Confederate wizards of the saddle /

by Bennett H. Young

General Grant had failed to break General Lee’s lines. He must now resort to flank movements. General Hampton never for a moment hesitated at the tremendous responsibilities which now rested upon the cavalry. He was conscious of his power and the efficiency of his followers, and was ready to do the best he could. He was the successor of one of the most distinguished, brave and dashing cavalry leaders of the war. It required genius and courage to rise to the situation, but General Hampton, with calmness and intrepidity, was willing to meet every call and face every emergency.

Over at Hawes’ Shop, on the 28th of May, Sheridan was trying to find out the position of the Confederate infantry, and Hampton was trying to find out the position of the Federal infantry. They fought seven hours. Some of Hampton’s men had never heard the battle sound before. They had been sandwiched in with the veterans, and they made good soldiers even in their first conflict.

Custer and other Federal officers said that the fight at Hawes’ Shop was the severest cavalry fighting in the war. Colonel Alger of the 5th Michigan says it was a hand-to-hand battle. The South Carolinians bore the brunt of it, and they won new laurels. When the result of the fighting at Hawes’ Shop was made known none doubted that Stuart’s mantle had fallen upon a worthy successor. It was immediately preceding the death of General Stuart that General Sheridan said either to Grant or some of his commanders that he “could whip hell out of Stuart”; to which General Grant laconically replied, “Why in hell didn’t he go and do it?” He went, but he came back without making good his boast, and he was now to take a turn with General Hampton.

Next came Atlee Station, with its close, sharp contest and with its victory.

After the Battle of Cold Harbor, on the 4th day of June, Grant began to fortify and swing around to the east and north. Later he crossed the James River and sat down for the siege of Petersburg. He had not at first recognized General Lee’s true greatness. Here he was to realize the stern, unyielding courage of the Army of Northern Virginia. He had found it would do no good to “fight it out on that line, if it took all summer,” and to save his army from annihilation he must change his plan of campaign. At the Battle of Cold Harbor, the ratio of loss had been for fifteen Federals, one Confederate. Nothing had happened like this before. No man could deny the valor and persistency of the Federal soldiers under Grant. They did not flinch when the test came. They bared their breast to the awful storm, and it swept more than seventy thousand either into the grave or the hospital. We know now all that passed. The wonderful book published by the Federal government, entitled “War of the Rebellion, Official Record,” tells the whole story, and the reader can see by the daily records and despatches of the actors on both sides, in these days of tremendous conflict, what these two armies did in the gigantic struggle for the possession of the Confederate capital.

On the morning of June 8th, General Hampton with his forces was out near Atlee Station, eight miles north of Richmond. In the early hours of that morning Sheridan marched away with a cavalry force of nine thousand men. He had been ordered by Grant to march northwest, to capture and destroy Gordonsville and Charlottesville, and then to move down the valley and help Hunter, who was then on his way to Lynchburg.

All the fury and storm of war now seemed to be turned loose on General Lee’s army. Hunter had penetrated the valley and was setting his face toward Lynchburg. The torch, with the horrors of hell behind it, was reducing the beautiful and happy homes of Virginia to heaps of ruins; piles of ashes and chimneys standing stark and lone were the memorial to the savagery of the invasion of this once hospitable and cultured country. Now Sheridan, later the “Scourge of God” in the Shenandoah Valley, was to add new atrocities at Charlottesville to war’s devastation and brutality.

The signal stations told the story of General Sheridan’s departure. General Hampton divined where he was going. He conferred with General Lee, and asked to follow Sheridan’s path and attempt the defense of the valley. As greatly as General Lee needed men, he could not allow Sheridan to march unmolested and destroy lines which were so essential to the maintenance of the Confederate position in and around Richmond.

Rations were light in these days. Quickly, three days’ food was cooked and with a few ears of corn tied round with strings and fastened to the saddles became the commissary equipment of Hampton’s forces, which were to engage in one of the important cavalry campaigns of the war. The cavalry under Hampton and Sheridan was to be removed fifty miles from the infantry supports and the cavalry alone was to fight out the issues of this campaign. Like mighty wrestlers repairing to some desert to try out their skill alone, these two cavalry forces marched away where none could see them in their struggle, and where none could come to the rescue of the vanquished.

Hampton could not take more than forty-seven hundred men. These were all that Lee could spare. He had twelve pieces of artillery.