Cedar Creek

On October 19, 1864, Confederate and Union forces clashed near Cedar Creek in Virginia's Shenandoah Valley, a fight also known by the name Belle Grove, close to Middletown and the Valley Pike. That morning brought striking success for the Confederates under Lieutenant General Jubal Early, whose troops pushed back seven Union infantry divisions, seizing more than 1,000 prisoners and upward of twenty cannon in the process. Yet the tide turned as afternoon wore on: Major General Philip Sheridan's Union forces regrouped and pushed Early's men into retreat, reclaiming not only their own lost guns but also capturing the bulk of the Confederate artillery and supply wagons.

The engagement began under cover of thick fog before sunrise, when Early launched a surprise assault that caught numerous Union troops still asleep. Though his force was the smaller of the two, he struck at multiple points along the Union line simultaneously, gaining brief but decisive advantages in numbers as well as surprise. Around 10:00 in the morning, Early halted his advance to regroup his men. Sheridan himself had been away in Washington, D.C. for a conference when the fighting broke out; racing back, he reached the field by roughly 10:30 a.m., and his presence steadied and reinvigorated his faltering army. By 4:00 that afternoon, the Union forces launched a counterattack, leaning heavily on their stronger cavalry, and shattered Early's army, sending it fleeing southward.

This defeat effectively broke the Confederate military presence in the Shenandoah Valley for good, ending any further threat of an advance northward toward Washington or beyond. The loss also cost the Confederacy control of the valley's agricultural resources, which had long supplied its army, since Early no longer had the strength to defend the region. Beyond its strategic weight, the victory helped bolster Abraham Lincoln's chances for reelection, and combined with Sheridan's prior successes at Winchester and Fisher's Hill, secured his reputation as one of the war's most celebrated commanders.

Background

In March 1864, Ulysses S. Grant left the Western Theater for a promotion to lieutenant general and command over every Union army. Unlike the generals before him, he wanted the various Union forces to act in concert, aiming to wreck Confederate armies rather than simply seize ground. By pushing several campaigns forward at once, he hoped to keep the Confederacy from shifting troops between fronts. Lee's

Disposition of forces and movement to battle

Following the crushing win at Tom's Brook, Sheridan and much of his command assumed Early's forces had ceased to pose a real danger. As a result, Union troops shifted northeast down the valley, anticipating combat would occur somewhere else. Crook's Army of West Virginia and the XIX Corps set up camp close to Cedar Creek and Middletown, but the VI Corps found itself positioned farther off along the route to Front Royal. Merritt's and Custer's cavalry divisions held ground near Fisher's Hill, and Powell's 2nd Cavalry Division held Front Royal.

Grant remained determined to see the Virginia Central Railroad put out of commission, so he dispatched two brigades from Powell's cavalry southward to strike rail lines near Gordonsville and Charlottesville. A directive issued on October 12 instructed Wright to march his VI Corps out the following day, passing through Ashby's Gap toward Alexandria, Virginia. Sheridan's intention was for these troops, once at Alexandria, to reinforce Grant's Army of the Potomac.

Without Sheridan's forces detecting them, Early's men reached Hupp's Hill, positioned just above Strasburg, on October 13. Forming into battle lines, they opened fire with artillery on the XIX Corps encampment. This assault caught the Union infantry off guard entirely, and Crook initially dismissed it as merely a small scouting party meant to provoke the Federals into exposing their numbers and position. In response, Colonel Joseph Thoburn brought his division from the Army of West Virginia forward to quiet the enemy guns, clashing with Kershaw's division near the Abram Stickley farm. The fighting there left 209 Union soldiers and 182 Confederates as casualties. By late afternoon, the Confederates had pulled back through Strasburg toward Fisher's Hill. That evening, wary of further trouble, Sheridan called Wright's VI Corps back, and they began their return march to Middletown on October 14. This proved a costly miscalculation for Early, since those 9,000 seasoned VI Corps troops would prove decisive in the fighting that erupted six days afterward.

That same day, October 13, Secretary of War Edwin M. Stanton summoned Sheridan to Washington for talks about future strategy. Both Grant and Stanton continued pushing for a Union advance toward Gordonsville and Charlottesville aimed at disrupting Confederate rail lines, though Sheridan kept insisting such a move would prove logistically troublesome. Once the fighting at Hupp's Hill subsided and Early's men withdrew to Fisher's Hill, Sheridan set out for his Washington meeting on October 15, placing Wright in temporary command. Before leaving, he directed all three cavalry divisions to accompany him toward Front Royal, planning to send them afterward to destroy a bridge on the Virginia Central Railroad. They reached the vicinity of Front Royal on October 16. It was then that Sheridan learned of wig-wag signals from Early's camp suggesting Longstreet's First Corps might be arriving from Petersburg to reinforce him. This proved to be a deliberate deception by Early, meant to push the Federal forces into retreating down the valley. Instead, Sheridan simply ordered his cavalry back to rejoin the infantry camped along Cedar Creek. He and his staff reached Washington on the morning of October 17.

That day, Gordon ascended Massanutten Mountain and concluded that the Union's left flank was exposed, since Federal defenses appeared to rely heavily on the mountain and nearby rivers rather than active positioning. He convinced Early to sanction a strike against this vulnerable flank, confident it could shatter Sheridan's army entirely. Early agreed on the condition that Gordon could locate a hidden path allowing Confederate troops to slip around the Union position. The following day, Gordon explored along the North Fork of the Shenandoah River and discovered a narrow trail suited to the purpose. After reporting back to Early, he received approval to launch the assault at dawn on October 19.

The plan called for a predawn strike, taking advantage of the dense fog typically blanketing the valley each morning. Gordon would guide three divisions in a flanking maneuver against the Union rear and left, while Kershaw's Division struck from the front. Meanwhile, Wharton's Division, supported by artillery, would advance along

Battle

On the evening of October 18, Early's infantry organized itself into three separate columns preparing to advance. Gordon led one column made up of three divisions, Gordon's own (under Evans's command), Pegram's, and Ramseur's, along with Payne's Cavalry Brigade. This group faced the longest march and set out around 8:00 pm, right as darkness fell. Soldiers discarded anything liable to make noise and moved single file along a narrow path. Wharton and Kershaw led the remaining two columns, setting out near 1:00 am on October 19, with Early accompanying Kershaw toward Cedar Creek. Thick fog helped mask their advance, just as the Confederates had hoped. By 3:30 am, all three infantry columns had reached their positions, as had both cavalry units. Rosser's dismounted troopers, minus Payne's Brigade, took up a spot near the ford at Cupp's Mill, briefly clashing with Custer's men around 4:00 am. Lomax's cavalry sat far to the east near Cedarville and Front Royal, separated from Early's infantry by as much as 27 miles (43 km), which made coordinating movements difficult. Around 5:15 am, Early linked up with Wharton.

Near 5:00 am, Kershaw's Division struck the entrenchments held by Thoburn's Union 1st Division. The assault caught the defenders almost entirely off guard, with many Army of West Virginia soldiers still asleep in their tents. Thoburn's division largely disintegrated as troops scattered, though Lieutenant Colonel Thomas Wildes managed to keep two of his three regiments together within the First Brigade. This remnant conducted a fighting retreat toward the Valley Pike lasting more than half an hour. Union Captain Henry A. du Pont, in charge of Colonel Crook's artillery, managed to save nine of his sixteen guns, keeping them firing even as he pulled back toward Middletown. Aside from the fog, du Pont's effort and Wildes's two regiments were the only things slowing Kershaw's advance at first. Colonel Thoburn himself died from wounds inflicted by Confederate horsemen while attempting to rally his fleeing men near Middletown.

Colonel Rutherford B. Hayes, leading the Union 2nd Division, barely had word of the assault on Thoburn before seven brigades from Gordon's column struck his own lines. Evans's division held the Confederate left while Ramseur's division anchored the right. Of Hayes's two brigades, only the First stood ready to meet Gordon's men. His Second Brigade, positioned to the southwest, was still in camp when Thoburn's fleeing soldiers came pouring through. Before long, Hayes's division joined the retreat as well, with most of his men falling back toward Belle Grove while Thoburn's troops streamed northeast along the pike. Hayes himself was thrown when his horse was killed under him, briefly losing consciousness, and though nearly captured, he managed to get away. Farther north, Colonel J. Howard Kitching's inexperienced Provisional Division broke and ran with barely a fight. Kitching, wounded in the foot while mounted, kept trying to reform his men regardless. His 6th New York Heavy Artillery Regiment, arriving from its camp near the wagons, lent support to one of du Pont's batteries. Confederate casualties in Ramseur's attacking force stayed light, though brigade commander Cullen A. Battle suffered a serious wound. Near Belle Grove, Crook, Hayes, and Kitching worked to reassemble the scattered remains of their two divisions.

The Union XIX Corps, by contrast, was not taken entirely by surprise. Its 2nd Division under Brigadier General Cuvier Grover had been preparing a 5:30 am reconnaissance south toward Strasburg. Musket fire from the direction of the Army of West Virginia's position reached their ears around 5:15 am, prompting Grover to arrange his troops defensively, most of them behind earthworks. Within less than an hour of the battle's start, Confederate forces under Kershaw and Evans began shelling the corps from the south and east before attacking from those directions. Emory, commanding the XIX Corps, unexpectedly gained help from

Aftermath

Three separate factors explain why Confederate forces gained the upper hand at the outset. For one, a good many Union soldiers assumed their campaign against Early's forces had already concluded, so alertness suffered. For another, the ground itself and careless positioning of Union infantry left gaps that Confederates exploited to achieve surprise, encircle certain segments, and bring superior numbers against them. Finally, the Union horsemen sat in the wrong location entirely, exposing the left flank to attack. Once finally put into action, however, this same cavalry proved essential to the eventual Union triumph. Of the twenty-one Medal of Honor recipients tied to Cedar Creek, ten came from the cavalry, roughly half the total despite cavalry troops representing only about a quarter of those present. Sheridan, just two days after the fighting ended, pushed for the promotion of cavalry officers Merritt and Custer along with infantry commander Getty.

Popular opinion largely handed Sheridan the laurels for winning the day, and his image graced the cover of Harper's Weekly. Historians consider it beyond dispute that his arrival on the field energized his troops. Yet other observers point toward Wright as equally deserving, since his VI Corps blunted the Confederate assault and his battlefield decisions laid the groundwork that let Sheridan later rally the men. Some measure of credit even falls to the opposing commander, Jubal Early. His infantry and artillery had launched a meticulously planned dawn assault that caught the Federals completely off guard, though his cavalry remained split and badly positioned. After ten in the morning, Confederate forces grew strangely passive, a lull that Gordon later complained about, and this pause gave Union troops the chance to regroup and ultimately prevail. Gordon, who had designed the morning's attack and often criticized Early, found himself blamed by Early for letting the offensive stall. Early insisted that Gordon's Division had weakened itself through excessive looting, and that this depletion, combined with the danger posed by Union cavalry threatening his right flank, forced the halt.

Sheridan's Shenandoah Valley victories gave a considerable lift to Lincoln's bid for reelection that November. Just weeks earlier, in August, advisors had warned Lincoln that his chances looked grim, that the army's numerical edge seemed to be slipping, and that the public had grown weary of prolonged fighting. Coming only three weeks before the presidential vote, the win at Cedar Creek delighted Lincoln immensely. Sheridan found himself an instant celebrity, further immortalized when poet Thomas Buchanan Read composed the widely read verses of "Sheridan's Ride." His reputation soared to a level surpassed only by Grant and William Tecumseh Sherman, and he would go on to serve as Commanding General of the United States Army. A bronze likeness of Sheridan on horseback, rallying his men at Cedar Creek, was crafted by sculptor Gutzon Borglum and unveiled in 1908; it still stands today in Washington, D.C.'s Sheridan Circle. Early's fortunes moved in the opposite direction. He faced accusations of poor management and incompetence, lost the trust of those serving under him, and watched as portions of his command got called back to Richmond. His remaining forces met defeat at Custer's hands on March 2, 1865, in the Battle of Waynesboro, an engagement that effectively erased the Army of the Valley from existence. Early himself managed to flee, but his artillery pieces, wagons, and headquarters supplies all fell into enemy hands, while his soldiers were taken prisoner, killed, or simply scattered across the countryside.