imagined it was anything except some little picket-line tussle there was a general stir in the Union camp, and the veterans began to cook breakfast on the theory that whether this was a false alarm or the real thing it would do no harm to eat and be ready. Then, suddenly, artillery began to pound, the infantry firing became sustained and intense, and a wild uproar came through the dark mist—and the election commissioners quickly found their clothes and ballot boxes and horses and took off for the North just as fast as they could go.15
Crook’s corps was crumpled up in a tw
inkling, with Rebels coming in from the left and rear before the men even had time to grab their muskets. The corps had seven guns in line, and these were captured before they could fire a shot—to be spun about immediately by their captors and fired through the confusing mist into the middle of the Yankee camp. Crook commanded about 7,000 infantry that day, and in a matter of minutes those who had not been shot or captured were running for the rear, all 7,000 of them. For the next twenty-four hours, that corps did not exist as a usable military instrument.
Almost before the rest of the army realized that an attack was being made, Confederate Gordon had his infantry on the hill where Sheridan’s headquarters had been—which meant that he was in rear of the entire army and that the men of Emory’s and Wright’s corps, who had as yet seen no Rebels, could do nothing on earth except retreat as speedily as possible. The surprise could not have been more complete.
General Wright came up from his own quarters, working to get troops over to the Valley Pike and check the rout. One of the men who went with him wrote that nothing was left of Crook’s corps except “a disorganized, routed, demoralized, terrified mob of fugitives,” and he sketched “the universal confusion and dismay” along the turnpike:
“Wagons and ambulances lumbering hither and thither in disorder; pack horses led by frightened bummers, or wandering at their own free will; crowds of officers and men, some shod and some barefoot, many of them coatless and hatless, with and without their rifles, but all rushing wildly to the rear; oaths and blows alike powerless to halt them; a cavalry regiment stretched across the field, unable to stem the torrent.”16
Wright was in the middle of it, bareheaded, his beard all clotted with blood from a wound under the chin. He got the 2nd Connecticut heavies into line on a slope overlooking the highway, and as the men lay down to fire the sun came up and they found themselves looking directly into it, unable to see the Rebels, who were firing steadily: “We could see nothing but that enormous disk, rising out of the fog, while they could see every man in our line and could take good aim.” The fog thinned, and more Confederates came in on the left and rear, and the regiment had to retreat, retreat turning quickly into a rout. General Emory brought over a brigade and sent it straight up the turnpike to break the Rebel charge and give time for a rally.
Federals and Confederates met head on and around the regimental battle flags there was furious fighting. A man in the 8th Vermont remembered that “men seemed more like demons than human beings as they struck fiercely at each other with clubbed muskets and bayonets,” and at times it seemed that a dozen Confederates at once were reaching for each flagstaff. The colors tossed up and down in the dust and smoke. When they dropped the Southerners would cheer, and when they rose again the Northerners would cheer, and after a time the brigade got back out of the road and joined in the retreat. It still had all of its flags, but it had lost two thirds of its men.17
Step by step, the whole army retreated, and by the middle of the morning it formed a shaky battle line four miles north of its original position. This line stretched away to the west of the pike, and there was a lull in the fighting, and the men scooped up little breastworks and got ready to meet another attack. Crook’s corps was gone, and plenty of men had vanished from the other commands too, and all of these fugitives, together with the usual concourse of coffee boilers, wagoners, ambulance drivers, and the like were stretched out in steady flight all the way back to Winchester.
This flight was not a headlong rush, because even a frightened man cannot run so very far without pausing for breath. After the first panic wore off the men settled down to a walk, carrying on their flight, as one officer said, “in a manner as systematic as if they had been taught it.” Now and then they would stop to make coffee and talk things over. Then they would go on again, sauntering along without haste but also without any intention of making a real halt anywhere. It was noticed, in this as in all similar cases, that it was almost impossible for any officer to rally and re-form such fugitives unless they recognized him as belonging to their own regiment or brigade. They would obey no strangers. They might fall into ranks obediently enough for a strange officer, but the ranks would evaporate as soon as he tried to lead them back into action.18
The triumphant Confederates meanwhile had seized all of the Union camps, and had 1,300 prisoners and 18 of Sheridan’s cannon in their possession. Ahead of them, perhaps a mile and a half to the north, they could see the last Federal battle line; it was nearly two miles wide, and swarms of cavalry were forming up on either flank, and as Early looked at it he was jocund and full of confidence.
Exactly one month earlier his army had been running away from the Yankees, at Winchester. Now it was the Yankees who were in flight, and Early was in high spirits. A good many of his soldiers were leaving their commands to despoil the captured camps, with especial attention to the good food their foes had not been able to take with them, but this absenteeism did not worry him. He declared that the Yankee battle line visible west of the turnpike was no more than a rear guard. It would go away before long and the victory would be complete.
General Gordon was of a different notion.
“That is the VI Corps, general,” he said. “It will not go unless we drive it from the field.”
But Early would not listen to him. The Yankees had been beaten and most of them had run away: the rest would run away before long and that was all there was to it. Still, to play safe he put his staff to work to round up the camp looters and get them back into formation.19 From his headquarters post on a hilltop he continued to look north with deep satisfaction. Banks and Sigel, Hunter and Sheridan—they were all alike, when they collided with a Rebel army in the Valley!
… On a rise of ground just south of Winchester, about fifteen miles from the battlefield, the 17th Pennsylvania cavalry had been in bivouac. They had come down from Martinsburg, guarding trains against guerillas, and they had been ordered to wait here for General Sheridan, who had reached Winchester the night before on his return trip from Washington.
The day of October 19 began as usual for these troopers, with “Boots and Saddles” sounding before sunrise. As the men fed their horses and got their own breakfasts they could hear the mutter of gunfire, far to the south. Nobody thought much about it, since the word was that Wright was going to make a reconnoissance in force that morning to find out just where the Rebel army was, and it was assumed that that was the cause of the firing. The men finished their meal and stood by, waiting for the general.
Sheridan rode out about nine o’clock, a few aides riding with him. It was a sunny morning, bare fields rolling away to the hills and mountains which blazed with autumn colors, a warm Indian summer haze thickening the air. Off to the south there was that continued sound of firing, perhaps a bit louder now than it had been earlier. Sheridan seemed to be puzzled. As he picked up his cavalry escort he halted, dismounted, and bent over with his ear to the ground, listening intently. When he got back on his horse his swarthy face was clouded.
Down the road went general, aides, and cavalry, horses moving at a walk. After a mile or so they came upon a wagon train all in a tangle, wagons turned every which way, nobody moving. Sheridan sent his Major Forsyth trotting on ahead to see what was wrong, and presently Forsyth came back at a mad gallop. The train had been bound for the front, he reported, and at this spot had met an officer heading for Winchester bearing news that the army had been routed and was coming back in full retreat—on hearing which the teamsters had begun to swing their wagons around without waiting for orders.
Sheridan told Major Spera, the cavalry commander, to give him fifty of his best mounted men and to spread the rest across the road as traffic police: untangle the wagon train, round up fugitives, and in general see that everybody who thought he was going to Winchester turned and headed back for the place where the fighting was going on. Then with his chosen fifty Sheridan set off down the road, the horses moving at a walk no longer.
First they met wagon tr
ains, coming back to escape capture, and these were told to park in the fields and await orders. Then they met the outriders of defeat—sutlers, camp followers of high and low degree, artillerymen without their guns, headquarters trains, battery wagons, caissons, and little knots of stragglers and walking wounded. A little farther on, they saw groups of men in the fields, clustering about campfires, boiling coffee, and they met increasing numbers of men walking along the highway. And always the sound of the firing grew louder.
Here and there Sheridan would rein up and call: “Turn back, men! Turn back! Face the other way!” Once he told a group of stragglers: “Face the other way, boys—if I had been there this morning this wouldn’t have happened! You’ll have your own camps back before night!”
Most of the time, however, he did not come to a halt but kept on at a gallop, swinging his hat in a great arc, now and then pointing toward the south, always calling: “Turn back, men! Turn back!”
The effect was electric. One group of coffee boilers, who had been stretched at ease around a fire, jumped up with a yell as he went past, kicked their coffeepots over, seized their muskets, and started back toward the battlefield. All along the way men sprang up and cheered. Those who were near the road turned and shouted, waving their arms in frantic signal, to attract the attention of men who were sauntering across fields a quarter of a mile away. They pointed to the speeding cavalcade in the road and at the top of their lungs they cried: “Sheridan! Sheridan!”20
The Valley Pike had been macadamized once, but in the war years it had seen many armies and no repairs, and its surface now was all pitted and broken, and a cloud of white dust rose as the mounted men galloped on, Sheridan in front, the rest trailing after him.