[267]
Sheridan at Middletown.
One of the most brilliant actions of the war — indeed, one of the most brilliant of any war of modern times — was that victory which the gallant Sheridan snatched from defeat and disaster at Middletown, Virginia, on the 19th of October, 1864. Three or four times in the military history of the last five hundred years, has an able and skilful commander succeeded in stemming the current of disaster, and turning a defeat into a victory; but it has usually been done either by bringing up reinforcements, and thus staying the progress of the exultant and careless foe, or by suffering a day to intervene between the defeat and the victory; at Marengo, it was the approach of reinforcements which enabled Dessaix to say to the first Napoleon: “We have lost one battle, but it is not too late to win another.” At Shiloh, the reinforcements from Wallace's Division and Buell's Corps, and the intervention of the night, enabled Grant to recover, on the second day, all, and more than all, the losses of the first. At Stone River, the skill and genius of Rosecrans stayed the tide of disaster, and enabled the Army of the Cumberland, though suffering heavily, to maintain its position, and two days later to inflict upon the enemy a fearful punishment for his temerity. At Chickamauga, General Thomas maintained himself grandly in the face of a foe greatly superior to himself in numbers, and after one third of the army had been driven from the field, still held the rebels at bay; and, with the aid of Steedman's reinforcements, drove them back a little distance; but in none of these cases, [268] except that at Marengo, was the army rallied from a defeat able at once to drive the foe in return, and, in that case, only by the aid of reinforcements.In Sheridan's case, there were no reinforcements except himself; his army was defeated and routed; yet, at his cheering voice, and under the influence of his extra. ordinary personal magnetism, the flying, demoralized, and routed troops, turned back and hurled by his skilful hand upon the enemy, caused them in turn to fly with such precipitation as to leave cannon, arms, ammunition, every thing, behind them. Well did General Grant characterize the brave soldier who could do this as one of the greatest of generals.
With a brief description of the circumstances of the defeat, we will proceed to give the narrative of an eyewitness and participator in the subsequent victory Sheridan had, as those familiar with the history of the campaigns of the Army of the Shenandoah will recollect, repeatedly defeated Early during the previous month, driving him with heavy loss across and southward from the Opequan creek, on the 19th of September, and sending him “whirling” through Winchester; routing him — at Fisher's Hill on the 22d of September, and sending his troops in rapid flight and disorder up the valley to Harrisonburg; had “fixed” the new cavalry general, Rosser, on the 8th of October, and repelled with heavy loss a covert attack made by Early from North mountain, on the 12th of October. Supposing that the rebel general had been sufficiently punished to be willing to remain quiet, General Sheridan made a flying visit to his out-stations along the newly repaired Manassas Gap Railroad, and thence to Washington, from [269] whence he hastened back to his command, and, on the night of the 18th of October, reached Winchester.
But Early, restless and dissatisfied with the result of his previous encounters with the gallant cavalry general, was yet determined to try his fortune once more, and learning of his absence, and having received information, which he afterward found to his sorrow was false, that Sheridan had gone with the Sixth Corps to join the Army of the Potomac, he was emboldened to make another attack with, as he conceived, good hope of success. He had himself been reinforced meanwhile by a considerable body of troops (twelve thousand, it was said), a part of them without arms, but well drilled and ready for fight, if they could only procure weapons. With a daring which partook largely of rashness, he sent his troops into the gorge at the base of the Massanutten mountain, across the north fork of the Shenandoah, and skirted Crook's position for miles, passing for a considerable distance within four hundred yards of the Union pickets. Had his troops been detected in this march (and the chances of detection were almost a hundred to one), his army would have been ruined. The Union infantry would have cut his in two, and the Union cavalry would have prevented his retreat to Fisher's Hill. But his management of the advance was admirable. The canteens had been left in his camp, lest they should clatter against the shanks of the bayonets; the men crept noiselessly along in the darkness, and passed the dangerous points with complete success. Once, indeed, they were in danger of discovery. The rustling of the underbrush, and the muffled tramp of this large body of men, was heard by some of the outlying pickets, [270] who reported it; but the approach of Early seemed so utterly improbable that no precautions were taken against a surprise. By dawn of day, Gordon's Rebel Division, closely followed by Ramseur, Pegram, Kershaw, and Wharton, had flanked Crook's Corps (Army of Western Virginia), and assaulted his camp before the men could form in line of battle. The Union army was ranged, in military phrase, en echelon; i. e., in successive steps, the Army of Virginia, which was in front, extending also farthest south. Having flanked and rolled up this corps, the rebels, Gordon still heading, proceeded to flank the Nineteenth Corps, which occupied the next “step” of the echelon, and, after a short but determined struggle, drove that also northward. The Sixth Corps interposed a stronger obstacle to their progress, but that, too, was finally flanked, and all were compelled to retreat northward through Middletown toward Winchester. The first stragglers had by this time, about ten A. M., reached Winchester.
The camps, commissary supplies, and lines of earth works of the Union army, had fallen into the hands of the rebels, and they had captured twenty-four cannon and twelve hundred prisoners. The Union army was beaten, badly beaten, though not routed; they were retreating slowly and in good order, but still retreating toward Winchester.
How all this was changed by Sheridan's arrival, let Captain de Forest, himself a staff-officer and actor in the battle, tell:
At this time, at the close of this unfortunate struggle of five hours, we were joined by Sheridan, who had [271] passed the night in Winchester, on his way back from Washington, and who must have heard of Early's attack about the time that its success became decisive. It was near ten o'clock when he came up the pike at a three-minute trot, swinging his cap and shouting to the stragglers: “Face the other way, boys. We are going back to our camps. We are going to lick them out of their boots!”
The wounded by the roadside raised their hoarse voices to shout; the great army of fugitives turned about at sight of him, and followed him back to the front; they followed him back to the slaughter as hounds follow their master. The moment he reached the army he ordered it to face about, form line, and advance to the position which it had last quitted. Then for two hours he rode along the front, studying the ground and encouraging the men. “Boys, if I had been here this never should have happened,” he said, in his animated, earnest way. “I tell you it never should have happened. And now we are going back to our camps. We are going to get a twist on them. We are going to lick them out of their boots.”
The Sixth Corps held the pike and its vicinity. On its right the Nineteenth Corps was formed in double line, under cover of a dense wood, the first division on the right, the second on the left. The rearmost line threw up a rude breastwork of stones, rails, and trees, covered by the advanced line standing to arms, and by. a strong force of skirmishers stationed two hundred yards to the front, but still within the forest. For two hours all was silence, preparation, reorganization, and suspense. Then came a message from Sheridan to [272] Emory that the enemy in column were advancing against the Nineteenth Corps; and shortly afterward the column appeared among the lights and shadows of the autumnal woods, making for the centre of our second division. There was an awful rattle of musketry, which the forest re-echoed into a deep roar, and when the firing stopped and the smoke cleared away no enemy was visible. Emory immediately sent word to Sheridan that the attack had been repulsed.
“That's good, that's good!” Sheridan answered, gayly. “Thank God for that! Now then, tell General Emory if they attack him again to go after them, and to follow them up, and to sock it to them, and to give them the devil. We'll get the tightest twist on them yet that ever you saw. We'll have all those camps and cannon back again.” All this, with the nervous animation characteristic of the man, the eager and confident smile, and the energetic gesture of the right hand down into the palm of the left at every repetition of the idea of attack.
At half-past 3 came more explicit orders. “The entire line will advance. The Nineteenth Corps will move in connection with the Sixth Corps. The right of the Nineteenth will swing toward the left so as to drive the enemy upon the pike.”
One of our staff officers exclaimed, “By Jove, if we beat them now it will be magnificent!”
“And we are very likely to do it,” said General Emory. “They will be so far from expecting us.”
It must be understood that the enemy's left was now his strong point, being supported by successive wooded crests; while his right ran out to the pike across undulating [273] open fields which presented no natural line of resistance. Sheridan's plan was to push them off the crests by a turning movement of our right, and then, when they were doubled up on the pike, sling his cavalry at them across the Middletown meadows. With a solemn tranquillity of demeanor our infantry rose from the position where it had been lying, and advanced through tile forest into the open ground beyond. There was a silence of suspense; then came a screaming, crackling, humming rush of shell; then a prolonged roar of musketry, mingled with the long-drawn yell of our charge; then the artillery ceased, the musketry died into spattering bursts, and over all the yell rose triumphant. Every thing on the first line — the stone walls, the advanced crest, the tangled wood, the half finished breastworks — had been carried. The first body of rebel troops to break and fly was Gordon's Division, the same which had so perseveringly flanked us in the morning, and which was now flanked by our own first division of the Nineteenth Corps.
After this there was a lull in the assault, though not in the battle. The rebel artillery re-opened spitefully from a new position, and our musketry responded from the crest and wood which we had gained. Sheridan dashed along the front, re-organizing the line for a second charge, cheering the men with his confident smile and emphatic assurances of success, and giving his orders in person to brigade, division, and corps commanders. He took special pains with the direction of our first division, wheeling it in such a manner as to face square toward the pike, and form nearly a right angle to the enemy's front. Now came a second charge upon a [274] second line of stone walls, crests, and thickets, executed with as much enthusiasm and rapidity as if the army had just come into action. Remember that our gallant fellows had eaten nothing since the previous evening; that they had lost their canteens, and were tormented with thirst; that they had been fighting and manoeuvring, frequently at double-quick, for nearly twelve hours; and that they were sadly diminished in numbers by the slaughter and confusion of the morning. Remember, too, that this lost battle was retrieved without a reinforcement. Only veterans, and only veterans of the best quality, disciplined, intelligent, and brave, could put forth such a supreme effort at the close of a long, bloody, and disastrous conflict. As one of Sheridan's staff officers followed up our first division, and watched the yelling, running, panting soldiers, not firing a shot, but simply dashing along with parched, open mouths, he said, “Those men are doing all that flesh and blood can.”
“Your fellows on the right went in mighty pretty this afternoon,” I heard Custer say that evening to Emory. “I had to sing out to my men, ‘Are you going to let the infantry beat you?’ ”
Everybody now knows by reputation this brilliant officer, and can understand that we have a right to be proud of his praise.
The battle was over. Cavalry on the flanks, and infantry in the centre, we carried the second line with the same rush and with even greater ease than the first. Again Early's army was “whirling up the valley,” in more hopeless confusion this time than after Winchester or Strasburg, no exertions of the rebel officers being [275] sufficient to establish another line of resistance, or to check, even momentarily, the flow and spread of the panic. Colonel Love, of the One-hundred-and-sixteenth New York, dashed his horse into the broken ranks of the Second South Carolina, and captured its battle flag, escaping unhurt from the bullets of the color-guard. But the fighting soon swept far ahead of the tired infantry, which followed in perfect peace over the ground that during the morning it had stained with the blood of its retreat. Dead and wounded men, dead and wounded horses, dismounted guns, broken-down caissons, muskets with their stocks shivered and their barrels bent double by shot, splinters of shell, battered bullets, and blood over all, like a delirium of Lady Macbeth or the Chourineur, bore testimony to the desperate nature of the long, wide-spread conflict. The number of slaughtered horses was truly extraordinary, showing how largely the cavalry had been used, and how obstinately the artillery had been fought. I noticed that almost every dead soldier was covered by an overcoat or blanket, placed over him by some friend or perhaps brother. Of the wounded, a few lay quiet and silent; here and there one uttered wild, quavering cries expressive of intense agony or despair; others, and these the majority, groaned from time to time gently, and with a pitiful, patient courage. One man, whose light blue trowsers were clotted with that dull crimson so sickeningly common, and whose breath was short and voice hoarse, called feebly as we passed, “Hurrah for General Emory!”
“Are you badly hurt, my lad?” asked Emory, stopping his horse. [276]
“My leg is broken by a rifle ball, general. I suppose I shall lose it. But I still feel — as if I could say hurrah for General Emory. I fought under you-at Sabine Crossroads-and Pleasant Hill.”
The general dismounted to give the sufferer a glass of whisky, and left a guard to see that he was put into an ambulance.
It was nearly dark when our corps reached its camps. No new arrangement of the line was attempted; in the twilight of evening the regiments filed into the same positions that they had quitted in the twilight of dawn; and the tired soldiers lay down to rest among dead comrades and dead enemies. They had lost every thing but what they bore on their backs or in their hands; their shelter-tents, knapsacks, canteens, and haversacks had been plundered by the rebels; and they slept that night, as they had fought that day, without food.
But there was no rest for the enemy or for our cavalry. All the way from our camps to Strasburg, a distance of four miles, the pike was strewn with the debris of a beaten army; and the scene in Strasburg itself was such a flood of confused flight and chase, such a chaos of wreck, and bedlam of panic, as no other defeat of the war can parallel. Guns, caissons, ammunition wagons, baggage wagons, and ambulances by the hundred, with dead or entangled and struggling horses, were jammed in the streets of the little town, impeding alike fugitives and pursuers. Our troopers dodged through the press as they best could, pistoling, sabreing, and taking prisoners. A private of the Fifth New York Cavalry riding up to a wagon, ordered the five rebels who were [277] in it to surrender; and when they only lashed their horses into a wilder gallop he shot two with his revolver and brought in the three others. The usually gallant and elastic Southern infantry were so stupefied by fatigue and cowed by defeat that it seemed like a flock of animals, actually taking no notice of mounted men and officers from our army, who wandered into the wide confusion of its retreat. Lieutenant Gray, Company D, First Rhode Island Artillery, galloped up to a retreating battery and ordered it to face about. “I was told to go the rear as rapidly as possible,” remonstrated the sergeant in command. “You don't seem to know who I am,” answered Gray. “I am one of those d-d Yanks. Countermarch immediately!” The battery was countermarched, and Gray was leading it off alone, when a squadron of our cavalry came up and made the capture a certainty.
The victory was pushed, as Sheridan has pushed all his victories, to the utmost possible limit of success, the cavalry halting that night at Fisher's Hill, but starting again at dawn, and continuing the chase to Woodstock, sixteen miles from Middletown.
It was a gay evening at our headquarters, although we were worn out with fatigue, and as chilled, starved, and shelterless as the soldiers, our tents, baggage, rations, and cooks, having all gone to Winchester. Notwithstanding these discomforts, notwithstanding the thought of slain and wounded comrades, it was delightful to talk the whole day over, even of our defeat of the morning, because we could say, “All's well that ends well.” It was laughable to think of the fugitives who had fled beyond the hearing of our victory, and who [278] were now on their way to Martinsburg, spreading the news that Sheridan's army had been totally defeated, and that they (of course) were the only survivors. Then every half hour or so somebody galloped in from the advance with such a tale of continuing success that we could hardly grant our credence to it before a fresh messenger arrived, not so much to confirm the story as to exaggerate it.
It was “Hurrah! twenty cannon taken at Strasburg That makes twenty-six so far.”
“Glorious! Don't believe it. Isn't it splendid?”
“Impossible! All our own back again,” answered the contradictory chorus.
Then came another plunge of hoofs, reining up with another “Hurrah! forty-six guns! More wagons and ambulances than you can count!”
In truth the amount of material captured in this victory was extraordinary. Two days after the battle I saw near Sheridan's headquarters a row of forty-nine pieces of artillery, of which twenty-four had been lost by us and retaken, while the others were Early's own. In addition, the rebels lost fifty wagons, sixty-five ambulances (some of them marked Stonewall Brigade ), sixteen hundred small arms, several battle flags, fifteen hundred prisoners, and probably two thousand killed and wounded. Our own losses were: Crook's command, one hundred killed and wounded, and seven hundred prisoners; the Ninteenth Corps, sixteen hundred killed and wounded, and one hundred prisoners; the Sixth Corps, thirteen hundred killed and wounded; total, three thousand eight hundred.
The only reinforcement which the Army of the [279] Shenandoah received, or needed to recover its lost field of battle, camps, intrenchments, and cannon was one man-Sheridan.
Refusing to volunteer in the rebel army.
In the same prison with Parson Brownlow and other Unionists in Tennessee, was a venerable clergyman, named Cate, and his three sons. One of them, James Madison Cate, a most exemplary and worthy member of the Baptist church, was there for having committed no other crime than that of refusing to volunteer in the rebel army. He lay stretched at full length upon the floor, with one thickness of a piece of carpet under him, and an old overcoat doubled up for a pillow-and he in the agonies of death. His wife came to visit him, bringing her youngest child, which was but a babe. They were refused admittance. Parson Brownlow here put his head out of the jail window, and entreated them, for God's sake, to let the poor woman come in, as her husband was dying. The jailer at last consented that she might see him for the limited time of fifteen minutes. As she came in, and looked upon her husband's wan and emaciated face, and saw how rapidly he was sinking, she gave evident signs of fainting, and would have fallen to the floor with the babe in her arms, had not Parson B. rushed up to her and seized the babe. Then she sank down upon the breast of her dying husband, unable to speak. When the fifteen minutes had expired, the officer came in, and in an insulting and peremptory manner notified her that the interview was to close.
