Saturday, July 11, 2015

Colonel Charles Russell Lowell to Josephine Shaw Lowell, Tuesday Evening, September 20, 1864


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.
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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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