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| by Tom Mitchell, The Daily News-Record
During the Civil War, Sheridan's stature with fellow Union officers varied as much as the Valley's hilly terrain, where his acts forged forceful emotions from friends and foes. To an anxious President Abraham Lincoln and a determined Union General-In-Chief Ulysses S. Grant, Sheridan embodied a bellicosity that superiors frequently found wanting in the Army of the Potomac. To subordinates, Sheridan's ego chafed. To battlefield rivals, the bantam-legged man dubbed “Bullet Head” and “Little Phil” personified a uniformed devil: For years after the war, Sheridan's legacy of ashen Valley bins smoldered in the South. Regardless of feelings he evoked, Sheridan ranks as one of the North's three greatest generals, behind Grant and William T. Sherman. Sheridan's critics and supporters share one opinion: the effectiveness with which Sheridan's Valley campaign shortened one phase of the war.
Tapped by Grant in the summer of 1864 to head the Army of the Shenandoah, Sheridan applied to Virginia's heartland one of war's cruelest concepts: victory by starving an enemy. “Sheridan understood war the way you needed to, which made him a controversial figure in the South,” said Jeffry Wert, 58, a retired high-school history teacher from Centre, Pa. and author of a book on the 1864 Valley Campaign. “Sheridan had Grant's unblinking view of the war that you use your sword against the enemy.” Sheridan turned swords into torches, leveling Valley granaries in a systematic manner that crippled the region. Unlike Union General Sherman's more heralded March to the Sea which followed rail lines, Sheridan's campaign targeted crops and livestock. “The March to the Sea destroyed more warehouses near railroads,” said John Heatwole, 55, a Valley historian who lives in Augusta County. “In the Valley, Sheridan's [destruction] became more personal because it was against the infrastructure, against the civilian people.”
Oddly, Sheridan's fiery style flickered. Poised to help Grant take Richmond ahead of schedule, Sheridan curiously stalled. Many observers think that Sheridan's delay cost the North a shot at ending the war even sooner. While Sheridan's tactical frailties scarcely tainted his renown as a leader, the general's personal flaws injured the esteem in which others held him. Sheridan's penchant for monopolizing praise cost him support. One battle account in which Sheridan embellished his efforts while omitting contributions of one corps commander, George Crook, ended the former West Point classmate's friendship. “Sheridan was aggressive, but he had some good officers under him,” Heatwole said. “And when they did some things that pulled his bacon out of the fire, he was reluctant to give them credit.”
While Sheridan's memoirs list his place and date of birth as March 6, 1831 in Albany, N.Y., other accounts defy such data. During Sheridan's infancy, his family moved to Somerset, Ohio, where the future commander attended school, clerked in a country store and received an appointment to West Point as a result of a vacancy created when an earlier applicant to the prestigious military academy failed the school's entrance exam. In 1851, a year before Sheridan's scheduled graduation, a quarrel with a fellow cadet earned Sheridan a year's suspension from the academy. Sheridan finished West Point in 1853 ranked in the bottom third of his class. Sheridan's chance academy admission portended a fortuitous career: Advancement opportunities swelled after superiors' mass defections to the Confederate cause. In May 1862 Grant, then a major general in Tennessee, appointed Sheridan as a colonel in the Second Michigan Cavalry, enacting a promotion that accelerated Sheridan's rise through the ranks. Grant's choice of Sheridan for cavalry duty required the Union leader to bypass more seasoned candidates. Grant eyed Sheridan as a replacement for unpopular predecessor Albert Pleasanton, after observing Sheridan's sharp leadership with infantry in battles at Chattanooga and Missionary Ridge in Tennessee. Grant considered Sheridan's grit to be a trait transferable to cavalry. When Grant became commander of all the Union armies in March 1864, he decided to travel in the field with the Army of the Potomac commanded by Gen. George Gordon Meade. He replaced Gen. Alfred Pleasonton with Sheridan, as commander of cavalry in the Army of the Potomac. “What Grant saw in Sheridan was Sheridan's aggressiveness,” Wert said. “Sheridan's major attribute was that he would make the cavalry fight.” Sheridan's cavalry skills appear to justify Grant's faith. In the spring of ‘64, Sheridan sought battle with Confederate JEB Stuart's cavalry command of the Army of Northern Virginia. Sheridan defeated Stuart at Yellow Tavern. Stuart was killed. Sheridan's expedition toward Charlottesville and a potential link-up with Gen. David Hunter, operating in the Shenandoah Valley, was stopped at the battle of Trevilian Station in June. Following Confederate Gen. Jubal Early's march on Washington, D.C. in July, Grant put Sheridan in charge of a new drive to rid the Shenandoah Valley of Confederate resistance and deprive the South of the region's agricultural bounty. At the battles of Third Winchester and Fisher's Hill, Tom's Brook and Cedar Creek, Sheridan defeated Early's forces and emerged as a prominent military figure. Between the battles of Fisher's Hill and Tom's Brook, Sheridan carried out Grant's order to destroy crops and livestock in what has become known as “The Burning.” “Sheridan's original orders were for his troops to burn only barns and mills, with grain or forage to be left alone, and the other part of that order was that, if mills and barns belonged to widows and orphans, or single men, they were also to be left alone,” Wert said. “Some of Sheridan's men followed those orders. It wasn't a willy nilly orgy of destruction. It was well planned.” Sheridan also dispatched troops in the Mount Sidney sector of Augusta County to find grain for equally hungry Federals and Confederates, Wert adds. During “The Burning,” Sheridan rescinded an order to burn Dayton, in retaliation for the death of Lt. John Meigs, who was on his staff. Sheridan also offered Valley families a wagon and team to leave the region. While advantages in soldiers and supplies against more scantily equipped southern forces undoubtedly factored in Sheridan's successes, accounts confirm his battlefield skills. At Cedar Creek in October ‘64, Sheridan's calm confidence, buoyed by Confederate blunders, snatched victory from defeat and instantly inspired a poem from renown poet T. Buchanan Read entitled “Sheridan's Ride”. Sheridan's Valley victories, along with Sherman's success further south, all but assured Lincoln's re-election. “The 1864 elections were governed by events related to which way the war would go,” Wert said. “Sherman's capturing Atlanta, and Sheridan's winning three victories in the Valley made headlines across the North.” Sheridan concluded his Valley crusade by winning in Waynesboro in March of ‘65 and joined Grant to drive Confederates from Petersburg and Richmond. At Appomattox, Sheridan's infantry-backed cavalry blocked Lee's escape and led to the South's surrender. After the war, Sheridan headed Reconstruction in Louisiana and Texas, resigning under pressure after six months following reports of his severity. Sheridan died as a full general in 1888, after four years as the United States Army's commander-in-chief. During that time Sheridan led a Missouri division, observed the Franco-Prussian War and backed the creation and preservation of Yellowstone National Park. |
In his army's decisive drive through the Shenandoah Valley, Philip Henry Sheridan burned barns, crops, and, figuratively speaking, bridges.