Tuesday evening
(September 20).
We had a very successful action yesterday, and the cavalry
did well. Both the other brigades of the division got battle-flags, — one two,
the other four; we got none, but did well and took a couple of guns. Poor Billy
was shot in three places and is dead. I had not an orderly near at the time, or
I should have changed him. During the afternoon, I had one horse killed and two
wounded, — all taken from orderlies. I couldn't get the gray to go anywhere: I
have not a scratch. We have two officers of the Second Massachusetts wounded,
the Doctor fears, mortally,— Lieutenants Baldwin and Thompson; Lieutenant Home
prisoner: but the Second Massachusetts was not in the real fight, for some
unaccountable reason it stayed behind, — so that I had not over 150 men in the
command at Winchester, — otherwise I think we should have done even better. I
feel very badly about it, but it can't be helped.1 We are now in
front of Strasburg, and the infantry will attack if they come up in time: I
fear that the enemy will make off in the night, if we do not press them.
_______________
1 Lowell, with his three Regular regiments and a
battalion of the Second Massachusetts, did admirable service, however. On
hearing certain news of the withdrawal of Kershaw's force from the Valley,
Sheridan, given carte blanche by Grant, moved instantly on Early's
somewhat scattered command, and the Battle of the Opequan resulted. Torbert
reported that Merritt's division, on the right, fording that creek at daylight,
“was opposed by the rebel infantry; but the cavalry gallantly charged across
the creek and drove them . . . about a mile and a half . . . where the infantry
held the cavalry in check for some time, they being posted behind stone walls
and rail breastworks; but General Averell, farther to the right turned the
flank of this infantry and caused them to fall back.” Merritt advanced again,
and these two commands drove the infantry and cavalry before them (part of
Breckenridge's command) towards Winchester. They endeavoured to make a stand.
What followed is thus described by General Sheridan: —
“The ground which Breckenridge was holding was open, and
offered an opportunity such as seldom has been presented during the war for a
mounted attack, and Torbert was not slow to take advantage of it. The instant
Merritt's division could be formed for the charge, it went at Breckenridge's
infantry and Fitzhugh Lee's cavalry, with such momentum as to break the
Confederate left just as Averell was passing around it. Merritt's brigades, led
by Custer, Lowell, and Devin, met from the start with pronounced success, and,
with sabre and pistol in hand, literally rode down a battery of five guns and
took about 1200 prisoners." At the same time, Crook and Wright forced the
rebel infantry so hard, that the whole Confederate Army fell back to
breastworks formerly thrown up before Winchester. Here Early strove hard to
stem the tide, but soon Torbert's cavalry began to pass around his left flank,
and the infantry made a front attack. A panic ensued. The result was that
Sheridan, after the supplementary routing of Early's army two days later at
Fisher's Hill (in which Torbert's cavalry had no part), regained the Valley
from the Potomac to Strasburg.
The unhappy General Early wrote as follows, to General Lee,
after this defeat: —
"The enemy's immense superiority
in cavalry, and the inefficiency of the greater part of mine, has been the
cause of all my disasters. In the affair at Fisher's Hill the cavalry gave way,
but it was flanked. This would have been remedied if the troops had remained
steady, but a panic seized them at the idea of being flanked, and without being
defeated they broke, many of them fleeing shamefully. . . . My troops are very
much shattered, the men very much exhausted, and many of them without
shoes."
SOURCE: Edward Waldo Emerson, Life and Letters of
Charles Russell Lowell, p. 347-8, 463-5
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