OPERATIONS AT PETERSBURG AND SHERIDAN'S VALLEY CAMPAIGN
In the mine operation General Grant had been baffled even more
conspicuously than at the Wilderness or at Spottsylvania or at Cold
Harbor. All his efforts to break through Lee's lines had completely
failed. All his efforts to crush Lee and destroy his resisting power
had come to naught. There remained to him--notwithstanding his enormous
superiority of force and of the materials of war--only the resource of
continuing the regular siege operations already in progress.
For such operations he was peculiarly well equipped. He had more men
than his adversary had by three or four to one. He had an unassailable
base of supplies upon the James river to which his vessels could come
without the slightest fear of molestation. He had unlimited supplies
while his adversary hung all the time upon the verge of starvation.
He had a railroad in his rear over which he could move trains at will
without even the possibility of his adversary's discovery. He had
already by the extension of his lines compelled Lee to draw his out
to the point of breaking. Grant could, at any moment, concentrate a
hundred thousand men and a hundred guns upon any point in Lee's line
which he might select for assault, and that without the smallest
possibility of Lee's discovering his purpose. But instead of assault,
which he had many times attempted with disastrous results, General
Grant wisely determined to continue his policy of attenuating
Lee's lines by enforced extension. He continued to move his own
troops southward and westward toward and along the Weldon railroad,
thus compelling Lee to stretch out his lines until the men in his
breastworks, instead of standing elbow to elbow, stood many feet apart,
and held their ground only by virtue of a desperate determination.
On the thirteenth of August Grant sent Hancock to assail the defenses
of Richmond on the northern side of the James river. Lee was prompt
to meet him, and the Confederates succeeded in repelling every attack
made throughout a succession of bloody days. But while these operations
were going on north of the James, Grant availed himself of his superior
numbers by sending Warren on the eighteenth to seize upon the Weldon
railroad south of Petersburg, and entrench himself in a line crossing
that avenue of Confederate communication. On the nineteenth of August
and again on the twenty-first, Lee desperately assailed Warren in this
position, but without success. On the twenty-fifth a Confederate force
under General A. P. Hill was sent forward to recapture the position.
The Confederates made three desperate assaults, but in each case were
beaten back with terrific loss. Finally, Hill ordered Heth's division
to move forward and carry the works at all hazards and all costs.
That was an order which the veterans in these two contending armies
understood, and were accustomed to obey. Ordered to carry the works,
Heth did so, capturing three batteries and a large number of prisoners.
Then the Federals, under General Miles, rallied and made a counter
assault, recapturing a part of the works, but suffering terribly in
the encounter. In this fierce struggle the Federals lost 2,400 men.
The Confederate loss has never been accurately reported, but in such
desperate fighting as was done on that field, it must have been severe.
The total result of this struggle was that Grant held and continued
thereafter to hold a part of the railroad which led south from
Petersburg, by way of Weldon, and upon which Lee was compelled to
depend in a considerable degree for communication and supplies.
But with that vigor and resourcefulness which had come to mark the
operations of the armies on both sides, Lee promptly opened a wagon
route thirty miles long and well defended, over which as a bridge to
the gap he was able for months afterwards to carry all supplies and
reinforcements that could be brought to him from the south.
In the meanwhile there was continuous battling all along the Richmond
and Petersburg lines, which covered a space of more than thirty miles.
The sharpshooting was incessant, the bombardment scarcely less so. But
Grant was not yet ready to make another determined assault upon Lee's
works, or in any other way to bring on a battle in earnest.
The defeat and driving away of Hunter from the Valley was a painful
miscarriage of the plans with which the lieutenant general had hoped
to conduct the campaign. So long as Early should remain in the Valley
it was obvious that continual raids upon Washington were not only
possible but probable, and that these raids or even the possibility of
them must seriously impair Grant's strength at Petersburg. Accordingly,
Grant decided that his first care now must be to regain possession of
the valley of Virginia, and to hold that region irresistibly against
Confederate invasion. To accomplish this he sent for General Sheridan
and placed under his command a force of 30,000 men, or nearly four
times as many as those with which Early could oppose him. With a force
so overwhelming, Sheridan was ordered completely to clear the valley of
Confederate troops, to cut off all supplies that might come from that
fertile region for the support of Lee's army, and permanently to render
that pathway toward the north a no-thoroughfare to the Confederates.
Grant's purpose looked to a campaign of utter and complete destruction.
In his orders to Sheridan he said, "In pushing up the Shenandoah
Valley, where it is expected you will have to go first or last, it is
desirable that nothing should be left to invite the enemy to return.
Take all provisions, forage and stock wanted for the use of your
command. Such as cannot be consumed destroy. It is not desirable that
the buildings should be destroyed--they should rather be protected; but
the people should be informed that so long as an army can subsist among
them recurrences of these raids must be expected; and we are determined
to stop them at all hazards."
Up to this time General Halleck, who was acting as adjutant general,
though no longer in command, had continued in annoying ways to
interfere with Grant's orders and proceedings. A dispatch from Mr.
Lincoln warned Grant that certain of his orders would not be carried
out unless he, Grant, should personally see to their execution. This
gave Grant his opportunity, once for all, to teach Halleck the bitter
lesson that it was now the Galena clerk who had the right to command.
Grant went to Washington and so far asserted himself that Halleck
sent him a message of complete submission, and thereafter executed
the orders of the commanding general, instead of criticizing them and
interfering with them.
Grant's instructions to Sheridan were to put himself south of the
Confederates, and to follow them to the death wherever they might go.
Having 30,000 men with whom to chase 8,000 Sheridan's task in the
execution of this order was not a difficult one.
Early lay at this time just south of the Potomac, a little way above
Harper's Ferry, and was drawing his supplies from Maryland by cavalry
operations in that quarter. Sheridan promptly pushed southward toward
Winchester and Early retired to that point to await reinforcements
from Lee. Early retreated as far as Fisher's Hill, east of Winchester,
and there took up a strong position, offering battle to his adversary
while waiting to be reinforced. There Sheridan attacked Early on the
twenty-first of August and was beaten off by the Confederates with a
loss of two or three hundred men. Sheridan thereupon retired to Hall
Town, destroying as he went "everything eatable."
Then occurred one of the odd situations of the war. For three or
four weeks, Early with less than 8,000 men was practically besieging
Sheridan with more than 30,000, and in the meantime keeping Washington
in a condition of chronic fright by threatening raids into Maryland,
West Virginia and Pennsylvania, by breaking up the Baltimore and Ohio
railroad and the Chesapeake and Ohio canal, and in other ways behaving
himself precisely as he might have done had his force been four times
that of Sheridan's, instead of being, as it was in fact, one fourth as
great.
Why Sheridan with his enormously superior force did not at this time
fall upon Early and crush him must always be a puzzling question to the
historian and the military critic. Whatever the explanation may be, the
fact is that during all these weeks Sheridan was standing at bay in
the hope that Grant's operations before Petersburg might compel Lee to
withdraw Early and his small force from the Valley. So far from driving
Early out of that region Sheridan stood upon the defensive in order
that Early might not drive him out instead.
At last Lee recalled to Petersburg the troops he had sent to Early's
reinforcement, and about the same time Early divided his forces,
sending a large part of them to Martinsburg, twenty miles or so north
of Winchester. Here was a great opportunity and Grant promptly ordered
Sheridan to take advantage of it. On the nineteenth of September
Sheridan advanced with all his force upon Winchester, which place Early
was defending east of the town. Promptly discovering the purpose of
Sheridan's movement, Early recalled his troops from Martinsburg, and
concentrated all the force he had in front of Winchester. A fierce
and desperate battle ensued in which the Federal loss was about 5,000
men, and the Confederate loss about 4,000. In the end the enormous
superiority of numbers on the Federal side prevailed, and Early was
driven into retreat up the Valley. But the retreat was made in good
order, and all the trains were saved.
Early retired again to Fisher's Hill, where the Valley is about four
miles in width, and there took up a strong position for resistance.
There on the twenty-second of September Sheridan again assailed him in
overwhelming force, and after a stubborn fight drove him again into
retreat up the Valley, but failed in a deliberately formed plan for
capturing the meager Confederate force. During the next three or four
days Early continued his retreat until he reached Port Republic, and
the fighting, though irregular, was continuous.
Grant had hoped that Sheridan would make his way as far south as
Charlottesville, but in that he was disappointed. Finding it impossible
to force his way further, Sheridan began a retrograde march northward
down the Valley on the fifth of October. He destroyed as he went
everything that might by any possibility have value to his enemy. In
his report he said, "I have destroyed over 2,000 barns, filled with
wheat, hay and farming implements; over 70 mills filled with flour and
wheat; have driven in front of the army over 4,000 head of stock, and
have killed and issued to the troops not less than 3,000 sheep." After
this march was over Sheridan picturesquely suggested the desolation he
had wrought in one of the fairest of all God's countries by saying that
"The crow that flies over the Valley of Virginia must henceforth carry
his rations with him."
Here we have a suggestion of the barbarity and brutality and desolation
of war! With their barns burned, their wheat and their corn and
their flour destroyed, and their stock carried off by the enemy, the
farmers of that rich valley were left by the decree of war to stare
starvation in the face, and to suffer an extreme of poverty more severe
even than that which wastefulness and debauchery bring to men. With
jaunty indifference to human suffering war decrees starvation to women
and children, the ruin of men's fortunes, the destruction of their
means of subsistence, and their sudden reduction from affluence to
poverty. In this particular case, in order that no Confederate army
might thereafter secure supplies upon which to subsist in the Valley
of Virginia, Sheridan decreed that all these farmer folk should be
completely deprived of their substance, that their barns should be
burned, their cattle slaughtered, their sheep driven off, their wheat
stacks reduced to ashes, their smokehouses stripped of the last flitch
of bacon that might be hanging there--in brief, that these people, men,
women and children, should be deprived of all food supplies and left
to starve in wretchedness for the sake of accomplishing a military
purpose. How long, oh, Lord, how long will it be before the world shall
advance to that point in civilization in which war will be justly
regarded as the infamous crime that it is? How long will it be before
civilization shall cease to be a mere veneer or varnish and become a
matter of substance in human affairs?
As Sheridan retired northward down the Valley, Early received some
meager reinforcements, and with that energy which characterized all his
operations, he instantly set out in pursuit of his adversary.
Sheridan had taken a position at Cedar Creek, a little to the north of
Strasburg, and there on the night of the eighteenth, Early, with every
precaution of silence, moved around the Federal left, and at dawn of
the nineteenth fell upon the Federal forces with all the vigor he could
command. The rout of the Federals was quick and complete. Sheridan was
absent at the time, and on his return he met his army in full flight.
He instantly set cavalry to work against his own men, in order to stop
the insensate retreat. Thus rallying his men he turned them back,
entrenched them hastily, and repulsed Early's assault. Later in the
day he took the offensive, and succeeded in breaking the Confederate
line, and driving it into retreat, capturing 34 Confederate guns in the
operation. On the Confederate side 3,100 men fell in this contest. On
the Federal side the loss amounted to 5,764.
The result of these operations was to give Sheridan complete command of
the Valley of the Shenandoah for the time being, at least, and to wipe
that danger spot off the map.