Day 69. May 8, 1862.
69
nothing living could cross him and get away with it….
May Thursday 8
Quite cool this morning and all appearance for a fine day. We are still in this same camp and nothing new. I have been packing up the medicines and unpacking. The Regiment was Inspected today
Note: Battle of McDowell today; really not sure what is going on here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KIehnptE4Nk
Make Me a Map of the Valley: The Civil War Journal of Stonewall Jackson’s Topographer Jedediah Hotchkiss P. 39-40 (Excerpts)
“Thursday, May 8th. The General sent me in advance, with skirmishers, up the winding turnpike road along an eastward spur of Bull-Pasture Mountain, and when, at each turn of the road, I found the way clear I waved my handkerchief, then he came on with the main column.
A scene of great confusion. It was between 8 and 9 P.M.; we had repulsed the enemy’s attack on our left and our troops were all mingled together, in the greatest disorder imaginable, like a swarm of bees, calling out for comrades, commands, etc., no one being able to distinguish another in the darkness.”
Note: Ephraim’s May 13 entry mentions fires like these, as does his letter dated May 20. Below, 1864:
This Hallowed Ground: The Story of the Union Side of the Civil War Bruce Catton P. 325
“The woods were on fire all along* the front here, Longstreet’s men were almost as disorganized by their victory as the Federals had been by their defeat, Longstreet himself was badly wounded—shot by his own men, in the blind confusion, just as Stonewall Jackson had been shot at nearby Chancellorsville a year earlier—and the crisis was met and passed. By the end of the day Union and Confederate armies on this part of the field were about where they had been in the morning, except that many thousands of men on each side had been shot.
One more blow the Confederates swung before the battle ended. The extreme right of the Army of the Potomac, operating in dense woods where no regimental commander could see all of his own men, had an exposed flank. Lee found it, and at dusk the Federal right flank was driven in just as the left flank had been driven during the morning. But John Sedgwick, who was still another imperturbable Union corps commander cut to the Thomas pattern, was in charge here; and as the Rebel drive lost its impetus in the smoky darkness he brought up reserves, stabilized a new line, and got the flank securely anchored. And at last the the noise died down, the firing stopped, the smoke drifted off in the night, and the two exhausted armies settled down to get what sleep they could, while the cries of wounded men in the smoldering forest (flames creeping up through the matted dead leaves and dried underbrush) made a steady, despairing murmur in the dark.
The fearful story of war is mostly the story of ordinary men who are called upon to suffer and endure and die to no purpose that they can easily discover; and generally the story of a great battle is no more than the story of how some thousands of these men acquit themselves. But once in a great while the terrible drama of war narrows to a very small focus: to a place in the heart and mind of one man who has been burdened with the great responsibility of making a decision and who at last alone with himself in a darkened tent, must speak the word that will determine how history is to go.
It was this way in the Wilderness after the two days of battle were over. Here were the two armies, lying crosswise in a burned-out forest, death all around them, the scent and feel of death in the soiled air. They had done all they could, nobody had won or lost anything that amounted to very much, and the men who had to carry the muskets would go on doing whatever they were told even if they were destroyed doing it.”
Note: 1864:
In Their Own Words: Civil War Commanders Collected and Edited by T.J. Stiles P. 279-280
From the Wilderness to Petersburg
By General U.S. Grant
(Excerpts)
“On the eighth of May, just after the Battle of the Wilderness and when we were moving on Spotyslvania, I directed Sheridan verbally to cut loose from the Army of the Potomac, pass around the left of Lee’s army and attack his cavalry: to cut the two [rail]roads– one running west through Gordonsville, Charlottesville, and Lynchburg, the other to Richmond, and, when compelled to do so for want of forage and rations, to move on to the James River and draw these from Butler’s supplies. This move took him past the entire rear of Lee’s army….
The object of this move was threefold. First, if successfully executed, and it was, he would annoy the enemy by cutting his line of supplies and telegraphic communications, and destroy or get for his own use supplies in the rear and coming up. Second, he would draw the enemy’s cavalry after him, and thus better protect our flanks, rear, and trains than by remaining with the army. Third, his absence would save the trains drawing his forage and other supplies from Fredericksburg, which had now become our base. He started at daylight the next morning, and accomplished more than was expected. It was sixteen days before he got back to the Army of the Potomac.
The course Sheridan took was directly to Richmond. Before night Stuart, commanding the Confederate cavalry, came on to the rear of his command…. Stuart, seeing that our cavalry was pushing toward Richmond, abandoned the pursuit on the morning of the tenth and, by a detour and an exhausting march, interposed between Sheridan and Richmond at Yellow Tavern, only about six miles north of the city. Sheridan destroyed the railroad and more supplies at Ashland, and on the eleventh arrived in Stuart’s front. A severe engagement ensued in which the losses were heavy on both sides, but the rebels were beaten, their leader mortally wounded, and some guns and many prisoners captured….
Sheridan on this memorable raid passed entirely around Lee’s army; encountered his cavalry in four engagements, and defeated them in all; recaptured four hundred Union prisoners and killed and captured many of the enemy; destroyed and used many supplies and munitions of war; destroyed miles of railroad and telegraph; and freed us from annoyance by the cavalry of the enemy for more than two weeks….”
Note: More burning at another time in the war. It truly must have seemed like Armageddon:
The Thin Light of Freedom: The Civil War and Emancipation in the Heart of America Edward L. Ayers P. 241
(In discussing Sheridan’s raid)
“The Staunton Vindicator, October 21, 1864: “The trajectory seemed clear: “Grant, wearied and sick of fighting the veterans of Lee with no avail, has turned his arms against the women and children of our land, hoping, doubtless, that he may gain a glorious victory (!) over them.” The people of the Valley would not forget. The atrocities would be “treasured up by the fathers, husbands, brothers and sons.” The men would “some day have retribution. Let not the North then cry out that the Southern Barbarians are let loose upon them, but remember that we can point to the campaigns in the Valley of the Shenandoah for precedents for all the acts our soldiery may commit. Some day, they would “make retribution justice.’”
The Mind of the South W. J. Cash (1941) P. 44
“Allow what you will for espirit de corps, for this or for that, the thing that sent him swinging up the slope at Gettysburg on that celebrated, gallant afternoon was before all else nothing more or less than the thing which elsewhere accounted for his violence—was nothing more or less than his conviction, the conviction of every farmer among what was essentially only a band of farmers, that nothing living could cross him and get away with it.”
A Stillness at Appomattox Bruce Catton P. 304
“Guerilla warfare made men savage, and when the partisan rangers swept in for a fight neither side gave quarter. Cavalrymen said they would rather go into battle than patrol the Valley roads. One of Sheridan’s aides was found in a field with his throat cut, and in hot fury Sheridan ordered every house, barn, and out-building within five miles burned ot the ground. Farther down the Valley, Mosby’s men struck at a supply train and its cavalry escort. Among the killed was a young Union officer who had been shot after he surrendered– or so, at any rate, the Federal troopers believed. Men from the 17th Pennsylvania Cavalry and the 2nd Regulars rode out for revenge, captured six of Mosby’s riders, shot four of them, and hanged the remaining two. Under the dangling bodies they left a sign: “Such is the fate of Mosby’s men.”
As the army withdrew Sheridan had the men get the matches out again, and the upper Valley got the treatment which the area below Strasburg had been given earlier. A cordon of cavalry brought up the rear, and behind it there was a blackened waste. A gunner said that “clean work was done,” and a newspaper correspondent wrote: “The atmosphere, from horizon to horizon, has been black with the smoke of a hundred conflagrations, and at night a gleam brighter and more lurid than sunset has shot from every verge.” Orders were to burn no dwellings, but if a burning barn happened to stand close to a house the house usually went up too, and the correspondent admitted that all of this incendiarism could not take place “without undue license” by stragglers and bummers; so “there have been frequent instances of rascality and pillage.”
Nearly all barns and stables were destroyed, he recorded, most gardens and cornfields were ruined, and more than 5,000 head of livestock were driven off. Stout Union man though he was, this correspondent felt that the devastation “fearfully illustrates the horrible barbarity of war.” Sheridan’s orders were to leave each family enough to avery starvation, but marauding stragglers often carried away the last morsel….’”
Note: This guy Mosby post-war:
“I am not ashamed of having fought on the side of slavery, a soldier fights for his country, right or wrong, he is not responsible for the political merits of the course he fights in. The South was my country.”
John S. Mosby to Sam Chapman in 1907.
The Vermont Brigade in the Shenandoah Valley Aldace F. Walker P. 148
“As the sturdy, fiery Sheridan, on his sturdy, fiery steed, flanked with foam from his two hours mad galloping, wheeled from the pike and dashed down the line, our Division also broke forth into the most tumultuous applause. Ardent General Custer first stopped the wonderful Inspirer, and kissed him before his men. His next halt was before our own Brigade. Such a scene as his presence and such emotion as it awoke cannot be realized but once a century. All outward manifestations were as enthusiastic as men are capable of exhibiting; cheers seemed to come from throats of brass, and caps were thrown to the tops of scattering oaks; but beneath and yet superior to these noisy demonstrations, there was in every heart a revulsion of feeling, and a pressure of emotion, beyond description. No more doubt or chance for doubt existed; we were safe, perfectly and unconditionally safe, and every man knew it.”
Note: General Custer’s lock of hair sells for 12.500 – or Custer’s Last Strand.
Note: Regarding Sheridan’s Ride (Battle of Cedar Creek in the Shenandoah Valley) of October 19th, 1864:
Battle Cry of Freedom: The Civil War Era James McPherson P. 779-781
“He had returned to Winchester the previous evening. Puzzled at breakfast by the ominous rumbling of artillery off to the south, he saddled up and began his ride into legend. As Sheridan approached the battlefield, stragglers recognized him and began to cheer. “God damn you, don’t cheer me!” he shouted at them. “If you love your country, come up to the front! . . .There’s lots of fight in you men yet! Come up, God damn you! Come up!” By dozens and then hundreds they followed him. Sheridan’s performance this day was the most notable example of personal battlefield leadership in the war. A veteran of the 6th Corps recalled: “Such a scene as his presence and such emotion as it awoke cannot be realized but once in a century.”
While across the way Early seemed mesmerized by his victory, Sheridan reorganized his army during the hazy autumn afternoon and sent it forward in a counterattack. With cavalry slashing in from the flanks and infantry rolling ahead like ocean surf, the Yankees sent Early’s graybacks reeling back over the morning’s battleground. Driving the rebels across Cedar Creek, bluecoats captured a thousand prisoners along with the eighteen guns they lost in the morning and twenty-three more for good measure. Early’s army virtually disintegrated as it fled southward in the gathering darkness with blue cavalry picking off most of its wagontrain. Within a few hours Sheridan had concerted the battle of Cedar Creek from a humiliating defeat into one of the most decisive Union victories of the war.
To follow it up, Grant tried another double swipe at both ends of Lee’s line at Petersburg and Richmond. Though unsuccessful, this forced Lee to lengthen his defenses further, until they now stretched 35 miles from a point east of Richmond to another one southwest of Petersburg. This line was so thin, Lee informed Davis, that, unless he could get more troops, “I fear a great calamity will befall us.”
Northerners were beginning to think so too. Scenting victory and wanting to be part of it, many three-year veterans who had mustered out in the spring re-enlisted in the fall. They helped fill enlistment quotas and relieved the pressure of the draft, which proceeded with unexpected smoothness. They also helped restore the Army of the Potomac’s tone, which had all but disappeared during the summer under the weight of conscripts, substitutes, and bounty-jumpers.
Republican politicians knew how to use this scent of victory to their advantage. One of the best campaign documents was a poem, “Sheridan’s Ride,” written by Thomas Buchanan Read after the battle of Cedar Creek. Recited aloud in the meter of a galloping horse (from Winchester to the battlefield), it seldom failed to rouse crowds at political rallies to roars of patriotic fervor:
Up from the South, at break of day,
Bringing to Winchester fresh dismay . . .
But there is a road from Winchester town,
A good, broad highway leading down . . .
Still sprang from these swift hoofs, thundering south,
The dust like smoke from the cannon’s mouth,
Or the trail of a comet, sweeping faster and faster,
Foreboding to traitors the doom of disaster.
And:
And the wave of retreated checked its course there, because
The sight of the master compelled it to pause.
With foam and with dust the black charger was gray;
By the flash of his eye, and his red nostril’s play,
He seemed to the whole great army to say:
“I have brought you Sheridan all the way
From Winchester down to save the day.’”
The Thin Light of Freedom: The Civil War and Emancipation in the Heart of America Edward L. Ayers P. 250
“A painting of Sheridan’s ride became its own sensation; later artists would make that moment in the Valley one of three most painted scenes in the entire Civil War, standing with Gettysburg and the battle of the ironclads as defining moments in the national memory and imagination.”
Testament to Union: Civil War Monuments in Washington, D.C. Kathryn Allamong Jacob P. 28
“According to family legend, shortly before his death, General Philip Sheridan paused while out walking with his wife to look at the equestrian statue of of one of his Civil War comrades, which decorated a Washington park. The overweight bronze general sat stolidly astride timid, too-small mount. “Whatever you do after I’m gone,” the general told Mrs. Sheridan, “don’t put me on a horse like that.’”
Note: There were many period paintings (1880s) of this ride, the most famous by Read and by Sartain (currently at the MET). https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/428639
Note: Rienze– Sheridan’s jet black horse (renamed “Winchester” after the raid) was a majestic animal who had been through 45 engagements, including 19 fierce battles and two cavalry raids. 5 feet 8 at the horse’s shoulder, or 16 hands high (Sheridan was 5’5)– went riding through 45 engagements, including 19 fierce battles and two cavalry raids. In 1878, Winchester died. He is stuffed (“mounted”), standing in a glass case at Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History in the Hall of Armed Forces a few blocks from Lincoln’s blood-stained pillows, a black Morgan stallion so important to the country, some say, that without whom, Lincoln could have lost reelection. July & August 1864 was a dangerous time for the North, & had the Union lost, it would have been that summer. Sheridan & Winchester were also present at Appomattox. At Lincoln Park in Chicago, the two were put in bronze in 1908, after, naturally, the Plains War, where he & his men continued their scorched-earth tactics. “The only good Indians I ever saw were dead.”
You can visit Sheridan & his horse at Sheridan Circle in D.C. https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/union-colonel-phil-sheridans-valiant-horse-124899830/
Note: Jackson will move 400 miles between May 8 & June 9. Imagine the starving men walking, one foot in front of another.
Back to Sheridan: Like every other numerical calculation of the Civil War, to this day we don’t know the extent of the destruction. It was minimum 2000 barns that had grain decimated. Killed or driven away were 4,000 cattle. In 1864, in a two week period, soldiers burned at least 50 houses, rounded up livestock & drove animals away or killed them, burned mills, barns, & standing crops.
Note: According to https://www.shenandoahatwar.org/history/battle-of-cross-keys/ forces engaged today: Schenck: 6500 with 260 casualties. Jackson: 6000 with 500 casualties.
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all appearance for a fine day….
Fire that was more substantial than light. Clear light, holy light, final light. They know how to see all around a thing, then down its center, how at its center lay a darkness. That sky and ground had never been separated after all. Now something resembling burnt afterbirth.
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