Fisher's Hill, 1864: How Crook's Flank March Broke the 'Gibraltar of the Confederacy'

Three days after losing at Third Winchester on September 19, 1864, Lt. Gen. Jubal Early's battered Army of the Valley stood again on Fisher's Hill — a ridge its men called the "Gibraltar of the Confederacy." On September 22, Maj. Gen. Philip Sheridan's 35,000-strong Army of the Shenandoah took it from them in an afternoon, not by storming its face but by walking around its end.

Looking north from the Confederate positions on Fisher's Hill; Sheridan's army began the battle from the high ground in the distance. Photo by the National Park Service

A ridge across the Valley

The Shenandoah Valley runs northeast to southwest; Fisher's Hill cuts across it, east to west — something of a geologic oddity.

From the north the hill looks steep and rocky, but it grows lower and less rugged toward the west before meeting the foothills. Many of Early's men came from the Valley and had held these same earthworks earlier in the war, so the position gave them some security and even a little comfort. Their condition was poor: soldiers wrote of "a great deficiency in clothing" and that "men barefoot and in tatters are not infrequently seen."

Sheridan's plan: go around

Ulysses S. Grant had ordered Sheridan to destroy Early's army, so he had to attack. But scouting the ridge along several roads, Sheridan and his officers saw that a frontal assault would cost too many lives. At a council of war on the evening of September 20, Sheridan took up a plan from Maj. Gen. George Crook:

Crook's men had fought over rugged ground in West Virginia and the Valley, and he and his officers thought no corps was better suited to the march. The cavalry sweep, meant to trap Early between two Federal forces, failed — Sheridan blamed a lack of aggressiveness on Torbert's part.

September 21: Flint Hill

Early had his men strengthen not only Fisher's Hill but Flint Hill, high ground about a mile north. There they built "bullpens" — U-shaped barricades of fence rails covered in earth — sheltering skirmishers and sharpshooters armed with Enfield muskets and a few Whitworth rifles. Early feared that Sheridan, holding Flint Hill, could pound his line with artillery; he meant to make him fight for it.

• Brig. Gen. William Averell's cavalry probed the Confederate left and reported that "an infantry corps, by hugging the base of the North Mountain, might break around the enemy's left" — confirming Sheridan's choice.
• Wright's 6th Corps then pushed at Flint Hill. George Getty's skirmishers and Col. Warren Keifer's reinforcements took hot fire from the sharpshooters of Maj. Gen. Stephen D. Ramseur and Brig. Gen. John Pegram. "We were much exposed and suffering terrible without the ability to inflict much loss on the enemy," one Ohioan wrote.
• Around 6 p.m., Col. James Warner's brigade drove the last Confederates out of the bullpens and back to Fisher's Hill. Sheridan now had a clear view, and clear fields of fire, for the next day.

The lines on the morning of September 22

Early had under 10,000 men to hold nearly four miles. "The position was a very strong one, but our army was too small to man it," wrote Captain Samuel Buck of the 13th Virginia.

Early seems not to have expected a serious attack on a flank held only by cavalry.

The attack

That morning the 19th Corps took more bullpens, the 6th Corps edged closer and staged movements to distract, and Averell's cavalry kept Lomax busy while screening Crook's march through the woods.

About 4 p.m., Crook's men came down the slopes and around the boulders. Brig. Gen. Bryan Grimes and others spotted them and told their division commander, Ramseur; Ramseur apparently passed the word to Early, who did not respond.

The Federals "rushed with unwonted fury down the mountainside," an Ohioan claimed, into Lomax's surprised troopers. Formation dissolved as they met resistance, swept it aside and kept going — "a legion of fighting demons. No orders were given, as these veterans knew well what to do," a Federal officer wrote. Under fire from west and north, Lomax turned his guns and asked for infantry that never came. He later reported:

"About 4 p.m. I discovered a force of the enemy moving… about half a mile to the left, on the side of the mountain. I immediately changed my front to meet his force… I met the force from the mountain (about two brigades) and drove them back… but the works on my right (my original front) not being occupied as I expected, the enemy advanced… and moved on my rear. The infantry failed to come to my support; I was forced to fall back…"
>
— Maj. Gen. Lunsford Lomax

Ramseur's line gives way

Crook's men pushed east through more woods and up onto Ramseur's exposed left. Ramseur had seen it coming and swung Brig. Gen. Cullen Battle's brigade and a battery to meet it. Col. Joseph Thoburn, one of Crook's division commanders, credited Battle with "a more stubborn resistance, and our advance for a short time was driven back."

The pressure kept building, and Battle had to pull back. Grimes's brigade, left to cover the collapsing flank, took fire from three sides: Crook from the west, Col. Rutherford B. Hayes's 8th Corps division curling around from the southwest, and Brig. Gen. James Ricketts's 6th Corps division from the north.

Flight

As Ramseur's men streamed south, Early tried threats. "Gen. Early rode up and ordered our regiment to fire into them if they would not halt," Buck wrote. His men, of Pegram's division, refused.

Seeing the right succeed, the rest of the 6th and 19th Corps charged the center and left, loading and firing their 1861 Springfield rifles as fast as they could. Sheridan rode among them shouting, "Crook and Averell are on their left and rear, we've got 'em." The Federals climbed into the earthworks as the defenders abandoned them.

Early sent Wharton from the right to slow the attack from the west; he never arrived, because the 6th Corps wheeled east and struck both Wharton's and Gordon's divisions. Even the Louisiana "Tiger" Brigade left its works — "it required the greatest fleetness of foot to enable us to keep from being captured," one of its officers wrote. With the defenders and their guns gone, the ridge was no longer "those unattainable heights," as a 19th Corps soldier put it.

The cost

Shouting "Forward! Forward all!", Sheridan drove the pursuit. Most Confederates fled south on the Valley Turnpike; others went cross-country or into the woods and slopes of Massanutten. That night the 19th Corps chased them, and in a small skirmish Lt. Col. Alexander "Sandie" Pendleton, Early's chief of staff, was mortally wounded.

For the second time in four days, Sheridan's larger numbers and firepower had decisively beaten Early — and Early's losses could not be replaced.

What came next

Early fell back to Brown's Gap, near Waynesboro, to regroup, tend his wounded and hope for reinforcements. Sheridan followed — then, rather than attack, turned north and set the Valley's farms and crops on fire, opening a brutal new phase of the 1864 Valley campaign, known as The Burning.

Visiting

The Shenandoah Valley Battlefields National Historic District runs Ramseur's Hill Park on the battlefield, on the ground Ramseur's troops held under the heaviest Union attacks — see Fisher's Hill Battlefield. The battle is part of the story told at Cedar Creek & Belle Grove National Historical Park.

Sources

Based on "Battle of Fisher's Hill," from the series Drive the Enemy South, National Park Service; a work of the United States government in the public domain. Quotations are from soldiers' and officers' 1864 accounts as given there.