Voices from a war-torn valley: the 1864 Shenandoah Valley burning and Cedar Creek

"Voices from a War Torn Valley" is a National Park Service flip book of illustrations, quotations and stories from the exhibit "From Backcountry to Breadbasket, to Battlefield, and Beyond." It lets generals, soldiers and Valley residents describe the 1864 burning of the Shenandoah Valley and the Battle of Cedar Creek.

Illustration of the burning of the Shenandoah Valley by US troops.

"Total war" and the burning of the Valley

Philip Sheridan, 1864. Library of Congress.

In 1864 General Sheridan wrote that people at home in peace and plenty see little of war's horrors, but that when deprivation and suffering reach their own doors, loss of property weighs heavily on them, often more than the sacrifices on the battlefield. The policy that followed is called "total war."

The destruction of Valley livestock was part of the Union's "total war" policy. Sketch by James E. Taylor.

Sheridan reported that he had made the country from the Blue Ridge to the North Mountain untenable for a rebel army. He had destroyed over two thousand barns filled with wheat, hay and farming implements and over seventy mills filled with flour and wheat. He had driven off more than four thousand head of stock and killed and issued to the troops not less than three thousand sheep. When the work was done, he wrote, the Valley from Winchester to Staunton, 92 miles, would have little left for man or beast.

A Northern news correspondent traveling with Sheridan wrote that poor and rich alike suffered, that the wailing of women and children mingled with crackling flames, and that the desolation was complete. Valley resident Samuel Blosser recalled soldiers going through the house, taking anything valuable, shooting hogs, sheep and chickens all day so that it was unsafe to go outdoors, and burning the buildings that evening. Mary Stickley recalled a family with hardly anything, with fences gone and a broken-down army horse picked up on the battlefield as its only horse.

The Confederate night march and surprise attack

Confederate night march. Sketch by James E. Taylor.

Major General John Gordon recalled the plan adopted by General Early: instead of attacking Sheridan's prepared positions, the Confederates would strike the Union left, where no defense was ready. Men left behind canteens and anything that made noise, spoke only in whispers, and moved in a long gray line along the cliffs above the Shenandoah in the October darkness. At the ford, Evans's brigade, with the old Stonewall Brigade leading, rushed into the cold river, then ran at the "double quick" to the left flank of Sheridan's sleeping army.

John B. Gordon, c. 1868. Library of Congress.

Captain D. Augustus Dickert of the 3rd South Carolina described a vast plain of tents with a living sea of men and horses fleeing for safety, some without hats, shoes or guns, caissons racing off: a panic never witnessed before.

The fatal halt

Early wrote to Robert E. Lee that too many of his men had stopped to plunder in the Union camp, and the open country and strong Union cavalry made him judge it imprudent to press further. Major Henry Kyd Douglas, a Confederate staff officer, wrote that he did not know why they had not attacked before the Union troops recovered from the confusion. Gordon insisted the disaster came from the halt and delay after the morning victory, not, as Early maintained, the "bad conduct" of his own men.

Sheridan's ride and the victory

"Sheridan's Ride," painting by Thure de Thulstrup; facsimile print by L. Prang & Co., c. 1886. Library of Congress.

Sheridan, returning to the field around 10:00 a.m., saw a panic-stricken army: slightly wounded men, unhurt but demoralized throngs and baggage wagons by the score, all pressing to the rear. He wrote that hundreds of men, on reflection, came back with cheers. A New York cavalry trooper, J. R. Bowen, recalled that the men sprang up and cheered, that hope returned at a bound, and that every man knew Sheridan would do it.

Sheridan told General Grant that the attack came about 3 p.m. in a left half-wheel of the whole line, with a cavalry division turning each flank; the enemy resisted stubbornly, then broke and fled. He reported probably over fifty pieces of artillery captured, which included those taken from Union troops that morning, and at least 1,600 prisoners. Cavalry took Fisher's Hill the next morning, the enemy having fled in the night.

Abraham Lincoln's letter to Philip Sheridan, Oct. 22, 1864. Library of Congress.

Lincoln thanked Sheridan and his army for the month's operations in the Shenandoah Valley, and especially for the work of October 19, 1864.

Stephen Dodson Ramseur

Ramseur was 27 when he was promoted to major general on June 1, 1864, the youngest in the Confederate army. A North Carolina native, he graduated from West Point in 1860, resigned his commission when the war began and joined the Confederacy. He commanded a division of approximately 3,000 men. He married Ellen ("Nellie") Richmond on October 28, 1863, and on the eve of Cedar Creek learned that she had given birth to their first child. He hoped to win a victory and then go home on furlough. Robert R. Hutchison of his staff wrote to Nellie the next day that Ramseur received his mortal wound between 5 and 6 p.m., after two horses were shot under him, while encouraging troops contesting a hill attacked from three sides.

Union cavalry captured Ramseur in the Confederate stampede and took him to Belle Grove, where doctors soon pronounced the wound mortal. Former West Point classmates now serving the Union visited him: Brig. Gen. George A. Custer, Brig. Gen. Wesley Merritt and Capt. Henry DuPont. Fifty-six years later, on September 16, 1920, at the dedication of a monument to Ramseur on the battlefield, Senator Henry DuPont described the visit: Ramseur lay still in his major general's uniform, opened his eyes in recognition and, with great effort, said "Du Pont, you know how I suffer," gripping DuPont's hand. Ramseur died the next day, leaving his wife a widow and their new daughter, Mary Ramseur, fatherless.

Civility in the midst of war

8th Vermont Monument. NPS.

Valley resident Annie Shull remembered her mother going to the battlefield to care for the wounded: the worst sight, with men, mules and horses lying thick on the ground. Some Union soldiers she met were believed to have taken the family's property before the battle, yet she did all she could for all of them. An unnamed soldier's line is quoted: mercy abandons the arena of battle, but when the conflict ends mercy asserts itself again.

At the 1885 dedication of the 8th Vermont's monument, Captain S. E. Howard said it was placed not for glorification but to mark where comrades fell and a turning point in a nation's history, and hoped it would also mark an era of genuine fraternal feeling between North and South.

This page belongs to the series From Backcountry to Breadbasket to Battlefield and Beyond, from Cedar Creek and Belle Grove National Historical Park.

Sources

• National Park Service, Cedar Creek and Belle Grove National Historical Park, Voices from a War Torn Valley; rewritten in hubnx's own words.