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446 • part 6: the war in 1864 35 Sheridan at Winchester Benjamin W. Crowninshield, Major, First Massachusetts Volunteer Cavalry as it has been recently stated that the story of [Major General Philip H.] Sheridan’s ride at the battle of Cedar Creek is a fiction, and as many other late statements in the newspapers about the Shenandoah Valley campaign of 1864 under Sheridan are incorrect,it seems due to the memory of the brave dead and gallant living officers and men of Sheridan’s army that some one should give an authoritative account of the campaign and the man, and especially of the fight at Cedar Creek.I shall therefore relate in brief the facts of the campaign, merely premising that I was on Sheridan’s staff and present at all the battles. During the whole war the ShenandoahValley offered to the Confederates an easy road north, being supplied with railroads and a macadamized turnpike, probably at that time the best road in the South. The valley itself was very fertile , and, notwithstanding the fighting for three years, in 1864 it was full of supplies ,which,on account of the open country,their troops could easily gather and transport. On the west the mountains were difficult to pass, and nobody wanted to go that way. To the northeast lay Washington, and northward the road to Baltimore.Philadelphia was up a valley equally practicable with the Shenandoah itself, and in fact a continuation of it, flanked by the same two ranges of mountains , with the watershed, of course, in an opposite direction. Still the decline in each valley was so slight that the terms up and down were strangely mixed; generally it was called down the Shenandoah towards Staunton (perhaps because we are apt to associate the terms down and south).Across the Blue Ridge lay the counties of Loudon and Fauquier,a beautiful rolling country,generally open,but well supplied with woods and a network of small roads besides good turnpikes. Here was the home of [Lieutenant Colonel John S.] Mosby’s battalion, and in spite of all attempts to drive him away here he remained, during the whole war, master of the situation,ready to harass our lines of communication south by the Orange andAlexandria Railroad and the roads towards Richmond; and by crossing the Blue Ridge he was at once on the flank of our army in the Shenandoah. It probably took,all through the war,in one place and another,twenty thousand men to watch Mosby’s command.Seldom remaining to fight,he was ubiquitous, and the amount of property he destroyed and the number of prisoners he captured during the war were something marvelous. No wagon train could move unless strongly guarded, and even then was almost at his mercy. 06.381-464_Cozz 12/2/03, 8:56 AM 446 There seemed to be for our arms something akin to fatality in the ShenandoahValley .It witnessed during the war many battles and gallant fights, but also for us several sad disasters and retreats. Especially was it expensive to us in the material of war. The captures by the Confederates were so considerable that it could almost be said to be to them an arsenal,besides providing enormous supplies of provisions for their armies. What happened in 1861, 1862, and 1863 in the valley has frequently been described, with the wonderful doings of Ashby, Ewell,Stonewall Jackson,and others on the Confederate side,and the campaigns of Banks, Shields, Milroy, which surely deserve the term remarkable. Stonewall Jackson achieved great reputation for his marches, fights, and captures there, and the valley gave more renown to him than to any other general of either army, excepting Sheridan. The avenue to and from Antietam and Gettysburg, for [General Robert E.] Lee’s troops, was by the valley. In the spring of 1864, [Major General David] Hunter, with a rather heterogeneous command, marched up to near Lynchburg, for a time having everything his own way, but he met no well-organized Southern troops. Finally, in July, Lee detached [Lieutenant General Jubal A.] Early, who hustled Hunter out in quick time, crossed the Potomac, and advanced through Maryland towards Washington, where he came within a hair’s-breadth of taking the city. His advance caused a panic at the North, and gold reached its highest figure, 285, in consequence. The Sixth and Nineteenth Army Corps, the one from [Lieutenant General Ulysses S.] Grant in front of Petersburg, the other...

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