Personal Recollections of Distinguished Generals

by William Franklin Gore Shanks

"The history of the combat of those dark cedars will never be known," wrote the only historian who has as yet truly written of Stone River, Mr. W. S. Furay, of the Cincinnati Gazette, a young man of very extraordinary abilities, and the most conscientious of all the war correspondents whom I met in the army. "No man," he adds, "could see even the whole of his own regiment, and no one will ever be able to tell who they were that fought bravest, or they who proved recreant to their trust. It was left to Sheridan to stay the successful onset of the foe. Never did a man labor more faithfully than he to perform his task, and never was leader seconded by more gallant soldiers. His division formed a kind of pivot, upon which the broken right wing turned in its flight, and its perilous condition can easily be imagined when the flight of Davis's division left it without any protection from the triumphant enemy who now swarmed upon its front and right flank; but it fought until one fourth of its number lay bleeding and lying upon the field, and till both remaining brigade commanders, Colonel Roberts and Shaeffer, had met with the same fate as General Sill."

When Sheridan had extricated his command from the forest and got in line with the reserves, he rode up to Rosecrans, and, pointing to the remnant of his division, said,

"Here is all that is left of us, general. Our cartridge-boxes contain nothing, and our guns are empty."

The Tullahoma campaign, which followed that of Stone River, offered few opportunities for the display of any other quality of the soldier in Sheridan than that of energy. The pursuit of Bragg, which formed the main feature of that campaign, required rapid marching, but no fighting. After the expulsion of the rebels from Tullahoma and Winchester the general pursuit was abandoned, as the enemy had reached the mountains, and only Sheridan's division and Stanley's cavalry received orders to pursue the enemy across the mountains to the Tennessee. Sheridan moved with great alacrity, hoping to reach the bridge over the Tennessee at Bridgeport in time to save it from destruction. He moved so rapidly that he reached the river before Stanley's cavalry, which had been ordered by an indirect route through Huntsville. He succeeded in saving the greater part of the bridge. He used to tell with great glee that on reaching Bridgeport he found numbers of the rear-guard of Bragg's army sitting on the burned end of the bridge, and asking his advance on the opposite bank of the river if "they were part of Stanley's cavalry." The infantry had moved so rapidly in pursuit that the enemy had all the while mistaken them for cavalry.

Sheridan has since displayed the same energy in moving, with better effect. The surrender of Lee was, without doubt, the effect of the admirable and vigorous execution by Sheridan of Grant's plan of operations from Five Forks to Burkesville Junction. It will be remembered that Sheridan, by rapid movements, placed his forces at Jettersville before Lee had reached Amelia Court-house, and thus cut off all retreat to Danville. His dispatches relating to those operations partake of the vigor of the actual movements, and handsomely illustrate his energy.

"I wish you were here yourself," he wrote to Grant—a compliment that the little lieutenant general may be proud to point to. "If things are pressed," he added, "I think Lee will surrender."

"Press things," was Grant's order. It needed no other. Sheridan pushed forward rapidly, struck right and left, punishing the enemy wherever found, and at last forcing Lee to surrender. Grant returned the compliment with interest in writing his final report of the closing operations of the war. He describes, in his peculiarly forcible language, that, on the eve of the battle of Winchester and the beginning of Sheridan's valley campaign, he went to Sheridan's quarters to examine his plans, forces, material, etc., and found that he had only a single instruction to give his lieutenant—"Go in!"

"Press things" and "go in" are instructions as laconic as they are indefinite. They betray Grant's practicability and plainness, and honor Sheridan. It is, perhaps, better to be the one addressed in such terms than even the author of them. Sheridan is not less plain and forcible in his language than Grant, as witness his various reports, the quotations above, and his opinion of Texas. "If I owned," he once said, "Texas and hell, I would sell Texas and live in the other place."

The battle of Chickamauga, as far as McCook and Sheridan were concerned, was only a repetition of Stone River. McCook's corps, consisting then of Davis's, Sheridan's, and Negley's divisions, was again defeated. General Negley, very unfortunately for that gallant officer and gentleman, was taken from his division in the heat of battle and ordered to the command of a number of batteries, and the division suffered badly, while the other division, under General Jefferson C. Davis, was scattered in every direction. Sheridan, who had formed the extreme right, had a desperate though ineffectual fight, but, after being separated from the rest of the army, eventually cut his own way out, brought in his division about half organized, and took his place in the line at Rossville, to which Thomas fell back at night. On this occasion, as at Stone River, Sheridan was a subordinate. The disaster to his division was general to his corps, and resulted from the incapacity of others, and not his own bad management. He was powerless to avert, he could only partly retrieve the disaster. On both occasions he did so with a skillful hand, by the most strenuous exertions, and at great personal risk.