Oct. 9 1864. |
 |
| View at Cedar Creek.1 |
This text is part of:
Table of Contents:
[368]
Cedar Creek, about half way between Middletown and Strasburg, and made his Headquarters near, at the fine mansion of Benjamin B. Cooley.
Early rallied his troops, and his cavalry, under Rosser, hung upon Sheridan's rear as he moved down the valley.
At length the latter ordered Torbert with his cavalry to turn upon Rosser.
It was done.
At the first charge the Confederates broke and fled, leaving behind them over three hundred prisoners, a dozen guns, and nearly fifty wagons.
They were chased twenty-six miles. Three days later Early attempted to surprise Sheridan, who had halted near Fisher's Hill, when the Confederates were so severely chastised that it was supposed they would remain quiet for some time.
With that impression Sheridan went to Washington on official business, leaving General Wright in temporary command of the army.
The Nationals were so strongly posted on the east side of Cedar Creek, that they had no expectation of being attacked by any force known to be in the valley.
They were upon three ridges.
Crook's division was in front; Emory's was half a mile behind it; and Wright's, then under the temporary command of Ricketts, with Torbert's cavalry on its right flank, was to the
right and rear of Emory.
Kitching's division lay behind Crook's left.
The cavalry divisions of Merritt and Custer were thrown out to guard the right, and Averill's (then under Powell) picketed the north fork of the Shenandoah from Cedar Creek to Front Royal.
Strong as was this line and its position, it was soon broken and imperiled by Early, who felt keenly the humiliation to which Sheridan had subjected him. Having been re-enforced by Kershaw's division and six hundred
1 this is a view of Cedar Creek, within the lines of Sheridan's army, near the house and mill of Mr. Stickley, on the right side of the stream. The high hill in the distance was called the Shenandoah peak, at the northern extremity of the Massanutten Mountain. On the hills between the Creek and that Mountain. The. Earth-works of the Nationals were plainly seen, when the writer made the sketch, in October, 1866.
Scanned printed text.
This work is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 United States License.
An XML version of this text is available for download, with the additional restriction that you offer Perseus any modifications you make. Perseus provides credit for all accepted changes, storing new additions in a versioning system.