Battle of Cedar Creek

• 1. Introduction

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  The Battle of Cedar Creek, also known as the Battle of Belle Grove, was fought on the 19th of October 1864 in the Shenandoah Valley of Northern Virginia. It began in heavy fog before dawn. Many Union soldiers near Middletown were still asleep in their tents when the Confederate attack reached them. By midmorning, the Confederate commander, Lieutenant General Jubal Early, seemed to hold a victory. He had taken more than a thousand prisoners and over twenty artillery pieces. By dusk, his army was fleeing south and the guns were back in Union hands. Three questions run through this story. How did Early lose a battle he appeared to have won? Why was the Union general, Philip Sheridan, nowhere near the field when it started? And how did a fight in a Virginia valley reach all the way to the reelection of Abraham Lincoln?

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• 2. Burning the Valley

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  In March 1864, Ulysses S. Grant was called east from the Western Theater, promoted to lieutenant general, and handed command of every Union army. His approach broke with his predecessors. The armies would advance together, and their goal would be to destroy Confederate armies rather than seize territory. Pressing on many fronts at once made it hard for the Confederates to shift troops from one to another. General Robert E. Lee's Army of Northern Virginia was a main target, and so were the supplies that fed it. A great deal of that food came from the Shenandoah Valley, and it often traveled on the Virginia Central and the Virginia and Tennessee railroads.

  Lee's counter, in June 1864, was a new force called the Army of the Valley. He carved it out of the Second Corps of the Army of Northern Virginia and put Early in command. Early had two jobs. He was to protect the valley as a source of food, and he was to menace Washington so the Union would divert resources and ease the pressure near Richmond. That summer he won at Lynchburg and at the Second Battle of Kernstown, then at Monocacy in Maryland on the 9th of July. Two days later he threatened Washington at Fort Stevens, only to be turned back by reinforcements rushed to the field. In late July, cavalry under Brigadier General John McCausland raided north and burned the town of Chambersburg, Pennsylvania.

  The Chambersburg raid settled the matter for Grant. Early had to be eliminated. In early August he merged four military organizations into the Middle Military Division. Major General Philip Sheridan took command on the 7th of August and named his cavalry and infantry the Army of the Shenandoah. Its orders had three parts. Push Early away from the Potomac River region and the lower valley, destroy the valley's ability to supply Lee, and disrupt the Virginia Central Railroad. Sheridan was careful through August. He feared that any military disaster could hurt Lincoln's chances of reelection. In September he beat Early decisively at the Third Battle of Winchester and again at Fisher's Hill. He took the valley as far south as Staunton and judged Early's army cleared out of it.

  That freed Sheridan to carry out the second order. From the 26th of September to the 8th of October, his army, mostly cavalry, burned crops, barns, mills and factories around Harrisonburg, Port Republic, Staunton and Waynesboro. Local people have called it “the Burning” or “Red October” ever since. Sheridan himself predicted that the valley between Winchester and Staunton, ninety-two miles, would hold “but little in it for man or beast.” Grant had hoped for something slightly different. He preferred strikes against the railroads supplying Lee at Richmond. That preference would soon matter, because it led to a summons that pulled Sheridan away from his army.

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• 3. Two Armies

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  On the 26th of September, four days after the defeat at Fisher's Hill, Major General Joseph B. Kershaw reached Early with an infantry division and a battalion of artillery. Kershaw brought 2,700 fighters. On the 5th of October, Brigadier General Thomas L. Rosser arrived with the Laurel Brigade of about 600 men, and three cavalry brigades were merged into a division under him. Early believed the new arrivals, plus stragglers returning from the September fights, nearly made up for his losses at Winchester and Fisher's Hill.

  By mid-October his Army of the Valley had an estimated 21,102 effectives. That figure counts 1,101 artillerists and 2,206 men in Rosser's cavalry division. Four infantry divisions answered to Ramseur, Pegram, Gordon and Wharton, with Major General John Brown Gordon serving as Early's second in command. Kershaw led a fifth division, lent from Lieutenant General James Longstreet's First Corps, an elite unit whose remainder was not in the valley. The cavalry had its own quirks. Major General Lunsford L. Lomax's division carried rifles but no pistols or sabers, so it behaved more like mounted infantry that could not fight on horseback. Rosser had a reputation as one of the most aggressive cavalry commanders in Lee's army, yet he had never led anything bigger than a brigade of four regiments. His Laurel Brigade was full of confident veterans.

  Sheridan's Army of the Shenandoah counted about 31,610 effectives and 90 artillery pieces across 11 divisions. The VI Corps, under Major General Horatio Wright, had 8,506 infantry. At least one historian says its soldiers were known for “steadfastness and reliability.” The XIX Corps under Brigadier General William H. Emory had 8,748 infantry, but it was considered far behind the VI Corps in discipline and efficiency. Brigadier General George Crook's Army of West Virginia was the smallest piece, with only 4,000 infantry. A Provisional Division of 1,000 men was attached to it, and its steadiness in combat was doubted.

  The Cavalry Corps, under Brigadier General Alfred Torbert, had 7,500 effectives in three divisions. Its commanders were Brigadier General Wesley Merritt, Colonel William H. Powell and Brigadier General George Custer. Fifteen regiments were fully armed, and three more partly armed, with the carbine version of the seven-shot Spencer repeating rifle. That firepower would shape some of Early's most debated choices on the day of the battle.

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• 4. A Ruse and a Climb

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  On the evening of the 8th of October, an annoyed Sheridan told Torbert to “whip the rebel cavalry or get whipped.” Confederate horsemen under Lomax and Rosser had been harassing his rear guard as he moved north. Rosser was close to Custer's division, and Lomax was close to Merritt's. The next day, at Tom's Brook, Custer and Merritt routed the Confederate cavalry. Torbert judged the result the most decisive the country had ever witnessed.

  After that, Sheridan and many in the Union army believed Early was no longer a threat. The army began drifting down the valley, expecting to fight elsewhere. Crook's men and the XIX Corps camped near Cedar Creek and Middletown, while the VI Corps sat farther off on the road to Front Royal. On the 12th of October, orders told Wright's VI Corps to leave through Ashby's Gap for Alexandria, from where it could reinforce Grant.

  Early had other plans. On the 13th of October his troops appeared, unseen, at Hupp's Hill just north of Strasburg and shelled the XIX Corps camp. Crook at first took it for a small probe meant to make the Union reveal its strength. Colonel Joseph Thoburn's division moved forward and fought Kershaw's division at the Abram Stickley farm, at a cost of 209 Union and 182 Confederate casualties. Early pulled back to Fisher's Hill by late afternoon. Sheridan recalled the VI Corps that evening as a precaution. Its 9,000 veterans would make a large difference six days later.

  That same day, Secretary of War Edwin M. Stanton asked Sheridan to come to Washington and discuss his next objective. Grant and Stanton still wanted the army to threaten the railroads at Gordonsville and Charlottesville, and Sheridan kept arguing that the logistics would be hard. He left on the 15th of October with Wright in command. He took all three cavalry divisions as far as Front Royal, planning to wreck a railroad bridge. There he learned that Early was sending wig-wag signals suggesting Longstreet's First Corps might arrive from Petersburg. It was disinformation, meant to push the Federals into withdrawing. Instead, Sheridan sent his cavalry back to the camps along Cedar Creek, and he reached Washington on the morning of the 17th.

  That same day, Gordon climbed Massanutten Mountain and saw that the Union left looked vulnerable. The Federals seemed to trust the mountain and the rivers to guard it. Gordon persuaded Early to approve an attack, on the condition that he find a hidden way around. On the 18th he scouted along the North Fork of the Shenandoah River and found a narrow trail. The plan used the morning fog. Gordon would lead three divisions against the Union rear while Kershaw hit the front, and Wharton and the artillery would wait to strike down the pike. Rosser would ride north along Cedar Creek to pin the Union cavalry. Colonel William H. F. Payne's small cavalry brigade would go with Gordon to seize Sheridan at his headquarters in the Belle Grove Plantation house. Lomax would circle through Front Royal to Newtown to block the road north. On the 18th of October the Confederate leaders synchronized their timepieces, aiming to be in place by 5:00 am.

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• 5. Surprise in the Fog

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  Gordon's column had the longest march, so it left first, about 8:00 pm on the 18th of October, just after dark. The men left behind anything that might rattle and followed the narrow trail in single file. Wharton's and Kershaw's columns set off around 1:00 am, with Early riding alongside Kershaw to Cedar Creek. The fog covered their approach, and all three columns stood ready by 3:30 am. The cavalry had mixed luck. Rosser's dismounted men skirmished briefly with Custer around 4:00 am, while Lomax was as far as 27 miles from Early's infantry, which made teamwork difficult.

  At about 5:00 am, Kershaw's division struck the trenches held by Thoburn's Union 1st Division. Most of Crook's soldiers were caught in camp, and many were asleep in their tents. The division lost most of its organization as men fled however they could. Lieutenant Colonel Thomas Wildes kept two of his First Brigade's three regiments in order and fought a withdrawal to the Valley Pike that lasted over 30 minutes. Captain Henry A. du Pont, an artillery chief, saved nine of sixteen guns by keeping them firing as he pulled back toward Middletown. Apart from the fog, those two efforts were all that slowed Kershaw's first push. Thoburn himself was mortally wounded by Confederate cavalry while trying to rally men near Middletown.

  Colonel Rutherford B. Hayes led the 2nd Division. He heard about the assault on Thoburn only minutes before seven brigades from Gordon's column hit his own line. Only his First Brigade was formed to meet them. His Second Brigade was still in its tents when Thoburn's fleeing men tore through the camp. Hayes's horse was killed under him and he was briefly knocked unconscious, yet he escaped capture. Colonel J. Howard Kitching's Provisional Division of raw recruits fled after little resistance. Kitching, wounded in the foot, kept trying to rally them from horseback.

  The XIX Corps fared better. Brigadier General Cuvier Grover's 2nd Division had planned a reconnaissance toward Strasburg at 5:30 am. When Grover heard musket fire around 5:15 am, he set his men on the defensive, most of them behind fortifications. Less than an hour into the battle, Kershaw and Brigadier General Clement A. Evans, who was leading Gordon's division, attacked the corps from the south and east. Wildes's stranded regiments could not rejoin Crook, so they offered help to Emory and Wright. Emory ordered them to attack to buy time for realigning the Union lines, and Wright led a bayonet charge in which he took a bloody wound to the face.

  A small group of Crook's men at Belle Grove, strengthened by some of Emory's, held for about 40 minutes before being flanked. That let most Union headquarters units and supply trains get away. In roughly two hours, Early had pushed back five Union divisions.

  The VI Corps now prepared a stand. Acting commander James B. Ricketts had his men moving within 20 minutes of the offensive beginning. Colonel J. Warren Keifer's 3rd Division stood on the right, Brigadier General Frank Wheaton's 1st on the left, and Brigadier General George W. Getty's 2nd near Middletown. Kershaw and Evans attacked around 7:30 am. By 8:00 they had driven Keifer and Wheaton northwest toward Meadow Brook, and Ricketts had been wounded. That left Getty's division as the only organized Union infantry south of Middletown. He fell back about 300 yards to the town cemetery, on a partly wooded hill west of the town. For over an hour his men held against frontal assaults by Ramseur, Pegram and Wharton. Getty took over the corps after Ricketts fell, so Brigadier General Lewis A. Grant took the division. After 30 minutes of artillery fire, Grant pulled back and rested for 20 minutes. He then withdrew about a mile, unopposed, and found Union cavalry waiting on his east side.

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• 6. The Halt

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  Sometime between 7:00 and 7:30 am, Early and Gordon met on the east side of the Valley Pike, near the road to Belle Grove. Early later wrote that the XIX Corps and Crook's corps were in “complete rout.” He called the VI Corps position on a ridge west of Middletown “a strong one.” The two generals remembered the meeting differently. Gordon wanted to focus an attack on the VI Corps, while Early seemed satisfied with the morning's gains. Early said he “rode forward on the Pike to ascertain the position of the enemy, in order to continue the attack.” Early took over command, and Gordon went back to his division.

  By 10:00 am Early believed the day was his. Riding into Middletown, he found the attack stalled by Union artillery and cavalry. Some of that cavalry was there because of his own trick, since the Longstreet signals had sent two Union cavalry divisions back to Cedar Creek. Rather than press on, Early halted to reorganize, a choice that subordinates such as Gordon later criticized. In a second meeting, Gordon urged an immediate assault on the VI Corps. He later wrote that the “fatal halting...converted the brilliant victory of the morning into disastrous defeat in the evening.”

  Early had reasons for caution. He feared the Union cavalry on his flanks, which carried repeating rifles. Many of his hungry men had also stopped to plunder the abandoned Union camps. By 11:30 am the line was ready, and the divisions of Gordon, Kershaw and Ramseur advanced. After about half a mile the push stopped at 1:00 pm. Early gave the same reasons as before: the cavalry, the plunderers, and tired, hungry soldiers.

  Meanwhile the Union horsemen were on the move. Between 9:00 and 10:00 am, Wright ordered Torbert to shift the cavalry from the Union right to the left. Custer left three companies to face Rosser, who had seemed hesitant in his earlier skirmish. Then Custer and Merritt took position west of the Valley Turnpike, about three quarters of a mile northeast of Middletown. Under heavy artillery fire, they still kept Early from reaching the rear of the Union army. At about 10:30 am, a general who had spent the night in Winchester finally reached the battlefield.

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• 7. Ride and Rout

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  At 6:00 am on the 19th of October, pickets south of Winchester told Sheridan they heard distant artillery. He assumed it was Grover's planned reconnaissance and dismissed the report. As more reports arrived, he had the horses saddled and ate a quick breakfast. By 9:00 am he was riding south toward the Valley Pike, and the noise of battle grew louder as he went. Less than 2 miles south of Winchester he met retreating men and wagons. Panicked soldiers told him all was lost, and he ordered a line set up to catch stragglers. Wright had already begun forming a defensive line between Newtown and Middletown. When Sheridan arrived around 10:30 am, his presence calmed the men. One soldier compared it to an “electric shock.”

  Sheridan did not attack at once. He believed Early's Longstreet ruse might be true. Questioning prisoners, he learned that only Kershaw's division of Longstreet's corps was present. He still feared Longstreet might be approaching from Front Royal to trap him between two forces. Around 3:30 pm he finally received confirmation that Longstreet was not near, and he ordered the attack.

  The counterattack began just before 4:00 pm. Custer's division stood on the far right facing Rosser, and Merritt's division held the left, southeast of the pike. Brigadier General William Dwight now led the XIX Corps' 1st Division, Grover had returned to the 2nd, and the VI Corps stood to Grover's left. Crook's men waited in reserve near the turnpike. The plan was for the cavalry to hold the Confederate flanks while the XIX Corps turned the Confederate left and drove it east of the pike, cutting off use of the bridge over Cedar Creek.

  The infantry attack stalled. Dwight overlapped Gordon's left but could not push it back. Kershaw's and Ramseur's men sat behind stone walls with artillery support, and Grover was wounded again. Merritt's cavalry charged twice and was thrown back by artillery and flanking fire. On the third charge, with the VI Corps moving forward alongside, the Confederates broke. Moments earlier, Colonel Charles Russell Lowell, commanding Merritt's Reserve Brigade, was mortally wounded at Thorndale Farm.

  On the far right, Custer had been trading half-hearted fire with Rosser. He left three regiments behind and took the rest of his division toward the infantry fight on his left, aiming to reach the Cedar Creek bridge and cut off the main escape route. Confederates who saw Union cavalry moving toward that route began to panic. Custer's appearance was also the signal for Dwight to renew his attack. Gordon's men fled toward the pike, and the panic spread to Kershaw's division and then Ramseur's. Ramseur, already wounded, tried to rally his men, but his horse was shot dead and he was mortally wounded.

  Colonel Thomas Devin's Second Brigade, from Merritt's division, reached the bridge before Custer did. Custer led his two lead regiments, the 5th New York and the 1st Vermont, to the right of it, forded the creek, and chased the fleeing enemy up the pike. Near 5:30 pm the last Confederate units crossed the creek. The fields toward Fisher's Hill filled with fleeing men, wagons, ambulances and artillery, hunted by Union cavalry with sabers. Then a small bridge on the pike south of Strasburg collapsed, and no wagon or gun could cross it. Early abandoned every Union gun and wagon he had taken that morning, along with most of his own. Sheridan's pursuit ended at nightfall, and the Confederates gathered on Fisher's Hill before moving farther south before the next dawn.

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• 8. Counting the Cost

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  The Union's official report listed 644 officers and men killed, 3,430 wounded, and 1,591 captured or missing, for 5,665 casualties. Both the VI Corps and the XIX Corps lost over 2,000, though the VI Corps had more killed and wounded. As the main victims of the surprise, the Army of West Virginia had 540 men captured or missing, and 790 of the XIX Corps' 2,383 casualties were captured or missing. Two brigade commanders were killed, Brigadier General Daniel D. Bidwell of the VI Corps and Lowell of the Cavalry Corps. Confederate figures are less certain, estimated at 320 killed, 1,540 wounded and 1,050 missing or captured, for 2,910. The Confederates also lost 300 wagons and ambulances and 43 artillery pieces, 20 of which were Union guns taken that morning. Ramseur, the highest ranking Confederate casualty, was captured by the 1st Vermont Cavalry. Early's artillery chief, Colonel Thomas H. Carter, was among the prisoners who slipped away in the dark while their captors searched for more men.

  Historians point to three reasons for the Confederate success at dawn. Many Union soldiers believed the campaign against Early was over and relaxed their vigilance. The terrain and the poor placement of the infantry left segments open to being flanked and outnumbered. And the Union cavalry had been misplaced, leaving the left flank exposed. Once the cavalry was used well, it proved crucial. Cavalry earned ten of the twenty-one Medals of Honor at Cedar Creek, though it made up only about a quarter of the men present. Two days after the battle, Sheridan sought promotions for two cavalry commanders, Merritt and Custer, and for one infantry commander, Getty.

  Credit for the victory is still argued. Many gave it to Sheridan, who appeared on the cover of Harper's Weekly, and it is “beyond dispute” that he electrified his men. Others say Wright deserves much of it, since his VI Corps stopped the Confederate attack and his judgments let Sheridan rally the army. Early shares some credit too. His dawn attack was well planned, but his cavalry was split and awkwardly placed. He blamed Gordon's division for plundering, while Gordon blamed the long pause.

  Sheridan's valley victories gave a lift to Lincoln's campaign. In August, advisers had warned the president that his reelection was in doubt, with the army's numerical edge in trouble and the country tired of war. Cedar Creek came three weeks before the election, and Lincoln was overjoyed. Sheridan won instant acclaim. The poet Thomas Buchanan Read wrote a popular poem, Sheridan's Ride, and Sheridan rose to a status only Grant and William Tecumseh Sherman outshone. He eventually became Commanding General of the United States Army. Gutzon Borglum sculpted an equestrian statue of Sheridan rallying his men at Cedar Creek, dedicated in 1908 at Sheridan Circle in Washington, D.C.

  Early's fortunes went the other way. He was accused of incompetence and mismanagement and no longer had his subordinates' confidence. Portions of his army were recalled to Richmond. On the 2nd of March 1865, Custer defeated Early and the remnants of his army at the Battle of Waynesboro, and the Army of the Valley ceased to exist. Early escaped, but his artillery, wagons and headquarters equipment were captured, and his men were captured, killed or scattered across the countryside.

  Part of the battlefield is now Cedar Creek and Belle Grove National Historical Park, established in 2002. It covers about 3,700 acres across three counties and includes trails, exhibits and the Belle Grove Plantation Manor House. The house was built in the 1790s by the brother-in-law of future President James Madison. The American Battlefield Trust and its partners have preserved more than 729 acres of the battlefield in 19 transactions since 1996.

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