Originally aired on March 17, 1995 - In part 29 of our Civil War series, Virginia Tech history professor James Robertson examines the stormy career of Union General Phillip H. Sheridan and his scorched-earth campaign in the lower Shenandoah Valley.
#29 – General Philip H. Sheridan (Scorched Earth)
In the autumn of 1864, two Union generals led armies on separate and, for America, unparalleled swaths of destruction. One of those commanders, General William T. Sherman, left Atlanta in flames and bulldozed his way to the Atlantic Ocean. The other, lesser known, scorched-earth campaign involved Union General Philip H. Sheridan and the lower Shenandoah Valley. The devastation there may not have been as widespread as Sherman’s March to the Sea, but helpless civilians in such Virginia counties as Rockingham and Shenandoah endured treatment at the hands of Sheridan that Virginians had never before known.
Who was this merchant of devastation? Phil Sheridan was born in March, 1831, in Albany, New York. The son of Irish immigrants, he was always a fighter. An altercation with a fellow cadet at West Point cost him an extra year at the Academy. Sheridan graduated in the lower third of the Class of 1853. He served on the western frontier until civil war came.
As a field officer in the Western theatre, Sheridan made consistently high marks. He led cavalry in the first year of the war, then displayed equal talents as an infantry commander. In April, 1864, General –in-Chief U. S. Grant brought Sheridan to Virginia to turn the inept Federal cavalry into a fighting organization.
Sheridan quickly molded those mounted men into his own image. The next month, he swung his horsemen like some giant scythe, got behind Lee’s army, struck for Richmond, and killed Confederate General Jeb Stuart in a mounted action on the outskirts of the capital.
By late summer, Grant had Lee’s forces pinned down at Richmond and Petersburg. The Union commander then sent Sheridan with an army west over the Blue Ridge. Grant’s instructions were simple: “If the war is to last another year,” he told Sheridan, “we want the Shenandoah Valley to (be) a barren waste”.
Sheridan looked the part of a destroyer. Although only 5 feet, 5 inches tall, he was a tough little man with black hair, olive-dark face, heavy mustaches, and hard eyes. Abraham Lincoln (himself a physical wonder) once described Sheridan as “a brown, chunky little chap, with a long body, short legs, not enough neck to hand his, and such long arms that if his ankles itch he can scratch then without stooping”. Sometimes Sheridan stormed and swore; at other times he fidgeted and glared; always he sought combat with cold determination.
At Opequon Creek, at Fisher’s Hill, at Cedar Creek, Sheridan launched fierce assaults against the undermanned forces of General Jubal Early. Sheridan’s success in all three battles virtually eliminated his Confederate opposition. Then the Federal general turned to his primary assignment in the agriculturally rich valley known as the “Breadbasket of the Confederacy”. Grant had expressed the hope that a crow flying over the Shenandoah would have to take its own food to survive the journey.
Sheridan turned that observation into reality. He laid waste to the Valley with cold, methodical effectiveness. Over 2,000 barns filled with grain and implements were destroyed, 70 flour mills burned, over 4,000 head of livestock seized, 3,000 sheep slaughtered – and that was only the beginning of the tally sheet. When Sheridan’s men finished with the lower Valley, a vast section of that garden spot was a smoking desert.
The story career of Sheridan continued into the postwar years. His military administration of Louisiana and Texas was so severe that President Andrew Johnson removed him from command. Sheridan’s harsh treatment of Indians in the West left an indelible legacy of hate. In 1884 he became commanding general of the U. S. Army – a post he held until shortly before his death four years later.
Sherman might have said that “war is hell”, but Phil Sheridan established that fact in the Valley of Virginia.
