Philip Sheridan: Army Auditor, Missionary Ridge and Yellowstone's Guard

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Philip Sheridan, a son of Irish Catholic immigrants raised in Somerset, Ohio, stood about five foot five and began as a dry goods clerk. At West Point he was suspended for a year after threatening classmate William Terrill with a bayonet, then served on the Pacific Northwest frontier. This episode shows how his bookkeeping mattered early in the Civil War, when Henry Halleck had him untangle a $12 million mess left by John C. Fremont in Missouri and he refused to pay officers for horses taken from civilians, telling his commander no authority could compel him to steal.

Made colonel of the 2nd Michigan Cavalry in May 1862, Sheridan rose to major general and led an unauthorized charge up Missionary Ridge in November 1863. Ulysses S. Grant brought him east, where he clashed with George Meade, saw his troopers mortally wound J.E.B. Stuart at Yellow Tavern, burned the Shenandoah Valley, and rallied his army at Cedar Creek. After Appomattox he ruled Texas and Louisiana under martial law, ran winter campaigns on the Plains, and in the 1880s fought developers and poachers in Yellowstone, sending in the U.S. Cavalry in 1886. He died in 1888 at 57.

• Lincoln joked that Sheridan's arms were long enough to scratch his ankles without bending over.
• Showered with dirt by a shell after toasting Confederate officers at Missionary Ridge, he called it damn ungenerous and charged the guns.
• In New Orleans he refused to let police enforce segregated streetcars, and Andrew Johnson later removed him.
• The episode notes that the quote about the only good Indian appeared in print over a century later and that Sheridan denied saying it.
• He brought President Chester A. Arthur to Yellowstone and helped limit commercial development there to 10 acres.