The Valley Campaign for Memory
APPENDIX C
BY CHRIS MACKOWSKI & PHILLIP S. GREENWALT
If the old saying is true about history being written by the victors, then Jubal A. Early is the exception that proves the rule. Inarguably, Early’s postwar writings in defense of the Confederacy did more to influence ongoing interpretation of the Civil War than anything else. As a result, for a century and a half, many (if not most) Americans accepted Early’s “Lost Cause” version of the war as fact. Confederates may have lost the Civil War, but Early helped them win the peace.
In that light, Phillip Sheridan’s victory in the Shenandoah Valley in the autumn of 1864 is all the more impressive. Sheridan not only won the campaign—he trounced the man who, in essence, wrote the war’s popular history.
“Trounced” isn’t a stretch, either. Sheridan’s manic twenty-mile ride from Winchester down to Cedar Creek on the morning of October 19 was immediately immortalized by Thomas Read, whose poem “Sheridan’s Ride” quickly became a national sensation. “The first that the general saw were the groups/Of stragglers, and then the retreating troops;” Read wrote with cliffhanger drama and flourish:
What was done? what to do? a glance told him both,
Then, striking his spurs, with a terrible oath
He dashed down the line ‘mid a storm of huzzas,
And the wave of retreat checked its course there, because
The sight of the master compelled it to pause.
Read, a prolific artist as well as writer, went on to paint a version of the scene in 1871 (which Sheridan and his horse posed for); that image still gets wide circulation in association with Cedar Creek.
President Lincoln’s partisans circulated Read’s poem widely in the lead-up to the November election as a reminder of the valiant Union victory. “Stick with us; we’ll win this thing yet,” the message suggested. Indeed, the entire incident could have been a metaphor for Lincoln’s election: he very much hoped to snatch electoral victory from the jaws of what had looked like certain defeat earlier that summer.
Sheridan loved the attention that “Sheridan’s Ride” garnered for him—so much so that he renamed his horse, from “Rienzi” to “Winchester,” in honor of the episode. He even had the hide of his horse mounted after it died, and then had the taxidermical masterpiece put on public display. To this day, the mounted hide of the horse stands on display in the Smithsonian’s Museum of American History.
There is no doubt that Sheridan, when he splashed across Meadow Brook, provided inspiration to the flagging spirits of the Union army. But the army he rallied was hardly defeated. They had received the best the Confederates could offer and been pushed back, but by the time Sheridan swept in, the army had already rallied and stabilized its defenses.
Sheridan’s own writings suggested otherwise, though. He wrote in his official report of his efforts to “stem the torrent of fugitives.” He was “happy to say that hundreds of the men, when reflection found they had not done themselves justice, came back with cheers.”
Following his well-publicized poem done a mere two weeks after the ride, Thomas Read six years later portrayed Sheridan’s Ride with oil on canvas (above). An 1886 facsimile by Louis Prang and Company was based on Read’s famous painting (below). (LOC)
So the story went, and so it grew. For instance, Brig. Gen. G. W. Forsyth, an aide-de-camp who’d accompanied Sheridan on the ride, described the event in even more hyperbolic fashion in an article for Scribner’s that he later included in his memoir, Thrilling Days in Army Life, published in 1900. “As we debouched into the fields,” he wrote of the climactic moment,
the general would wave his hat to the men and point to the front, never lessening his speed as he pressed forward. It was enough. One glance at the eager face and familiar black horse and they knew him and, starting to their feet, they swung their caps around their heads and broke into cheers as he passed beyond them; and then gathering up their belongings started after him for the front, shouting to their comrades farther out in the fields, “Sheridan! Sheridan!”
One might suggest that Sheridan’s version of events stuck as it did because, after all, he eventually rose to become general-in-chief of the entire army. As his fame and success grew after the war, so too did the image of him riding along the Valley Turnpike to rally his broken army.
However, one need only look at Sheridan’s boss, Ulysses S. Grant, to understand that office alone cannot ensure one’s version of history will stick. Grant’s rank, his eventual rise to the presidency, his ongoing adoration by veterans, and his authorship of his Personal Memoirs— a literary masterwork—all paled in the longevity of their power when compared to the unrelenting literary onslaught of Early and his fellow Lost Cause writers.
“Clear-eyed in his determination to sway future generations, Early used his own writings and his influence with other ex-Confederates to foster a heroic image of Robert E. Lee and the Southern war effort,” says historian Gary Gallagher, who has extensively studied Early’s writings and their impact. “Many of the ideas these men articulated became orthodoxy in the postwar South, eventually made their way into the broader national perception of the war, and remain vigorous today.”
“AS [SHERIDAN] MET THE FUGITIVES HE ORDERED THEM TO TURN BACK, REMINDING THEM THAT THEY WERE GOING THE WRONG WAY. HIS PRESENCE SOON RESTORED CONFIDENCE. FINDING THEMSELVES WORSE FRIGHTENED THAN HURT THE MEN DID HALT AND TURN BACK. MANY OF THOSE WHO HAD RUN TEN MILES GOT BACK IN TIME TO REDEEM THEIR REPUTATIONS AS GALLANT SOLDIERS BEFORE NIGHT.”
— from THE PERSONAL MEMOIRS OF ULYSSES S. GRANT
Ironically, it was a war of words with Sheridan over the Valley Campaign’s casualty figures that sparked Early’s attempts to chronicle—and thus interpret—the war. As the two antagonists refought the campaign through newspaper articles, Early refuted Sheridan’s claims about the “great slaughter” of the Confederate force at Cedar Creek. Early pointed to Sheridan’s exaggerations as self-aggrandizing proof that the Union general could not be trusted, and he called on “all fair minded men of other nations to withhold their judgment … until the truth can be placed before them.”
Ulysses S. Grant, in his Personal Memoirs, made the boldly erroneous assertion that “Early had lost more men in killed, wounded and captured in the [V]alley than Sheridan had commanded from first to last”—a statement that, if true, would have meant Early vastly outnumbered Sheridan (which, of course, he didn’t). Early jumped on Grant the same way he jumped on Sheridan, blasting “the recklessness of these statements.”
It must have rankled Early, proudly unreconstructed as he was after the war, to see his former Valley opponent propelled to such lofty heights. “If Sheridan had not had subordinates of more ability and energy than himself, I should probably have had to write a different history of my Valley campaign,” Early scoffed.
The story Early did write managed to sustain the honor of “hopelessly outnumbered Confederates,” says Gallagher, and thus “cast his own performance in a better light.” Yet he could not erase the stain of defeat. As a result, his larger postwar attempts to recast events in the Valley to his favor proved for naught.
It could be that Early had not only Sheridan to contend with but a figure of even greater magnitude: the nearly mythic stature of Stonewall Jackson, whose exploits in the Valley in the spring of 1862 had propelled him to international fame. At a time when the Confederacy’s fortunes had been on the decline nearly everywhere else, Jackson’s victories proved a much-needed bright spot for people of Southern sympathies. By the autumn of 1864, eighteen months after his death, Jackson had already risen to the position of Confederate martyr. Early had no way to compete.
While a historical marker along the Valley Pike indicates the area of Sheridan’s return, the actual location is off the road about a half a mile away along Meadow Brook. (CM)
“General Jackson did not have the odds opposed to him which I had, and his troops were composed entirely of the very best material which entered into the composition of our armies,” Early later said, admitting that many of those same units served under his command but had also, after two years’ time, nearly expended themselves. “Besides the old soldiers whose numbers were so reduced, my command was composed of recruits and conscripts.”
Described in Thomas Reed’s poem as “A steed as black as the steeds of night,” Sheridan’s horse, Rienzi, became almost as famous as his owner. Rienzi was a black gelding who measured nearly seventeen hands high. Sheridan called him “an animal of great intelligence and immense strength and endurance. He always held his head high, and by the quickness of his movements gave many persons the idea that he was exceedingly impetuous. This was not so, for I could at any time control him by a firm hand and a few words, and he was as cool and quiet under fire as one of my soldiers.” Rienzi was given to Sheridan in 1862 by officers of the 2nd Michigan Cavalry when the regiment was stationed in Rienzi, Mississippi, and Sheridan used him for the remainder of the war, including during his ascent up Missonary Ridge during the battles for Chattanooga in November of 1863 and his line-breaking charge at Five Forks in April of 1865. Rienzi was wounded several times in action but survived the war. He eventually died in Chicago in 1878.
Sheridan admired the horse so much that he asked a taxidermist to mount the hide for public display, and for years it stood at the military museum at Governor’s Island in New York. When the museum burned in 1922, Rienzi survived, and under escort from an army honor guard, the horse was transferred to the Smithsonian Institution, where it remains on display in the Museum of American History. The saddle, bridle, blanket, and other tack he still wears all belonged to Sheridan.
Rienzi is one of only eight mounted horses in the world and one of only two Civil War horses; the other Civil War horse is Stonewall Jackson’s “Little Sorrel” on display at V.M.I. Also in the “mounted mounts” club: Roy Rogers’ and Dale Evans’s Trigger and Buttermilk, on display at the Roy Rogers Museum in Branson, Missouri; Marengo, one of Napoleon’s horses, on display in England’s National Army Museum; Phar Lap, Australia’s most famous race horse, on display at the Museum of Victoria; and Comanche, a horse who had belonged to one of Gen. George Armstrong Custer’s officers and was the only survivor of Custer’s Last Stand at Little Big Horn, on display at the University of Kansas. Old Baldy, Union General George Meade’s horse, almost makes it into the club by a nose; his mounted head hangs on a plaque on display at the Grand Army of the Republic Museum in Philadelphia. (LOC/CM)
Harper’s Weekly depicted “Sheridan’s Ride” on the cover of its November 5, 1864, edition. Ironically, at least for Jubal Early, the sketch of Sheridan bore a striking resemblance to Stonewall Jackson, complete with slouch hat. Early would lose the battle for memory in the Valley to both men. (SOS)
With Kristopher D. White, Chris Mackowski is the cofounder of Emerging Civil War and managing editor of the Emerging Civil War Series. Dr. Mackowski is a professor of journalism and mass communication at St. Bonaventure University.
Early also bemoaned the disadvantages Sheridan’s Burning inflicted on his army. “The Valley, at the time of [Jackson’s] campaign, was teeming with provisions, and forage from one end to the other,” Early wrote; “while my command had very great difficulty in obtaining provisions for the men, and had to rely almost entirely on the grass in the open fields for forage.”
Early went on to offer other defenses, most of which were legitimate albeit tinged with the defensiveness of a self-apologist. “These facts do not detract from the merits of General Jackson’s campaign in the slightest degree, and far be it from me to attempt to obscure his well earned and richly deserved fame,” he concluded. “They only show that I ought not to be condemned for not doing what he did.”
Despite Early’s disdain for Sheridan, the bandylegged Irishman proved a far more capable foe for Early than anyone Jackson had contended with. In the spring of 1862, losers like Milroy, Shields, and Banks had yet to be culled from the ranks of general officers or shuffled off to less important (that is, politically visible) theaters of the war. Jackson’s audacity certainly played a role in his string of victories in the spring of 1862, but so, too, did the B-list nature of his adversaries. Early. in contrast, was up against one of Grant’s favored sons.
In the long run, Early was also up against himself. The mythmaking he’d begun with the Lost Cause put primacy on the war in the Eastern Theater (since, after all, Confederates kept getting drubbed in the West). In the East-centric narrative, the “noble Lee” stands at the center of the story, with the martyred Jackson by his side (at least through May of 1863). By necessity, that puts primacy on the Washington-Richmond axis of action at the expense of action in the Valley. The Valley is useful to that narrative only in that it helps build Jackson into the genius so important as Lee’s right hand. In order to promote his own vision of history, Early essentially had to write himself out of the main storyline.
Battered not only by Sheridan but by Jackson’s memory, it’s little wonder Early lost the Valley Campaign in all respects. What’s become even more ironic, though, is that the iconic story of Sheridan’s Ride—like the Lost Cause itself—has overshadowed the actual history.
Sheridan not only beat Early on the battlefield; wittingly or not, he beat Early at his own game.
After Lee’s surrender of Lee, Early went west of the Mississippi River looking for any Confederate force still fighting. After discovering they’d all surrendered, Early went abroad rather than live in the reconstructed South. Pardoned in 1868, though, he returned to Virginia to practice law and vigorously defend the South’s actions during the war. In doing so, he did much to shape the “Lost Cause” symbolism of the defeated Confederacy. After a fall down the steps, Early died the next day on March 2, 1894. He was buried in Spring Hill Cemetery in Lynchburg, Virginia. (PG)
Sheridan’s Ride
BY THOMAS BUCHANAN READ (1864)
Up from the South at break of day,
Bringing to Winchester fresh dismay,
The affrighted air with a shudder bore,
Like a herald in haste, to the chieftain’s door,
The terrible grumble, and rumble, and roar,
Telling the battle was on once more,
And Sheridan twenty miles away.
And wider still those billows of war,
Thundered along the horizon’s bar;
And louder yet into Winchester rolled
The roar of that red sea uncontrolled,
Making the blood of the listener cold,
As he thought of the stake in that fiery fray,
And Sheridan twenty miles away.
But there is a road from Winchester town,
A good, broad highway leading down;
And there, through the flush of the morning light,
A steed as black as the steeds of night,
Was seen to pass, as with eagle flight,
As if he knew the terrible need;
He stretched away with his utmost speed;
Hills rose and fell; but his heart was gay,
With Sheridan fifteen miles away.
Still sprung from those swift hoofs, thundering South,
The dust, like smoke from the cannon’s mouth;
Or the trail of a comet, sweeping faster and faster,
Foreboding to traitors the doom of disaster.
The heart of the steed, and the heart of the master
Were beating like prisoners assaulting their walls,
Impatient to be where the battle-field calls;
Every nerve of the charger was strained to full play,
With Sheridan only ten miles away.
Under his spurning feet the road
Like an arrowy Alpine river flowed,
And the landscape sped away behind
Like an ocean flying before the wind,
And the steed, like a barque fed with furnace ire,
Swept on, with his wild eyes full of fire.
But lo! he is nearing his heart’s desire;
He is snuffing the smoke of the roaring fray,
With Sheridan only five miles away.
The first that the general saw were the groups
Of stragglers, and then the retreating troops;
What was done? what to do? a glance told him both,
Then, striking his spurs, with a terrible oath,
He dashed down the line ‘mid a storm of huzzas,
And the wave of retreat checked its course there, because
The sight of the master compelled it to pause.
With foam and with dust the black charger was gray;
By the flash of his eye, and the red nostril’s play,
He seemed to the whole great army to say,
“I have brought you Sheridan all the way
From Winchester, down to save the day!”
Hurrah! hurrah for Sheridan!
Hurrah! hurrah for horse and man!
And when their statues are placed on high,
Under the dome of the Union sky,
The American soldier’s Temple of Fame;
There with the glorious general’s name,
Be it said, in letters both bold and bright,
“Here is the steed that saved the day,
By carrying Sheridan into the fight,
From Winchester, twenty miles away!”
Several composers put Read’s poem to music. (LOC)
An equestrian statue of Sheridan and Rienzi sits in Washington, D.C.’s Sheridan Circle, along Massachusetts Ave. near Embassy Row. The statue was sculpted by Gutzon Borglum, the artist who later did Mt. Rushmore in South Dakota and Stone Mountain in Georgia. Borglum earned the commission after winning a competition in 1908. A duplicate was erected in Chicago, where Sheridan had lived, in 1923. (DD)
