Cedar Creek 1864: Gordon's Silent Night March and Sheridan's Ride on Rienzi

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Before dawn on October 19, 1864, Union soldiers camped along Cedar Creek in Virginia's Shenandoah Valley were asleep in heavy fog, believing the campaign was over. Ulysses S. Grant had ordered Philip Sheridan to shut down the valley that fed Robert E. Lee's army, and Sheridan's cavalry burned crops, barns and mills along a 92-mile stretch, with Sheridan writing that a crow crossing the valley would have to carry its own rations. After two defeats, Jubal Early's army seemed finished, and Union scouting slackened while Early received reinforcements, including Joseph Kershaw's division. A minor attack at Hupp's Hill on October 13 led Sheridan to recall the veteran 6th Corps to Cedar Creek.

From Massanutten Mountain on October 17, John B. Gordon saw that the Union left was lightly guarded. His men marched single file all night on a narrow trail, leaving canteens behind so nothing would rattle, and struck at 5 a.m., routing two Union corps and taking more than 1,300 prisoners and 18 cannons. George Getty's division held a cemetery near Middletown, and around 10 a.m. Early halted his starving, exhausted troops. Sheridan, returning from Washington, rode south from Winchester on his horse Rienzi, rallied the fleeing men, and launched a counterattack at 4 p.m. that broke Early's army.

• Gordon's officers synchronized their pocket watches before the attack, with troops in position by 3:30 a.m.
• George Custer's cavalry, armed with seven-shot Spencer repeating rifles, charged toward the Cedar Creek bridge, the Confederate escape route.
• A bridge on the turnpike collapsed during the retreat, and Early abandoned the 24 captured cannons plus 43 of his own.
• Confederate General Stephen Ramseur, who had just learned of his first child's birth, was mortally wounded and died among West Point friends including Custer.
• The victory came three weeks before the 1864 election and helped secure Lincoln's second term.