by Burke Davis
In reply Johnson rode through the night in search of Stuart, wandering among the sleeping squadrons. Johnson recalled:
"I rode at once to Taylorsville to see General Stuart. He was lying flat on his back, his head on a saddle, and so fast asleep that McClellan and I turned him over without being able to waken him."
Johnson dealt with McClellan. He was obliged to protect the bridges, he said, under orders from General Lee, and could not join the chase of Sheridan. Further, he wanted to be positive that Stuart would take the best care of his guns.
"I have brought the pick of the command's batteries," he told McClellan. "I want it returned as soon as possible—and intact."
McClellan assured him the guns would be safe, and Johnson rode off to his post.
At one A.M. McClellan roused Fitz Lee and watched sleepily until the riders were moving. Stuart was also awake by now. McClellan was overcome as the move got under way:
"I lay down to catch, if possible, a few minutes' rest. The party rode off as I lay in a half-conscious condition, and I heard some one say: 'General, here's McClellan, fast asleep. Shall I wake him?'
" 'No,' he replied, 'he has been watching while we were asleep. Leave a courier with him, and tell him to come on when his nap is out.'"
McClellan slept and later caught up with the column, which was trotting toward Ashland, in the direction of Richmond.5
Now Jeb led the main column to the intersection of the Telegraph Road and the Mountain Road, which came in from the west, where Sheridan was. Not far below the intersection—perhaps half a mile—was an abandoned inn, Yellow Tavern, a paintless ghost of another era.
The spot was just six miles from Richmond, at the northern end of the Brook Turnpike. The gunner George Neese described the landscape: "A beautiful, rich and productive country of fertile land. The Brook Turnpike is an excellent macadamized road leading out of Richmond . . . through a gently rolling country of green fields and cultivated farms and gardens."
At six thirty A.M. Stuart reported to Bragg:
General, the enemy reached this point [Ashland] just before us, but was promptly whipped out after a sharp fight by Fitz Lee's advance, killing and capturing quite a number. General Gordon is in the rear of the enemy. I intersect the road the
enemy is marching on at Yellow Tavern, the head of the turnpike
My men and horses are all tired, hungry and jaded, but all right.
Two and a half hours later, at nine A.M., Jeb sent off two messages by couriers. One, to Bradley Johnson:
As the enemy may double back... you will oblige me very much by arranging it so that I may get the information in time to turn upon them before they get away. Be sure to barricade the roads with felled trees, in case they start in that direction... · Communicate with me by way of the Telegraph Road.
The other to General Bragg:
The head of my column reached Yellow Tavern at 8 A.M. No enemy had passed. Citizens and furloughed soldiers report them in heavy column gone toward Dover Mills. I will sweep across after them. I heard some firing toward their place of encampment about 7 A.M. Probably Gordon engaging them. The Central road is safe to Hanover Junction.
In short, Stuart was uncertain of Sheridan's next move, and could not yet determine his proper position. But in every line of his dispatches was the determination to strike, whatever the odds. His chief concern was the possibility of the enemy's escape.
McClellan rode beside Jeb as they came near Yellow Tavern. The Major found his commander pensive:
"We conversed on many matters of personal interest. He was more quiet than usual, softer, and more communicative ... the shadow of the near future was already upon him."
Major Theo Garnett overheard Stuart chide one of his brigade commanders who said, "We'll never catch Sheridan. He's too fast and too big for us."
Stuart snapped: "No! I would rather die than let him go!"
Stuart was at Yellow Tavern itself by ten o'clock, with no enemy in sight. To the north the country was wooded and rough, becoming more level and open nearer the Tavern. There was a stream nearby; fenced fields almost surrounded the spot.
If he could depend upon General Bragg and the home guard to hold Richmond, Stuart would prefer to remain at Yellow Tavern, where he could hang on Sheridan's flank and worry him as he moved across the country. He must make sure of Richmond's safety, however. He sent McClellan galloping down the Brook Turnpike to see Bragg and get help, if possible. The day grew warmer as the column waited. In the distance, from time to time, were sounds of Gordon's hammering at the Federal rear.
In the Union column May tenth had passed almost peacefully. Sheridan noted that, since he at last had food for men and horses, "our next object was to husband their strength and prepare to fight."
There was a "futile" and light barrage of artillery fire from the Confederate pursuit as his bluecoats left the North Anna, but the column was too big for a full-scale assault by Gordon's party, and the advance went on. Sheridan recalled it as a tranquil passage through the rolling country: "The march was without much incident, and we quietly encamped on the south bank of the South Anna (at Ground Squirrel Bridge) where we quietly procured all the necessary forage, marching from fifteen to eighteen miles."
Sheridan also began to suspect that he had Stuart at last:
"It now became apparent that the enemy in following up our rear, had made a great mistake, and he began to see it, for when we leisurely took the Negro Foot road to Richmond, a doubt arose in his mind as to whether his tactics were good, and urged his horses to the death so as to get in between Richmond and our column. This he effected, concentrating at Yellow Tavern."
The forces moved toward a collision in the late hours of May tenth. Sheridan recorded his moves:
He ordered a brigade under General Davies to destroy a train and tracks at Ashland; this force "rejoined the main column at Allen's Station, on the Fredericksburg Railroad. From Allen's, the entire command moved on Yellow Tavern, Merritt in advance, Wilson next, and Gregg in rear. The enemy here again made an error in tactics by sending a large force to attack my rear, thus weakening his force in front, enabling me to throw all my strength on that which opposed my front, and fight this force with a small rear guard."
Sheridan was right, but the affair in his rear early on May eleventh, though it was faint in his ears and posed no problems of command, was fierce enough to men on the ground. The scene was Goodall's Tavern, an old country hotel eighteen miles north of
Richmond, where part of Sheridan's command had spent the night. General Gordon and the North Carolina troopers galloped into the midst of the Federals at dawn. The ist North Carolina, one of the finest of Stuart's regiments, was in front.
Colonel W. H. Cheek of the 1st recalled part of it: "The enemy filled the old hotel and all its outhouses, stables, barns with sharpshooters. Without artillery, we could not dislodge them. The fight between the dismounted sharpshooters lasted several hours."
General Gordon at last came up, took command, and sent Cheek to a flank with a squadron of the 5th North Carolina; this drove the enemy skirmishers in "great disorder" to their main body, and then Gordon's men clashed with Sheridan's rear strength, head-on. Cheek never forgot it:
"We had the most desperate hand-to-hand conflict I ever witnessed. The regiment we met was the ist Maine, and it had the reputation of being the best cavalry in the Army of the Potomac. Saber cuts were given thick and fast on both sides. The staff of my colors
received two deep cuts while the sergeant was using it to protect himself from the furious blows of a Yankee trooper. We drove them from the field, but our pursuit was stopped by a battery of artillery and a second mounted line which they had established a short dis-
tance in the woods at Ground Squirrel Church
Here we had another hand-to-hand fight, which resulted in our breaking and hurling them back in confusion into the road. Here again was the saber freely used, and here it was that while I was pursuing a fleeing foe with t
he point of a saber in his back, his companion sent a bullet crashing through my shoulder."6
Colonel Cheek became a prisoner, the rear-guard skirmish was over, and the head of the Federal column, now almost a dozen miles to the south, came down on Yellow Tavern. The rear action, in brief, was gallant and spectacular, but Sheridan was only toying with Gordon.
In the blue ranks, with Company E of the 5th Michigan, Colonel Russell Alger commanding, was a trooper destined to play a vital role in the day's action. His name was John A. Huff. He had enlisted in October, 1861, at the age of forty-two, joining the 2nd U.S. Sharpshooters, which was to become famous as Berdan's Sharpshooters. He had won a prize as the regiment's best shot, an expert among hundreds of crack marksmen. But in 1863, after being wounded, he had been discharged on a surgeon's certificate: Disabled and unfit for duty.
Huff had returned to Michigan, but a year later, in January, 1864, had re-enlisted, this time in the 5th Michigan Cavalry. He had joined his regiment in Virginia not long before the coming of U. S. Grant and the spring offensive.
The army knew little enough about Huff, and until now had no occasion to know more. He was born in Hamburg, N.Y., the son of a journeyman Canadian carpenter who had migrated into Michigan by way of New York State and Ohio.
Trooper Huff was married, and had been a carpenter before the war. He had blue eyes, brown hair, and a light complexion; he was five feet eight and a half inches tall.
In the late morning of this May 11, 1864, as he rode down the last miles of the Mountain Road to the junction with the Telegraph Road, Private Huff, now forty-five, had only his age to set him apart from others of Company E, Fifth Michigan, Alger's regiment, Custer's brigade, Merritt's division.7
Stuart waited in the spring sunshine with perhaps 1,100 tired troopers, all that he had left to him today of the Cavalry Corps. Rosser was far away with the main army at Spotsylvania, and Gordon was in the rear of Sheridan. Two brigades, and no more. They filed around the tavern, seeking the best of the scanty cover.
About this time he wrote his last two dispatches—one dated nine forty A.M., the other evidently sent at about ten thirty. Both were addressed to Bragg. The first said in part:
. . . The enemy is moving down the same route of march already indicated—that is by a road leading into the head of the
Brook Turnpike 1 desire to keep in their rear and flank... if they can be kept in check we hope to punish them severely.
The second was written from very near Yellow Tavern itself:
The enemy seems to be making demonstrations here only— but we cannot exactly tell yet—I think his attack more likely to be made somewhere between Brook Turnpike and James River —Please caution our troops not to let anybody of cavalry advance on any road without being halted—a sufficient distance and its real character, whether friends or foes, investigated.
Jeb turned to the disposition of his oncoming troops.
Lomax's brigade came in first and took position along the road with its left flank near Yellow Tavern. Lomax left Colonel Henry Clay Pate in charge and went to the rear to observe things from a hilltop with his staff. Pate scouted the ground and moved his skirmish line in a gully at the edge of a woodland, with pickets hidden in a growth of trees. The line was three quarters of a mile long, trailing from the junction of the roads southward to the Tavern.
Wickham's brigade came in on the right of Lomax, pushing the line north of the road junction some two and a half miles, to a place known as Half Sink. Most of the artillery was placed along the line of Lomax, since it was most exposed. There were now ten guns, including those of the Baltimore Light Artillery which Jeb had borrowed from Bradley Johnson. Sheridan's approaching column carried an estimated thirty-six guns.
The Confederates were dismounted, waiting; behind the lines Negroes and orderlies held the horses, which snatched at scant grass and switched their tails at the first flies of the season. Two cannon were exposed in the road, not far from the Tavern. Others were screened by undergrowth, on the sector where Pate commanded.
Colonel Pate, whom Stuart had first met in the days of John Brown in Kansas, had often clashed with his chief during the war; there were bitter feelings between the two. Pate got first attention of the enemy today.
The bluecoats came near noon. The first wave was commanded by Colonel Thomas Devin, 6th New York, who had orders to clear Brook Turnpike.
Devin found other Federals in the woods ahead of him who had not yet attacked—troopers of the Reserve Brigade. He studied Stuart's line about the Tavern and changed his tactics:
"Advancing the 17th Pennsylvania through the woods on the right, I swung around on the Turnpike, driving the enemy from and seizing the cross roads leading to Ashland and Hanover Court House. ... I was then ordered to make a reconnaissance toward Richmond."
Devin's squadrons had no trouble circling Stuart's rear. They cut between the gray troopers and the capital and held Brook Turnpike, and went boldly to Richmond's outskirts, where the home guard was in trenches ahead of them. The advance of Devin stopped there, where its men could literally hear the heartbeat of the Confederacy: "The bells could be heard ringing, locomotives whistling, and general alarm and bustling seemed to prevail in Richmond," Devin remembered.
Back at Yellow Tavern, facing Stuart, Custer pushed his Michigan regiments into line, and General James Wilson strung another brigade on Custer's left. For two or three hours, just after noon, Sheridan's commanders perfected their line of attack.
Stuart watched. His frame of mind even now was probably about that of young W. W. Burgess, who lay with the Marylanders of Company K, 1st Virginia:
"Our only fear was that Sheridan would get away, as usual. That we would not whip him if we caught up with him did not enter our minds. . . . The enemy's cavalrymen were an insignificant looking set of men, but their horses and equipment were excellent."
Cyrus McCormick, a boy private of the 6th Virginia, watched the attack from near the Confederate center, where he and an elderly man stood picket under one of the aspen trees lining the road. When bullets began whizzing McCormick urged his little horse between the Tavern wall and a tree. The old man, whose horse was fat, could not make it, and after frantic spurring was stuck fast between tree and building.
McCormick wrote:
"We had been there half an hour when there appeared a great cloud of dust enveloping quite a troop of horsemen. As soon as this poor old man saw them he said, 'You do what you choose. I'm going to surrender.' I said, 'Oh, don't talk such nonsense. Those must be our own men. I don't understand how the Yankees can have gotten on our right so suddenly.' Just then the cloud of dust raised, and the awful apparition turned out to be General Stuart and his staff.... I took position immediately behind them."
Stuart studied the enemy with field glasses. McCormick looked behind and was humiliated to see the old man still stuck against the Tavern. He spoke in an undertone, "not dreaming that anyone could hear me except the old man."
"You're a coward and ought to be ashamed of yourself! Come out of there!"
Stuart and his officers roared with laughter. McCormick flushed red. He remembered:
"General Stuart... had thrown his leg over the saddle and was in the act of writing a dispatch. Captain Walter Hullihen . . . was with this party, and Stuart turned to Hullihen."
"Do you know that boy?" Stuart asked, nodding to McCormick.
"Yes," Hullihen said. "He belongs to Company D of the Sixth."
Stuart held the dispatch to McCormick. "Take this to General Lomax as fast as you can, and tell him to send it to General Fitz Lee."
McCormick rode after Lomax but his frightened horse squatted, and moved only when whacked on the head with a sword. The animal then ran madly, and the courier collided with Lomax as he delivered the message. McCormick asked permission to return. Lomax shook his head.
"You certainly can't go back where you left General Stuart. You'd better go back to your own squadron, down this road."8
Fe
deral attacks were pushing forward. Colonel Pate's men countercharged and fought hand-to-hand. Wickham sent in a mounted charge to help.
Stuart rode to the spot. If Pate could not cling to his position, the line must be abandoned. Jeb seemed to forget past antagonisms, or to be pleading with Pate to forget. He held out his hand and Pate took it, smiling.
"Colonel," Stuart said, "you have done all any man could do. How long can you hold?" "Until I die," Pate said.
"You're a brave man," Stuart said. They again shook hands, and Jeb rode back nearer the center.
The chief bugler was with him, and protested mildly under the fire: "General, I believe you love bullets."
"No, Fred, I don't love 'em any more than you do. I go where they are because it's my duty. I don't expect to survive this war."
They went by staff officers crouched under a hill, beneath a battery in action. Stuart asked Reid Venable to ride with him and they approached a gun surrounded by wounded men and horses.
Venable watched Stuart: "He stopped a while at this gun and encouraged the men to hold their position, as he expected reinforcements."
Venable scolded him for reckless exposure. "Men behind stumps and fences are being killed, and here you are out in the open."
Stuart laughed. "I don't reckon there is any danger," he said.9
Now the Michigan troopers came into action. Custer was a striking sight with his long yellow hair and black velvet uniform as he maneuvered his troops into position. Custer sketched the operation: