CHAPTER I.

SHERIDAN AS A GENERAL.

GRANT'S ESTIMATE OF SHERIDAN HIS FIRST IMPRESSIONS OF THE GREAT CAVALRYMAN HIS QUALITIES AS A COMMANDER-HIS SECOND MEETING WITH GRANT-SHERIDAN'S PLACE IN HISTORY-CLOSING SCENES OF THE

REBELLION.

idan.

"SHERIDAN'S pursuit of Lee was perfect in its generalship and energy." General Grant paid this fitting tribute to the soldier whose brilliant career these pages will record. Then the mighty man of war added: "As a soldier, as a commander of troops, as a man capable of doing all that is possible with any number of men, there is no man living greater than Sher

He belongs to the very first rank of soldiers, not only of our country, but of the world. I rank Sheridan with Napoleon and Frederick and the great commanders in history. No man ever had such a faculty of finding out things as Sheridan, or of knowing all about the enemy. He was always the best informed man in his command as to the enemy.

Then he had that magnetic quality of swaying men which I wish I had a rare quality in a general. I don't think any one can give Sheridan too high praise."

It took the humble Ohio lad more than four years, in the white heat of war, to make these facts clear to his countrymen and the authorities in control of the government and its armies. He was not a typical hero in appearance. His size was against him. Restless, full of the combative quality, not politic in language, somewhat reticent, half stubborn, and fond of hazardous enterprises, he was the embodiment of heroism, dash, and impulse. Then he had the power of inspiring all about him, and imparting to others the very confidence he felt himself. Yet he seemingly commanded only those qualities which show the wide difference between the habitual impulses of the brilliant corps commander, and the cool thinking of a chief in the art, as well as in the onset, of war. At the very outset of his career, just after he was appointed colonel of cavalry, and while on the way with his regiment to join General Gordon Granger, he met the future commander of the armies. But the impression he created on that occasion was not a favorable one. In fact, Grant tells us that it was bad, and relates the incident in these words:

"We met at a railway station. I had never seen Sheridan but once before. He was then commissary at Halleck's headquarters during the march toward Corinth. Although he belonged to the Fourth Infantry, my old regiment, I had no acquaintance with him, for he graduated ten years after I had left West Point. I knew I had sent a regiment of cavalry to join Granger, but I had not indicated the Second Michigan, of which Sheridan had recently been made the colonel. I really did not wish that regiment to leave. As we met for the second time in our lives, I spoke to him about his going. He said he would rather go than stay, or some similar brusque and rough remark that annoyed me. I don't think he could have said anything that would have made a worse impression upon me. But I subsequently watched

his career and saw how much there was in him. When I came East and took command, I looked around for a cavalry commander. While standing in front of the White House talking to Mr. Lincoln and General Halleck, I said I wanted the best man I could find for a cavalry commander. Then' said Halleck, why not take Phil Sheridan?' 'Well,' I said, 'I was going to say Phil Sheridan.' So Sheridan was sent for, and he came, but very much disgusted. He

6

was just about to have a corps, and he did not know why we wanted him East, whether it was to discipline him or not."

The country had not yet become interested in Sheridan, as Grant had. He was still practically unknown outside the immediate army in which he served when called from the West. His great fight with Cheatham at Stone River, his second struggle with the same general at Chickamauga, and his good deeds at Missionary Ridge, had, it is true, attracted the attention of military men. But he was only at the threshold of his fame when Grant sent him across the Rapidan as his chief of cavalry in 1864. The troopers had now become a positive power in army operations, yet their new leader was only considered a “rough rider" by the country, capable of great things with a small force and rapid movement. The series of brilliant cavalry operations which led to his transfer to the Shenandoah was all lost to the public ear, in the din of the greater army movements that were going on around him. He was sent to the valley of Virginia by an accident, as a cavalryman, not as a great commander; but his deeds soon carried him to supreme command, and he fought several great battles. Yet he did not reach the summit of his fame until the final act which destroyed Lee's army. In the closing hours of the Rebellion, Sheridan became the vivid omen of defeat to the broken soldier in gray. Grant called him from the Shenandoah; and when he reached him on the last days of February, 1865, with his ten thousand troopers, the lines were closing around the fated Confederacy. Sheridan became to Grant what Murat was to Napoleon. After Meade's forces crashed through Lee's lines at Petersburg, and the southern commander moved south to join Johnston, Sheridan's great work began.

The failing army against which his firm and fateful operations were now directed, was simply a vitalized desperation. It was at the mercy of Time. It had hopes, but they were only a pathetic disbelief in the inevitable. The swift stroke of the Federal cavalry was everywhere. It flashed upon the Confederate flanks, laughed past its front, and then it picked up the stragglers. It was the materialized sneer of fate at the hopelessness of further opposition.

The lines were closing, and there were gaps through which the hoof-beats of the horses were heard, and the sabres of the troopers fell. Every time they advanced farther and more recklessly, until the doomed army knew that the great cordon which was to crush it was closing more and more tightly around it. The daring of the Confederates was simply an attempt to postpone the inevitable; but it was a striking

illustration of their discipline, and the confidence reposed in their commander. The cavalry had whirled through the Shenandoah-a cyclone of war and had left a ruined country and a scattered and dispirited remnant of an army. It had throttled the last hope at Five Forks. Sheridan, the dashing cavalry officer, the masterly leader of men in battle, here proved himself a perfect tactician on the field and in the face of a fighting army. The whole of his movements won from an applauding world the recognition of his powers as a great commanding general. From that point it was little more than a series of running skirmishes, some of them desperate, all of them evidences of American grit; for, though sore, weary, and starving, the remnants of Lee's once great army would sometimes turn and sting with terrible power their relentless pursuers. But Union troopers harassed them at every turn. The infantry drove their already dejected forces into disorder. The great cordon closed around them like an immense barn door,. and the main army swung on the veterans of Lee like a host of beating flails winnowing the grain. Every avenue was closed by the Federal troopers. They had overrun all the roads of supplies and left them barren. Wherever the Confederacy looked expectantly for some new path of escape or succor, Sheridan was there like a whirlwind of death and defeat. Across fields, down highways, through by-paths, and on every road, in the storm and terror of Five Forks, on the road below Appomattox, this great cavalryman and wonderful soldier was leading the advance or striking the flank of the enemy, with an energy born of the mighty power of a great brain well schooled in the best element of the art and vigor of war.

Finally, on a beautiful April morning in 1865, as the sun rose over the hills and vales of a region that had never yet felt the cruel footfall of war, Sheridan's cavalry swung into line for the last charge. The sound of those horses' hoofs on the road beyond Gordon's advance was the final menace to the expiring Confederacy.

The night of the 8th of April closed upon a day of hard work and exciting events. By a forced and rapid march Sheridan had thrust his cavalry in front of the retreating Confederate army. The night before the surrender, Custer had enveloped Appomattox Station, capturing three heavily laden railway trains of supplies, twenty-five pieces of artillery, 200 wagons, and many prisoners. After this stroke the cavalrymen stood to horse all night. The gray of the morning was just yielding to the stronger light of full day when they were ordered to move forAs they emerged from the woods and advanced upon the plains.

[From a Recent Photograph.]

beyond, they could see the army of Lee cut off from further retreat. It was a sight at once grand and thrilling when the horsemen moved forward to the final attack. Gordon made an attempt to destroy the line of cavalry which appeared with sabres glistening in the spring sun, the trophies of war mingling with battle-flags of the Union commander. Behind Sheridan's cavalry long lines of infantry under Ord, Griffin, and Gibbon, were waiting to gather the sheaves of war which Sheridan's troopers had secured. The last fight was a short one, and the white flag of truce from Gordon's headquarters announced the final surrender. Sheridan rode into the Confederate lines to receive the praises of his chief and the applause of his country for his brilliant work. It was a fitting end to the closing hours of the great struggle, that his fame as a soldier should be completed only with the final breaking up, which his generalship and energy had done so much to hasten.

The story of so dashing and brilliant a life cannot be easily told. But it is well before taking up the thread of his military life in detail, to observe the elements of mind and character which have combined to produce a soldier whose fame has reached far beyond the limits of his own country, and of whom Grant once said: "No better general ever lived."