Most of the time, however, he did not come to a halt but kept on at a gallop, swinging his hat in a great arc, now and then pointing toward the south, always calling: “Turn back, men! Turn back!” Here and there Sheridan would rein up and call: “Turn back, men! Turn back! Face the other way!” Once he told a group of stragglers: “Face the other way, boys – If I had been there this morning this wouldn’t have happened! You’ll have your own camps back before night!” And always the sound of the firing grew louder. A little farther on, they saw groups of men in the fields, clustering about campfires, boiling coffee, and they met increasing numbers of men walking along the highway. Then they met the outriders of defeat – sutlers, camp followers of high and low degree, artillerymen without the guns, headquarter trains, battery wagons, caissons, and little knots of stragglers and walking wounded. Then with his chosen fifty Sheridan set off down the road, the horses moving at a walk no longer.įirst they met wagon trains, coming back to escape capture, and these were told to park in the fields and await orders. Sheridan told Major Spera, the cavalry commander, to give his fifty of his best mounted men and to spread the rest across the road as traffic police: untangle the wagon train, round up fugitives, and in general see that everybody who thought he was going to Winchester turned and headed back for the place where the fighting was going on.

The train had been bound for the front, he reported, and at this spot had met an officer heading for Winchester bearing news that the army had been routed and was coming back in full retreat – on hearing which the teamsters had begun to swing their wagons around without waiting for orders. Sheridan sent his Major Forsyth trotting on ahead to see what was wrong, and presently Forsyth came back at a mad gallop. After a mile or so they came upon a wagon train all in a tangle, wagons turned every which way, nobody moving. When he got back on his horse his swarthy face was clouded.ĭown the road went general, aides, and cavalry, horses moving at a walk. As he picked up his cavalry escort he halted, dismounted, and bent over with his ear to the ground, listening intently. Off to the south there was that continued sound of firing, perhaps a bit louder than it had been earlier. It was a sunny morning, bare fields rolling away to the hills and mountains which blazed with autumn colors, a warm Indian summer haze thickening the air. Sheridan rode out about nine o’clock, a few aides riding with him.

A stillness at appomattox 1953