Major-General George G. Meade, commanding the Federal Army of the Potomac, blamed the Cavalry Corps, led by Major-General Philip Sheridan, for failing to clear the Brock Road on May 8, which helped General Robert E. Lee’s Confederate Army of Northern Virginia to win the race to Spotsylvania Court House. When Sheridan came to Meade’s headquarters that day, the two men had a heated exchange.
Meade angrily blamed Sheridan for the mix-up that lost them the race, while Sheridan snapped that the cavalry should be fighting instead of guarding infantry. Sheridan wanted to take on Major-General Jeb Stuart’s legendary Confederate horsemen, and he later wrote, “I told him (Meade) I could whip Stuart if he would only let me.” Meade relayed this to General-in-Chief Ulysses S. Grant, who responded, “Did Sheridan say that? Well, he generally knows what he is talking about. Let him start right out and do it.”
Grant issued orders through Meade for Sheridan to lead 10,000 troopers south to cut Confederate supply lines, threaten the Confederate capital of Richmond, and destroy Stuart’s command. Sheridan could then either continue south to join Major-General Benjamin F. Butler’s Army of the James or return to the Potomac army. According to Grant:
“The object of this move was three-fold. First, if successfully executed, and it was, he would annoy the enemy by cutting his line of supplies and telegraphic communications, and destroy or get for his own use supplies in store in the rear and coming up. Second, he would draw the enemy’s cavalry after him, and thus better protect our flanks, rear and trains than by remaining with the army. Third, his absence would save the trains drawing his forage and other supplies from Fredericksburg, which had now become our base.”
Sheridan gathered his three division commanders–Brigadier-Generals Wesley Merritt, David M. Gregg, and James H. Wilson–on the night of the 8th and announced, “We are going out to fight Stuart’s cavalry in consequence of a suggestion from me. In view of my recent representations to General Meade I shall expect nothing but success.” According to Theophilus F. Rodenbough of Sheridan’s staff, “The command was stripped of all impediments, such as unserviceable animals, wagons and tents. The necessary ammunition train, two ambulances to a division, a few pack-mules for baggage, three days’ rations and a half-day’s forage carried on the saddle, comprised the outfit.”
This was the largest cavalry command ever gathered in the Potomac army, consisting of 13,000 troopers and 32 guns in six batteries of horse artillery. The Federals rode out at 6 a.m. on the 9th, with Sheridan vowing to whip Stuart out of his boots. To conserve energy, the Federals kept a slow pace as their line stretched 13 miles along the Telegraph Road. They first headed northwest around the army lines at Spotsylvania and then turned southwest toward Richmond. There was no need for such a large force to try to hide its movement; Sheridan wanted to draw Stuart out.
Confederate scouts learned the Federal cavalry was on the move almost as soon as it began, and elements of Stuart’s cavalry under Brigadier-General William C. Wickham quickly began harassing Sheridan’s rear. Sheridan disregarded these sporadic attacks.
Stuart, unaware of Sheridan’s intentions, kept nearly half his command at Spotsylvania to guard Confederate army’s flanks and rear while leading his remaining 5,000 men (in three brigades under Major-General Fitzhugh Lee and Brigadier-Generals Lunsford Lomax and James B. Gordon) to positions between Sheridan and Richmond. Stuart knew that he could not afford to ignore this threat as he did with George Stoneman’s timid raid around the same time last year.
Sheridan’s horsemen reached the North Anna River by nightfall. Merritt’s division, led by Brigadier-General George A. Custer’s brigade, continued to Beaver Dam Station, a key Confederate supply depot on the Virginia Central Railroad. Confederates burned the depot before retreating, and the advancing Federals burned 100 railroad cars and two locomotives, along with 10 miles of track. Some 504,000 rations of bread and 904,000 rations of meat earmarked for the Army of Northern Virginia were destroyed. The Federals also freed 378 of their comrades held as prisoners of war.
Unable to beat Sheridan to the North Anna, Stuart continued south to try to beat him to the South Anna. On the 10th, he reported to Chief of Staff Braxton Bragg in Richmond that Sheridan was heading south from Beaver Dam Station, while Federal detachments continued destroying tracks on the Virginia Central between the North and South Anna rivers.
Stuart wrote, “Should he attack Richmond, I will certainly move in his rear and do what I can; at the same time, I hope to be able to strike him if he endeavors to escape.” Stuart intended to make a stand outside Richmond that would delay Sheridan just long enough for the Confederate troops in Richmond to man the capital’s defenses.
As Sheridan continued his advance on the 10th, his troopers came upon a Confederate skirmish line. Sheridan rode up as the Federals were falling back, and was told that there were too many enemy forces ahead. Sheridan asked, “Cavalry or infantry?” He was told it was cavalry. Sheridan replied, “Keep moving, boys–we’re going on through. There isn’t cavalry enough in all the Southern Confederacy to stop us!” The Federals pushed forward and drove the enemy troopers off.
Sheridan stopped after crossing the South Anna on the night of the 10th. Stuart’s command, having been in the saddle for 36 straight hours, halted north of that same river. The next morning, Stuart divided his force even further by sending Gordon’s troopers to harass Sheridan’s rear while the other two Confederate brigades rode ahead of the Federals to Yellow Tavern, an old stagecoach stop on the Brook Turnpike about six miles north of Richmond. Stuart stopped briefly to see his wife Flora and two children on a plantation near Beaver Dam Station.
The Federals came up around 11 a.m., and the fight that Sheridan had hoped to draw Stuart into soon began. With Confederates continuing to harass his rear, Sheridan patiently scouted Stuart’s positions and deployed Merritt’s division in line of battle. The Federals had three divisions versus just two Confederate brigades; the Federals also had superior Spencer repeating rifles.
Merritt attacked Lomax’s brigade, sending the Confederates reeling back to their second defense line under Fitz Lee. A lull came over the field as both sides held back until reinforcements could arrive. During this time, Stuart received good news from Bragg: as many as 4,000 men were available to defend Richmond. Then, Custer’s Federals appeared in the clearing and charged an artillery battery. One of the Federal cavalrymen later wrote:
“As soon as our line appeared in the open, indeed, before it left the woods, the Confederate artillery opened with shell and shrapnel; the carbines and sharpshooters joined with zest in the fray and the man who thinks they did not succeed in making that part of the neighborhood around Yellow Tavern an uncomfortably hot place, was not there at the time.”
The Federals managed to capture the battery and turn Stuart’s left flank around 4 p.m. Stuart directed a countercharge by the 1st Virginia, which he held in reserve, and they repelled Custer’s Federals. As Stuart rode forward with the Virginians, a bullet from a .44-caliber Federal pistol hit him in the right side below the ribs. His aides helped him off his horse. Fitz Lee soon arrived, and Stuart passed command to him: “Go ahead, Fitz, old fellow, I know you will do what is right.”
Stuart’s aides loaded him into an arriving ambulance, with one of them recalling, “As he was being driven from the field he noticed the disorganized ranks of his retreating men and called out to them: ‘Go back! Go back! And do your duty, as I have done mine, and our country will be safe. Go back! Go back! I had rather die than be whipped.’”
Under command of Fitz Lee, the Confederates ultimately held firm. After probing for weaknesses, Sheridan disengaged and rode down the Brook Turnpike toward Richmond. However, the Confederate delaying action had given the city officials enough time to bolster their defenses.
The Federals rode past the capital’s outer works as alarm bells rang and artillery fire erupted. Sheridan surveyed the defenses and told an aide, “I could capture Richmond, if I wanted, but I can’t hold it. It isn’t worth the men it would cost.” Sheridan reported to Meade, “It is possible that I might have captured the city of Richmond by assault, but the want of knowledge of your operations and those of General Butler, and the facility with which the enemy could throw in troops, made me abandon the attempt.”
Sheridan asserted, “I should have been the hero of the hour. I could have gone in and burned and killed right and left.” But it was not worth sacrificing his men “for no permanent advantage,” since they could have only temporarily occupied the capital. Besides, Stuart had been Sheridan’s main objective, not Richmond. The Federals turned east to eventually join either Butler or Meade.
This marked a turning point in the cavalry struggle in Virginia, as the Federals now had not only the numbers but the skill to easily match the Confederate troopers. Estimated casualties at Yellow Tavern for each side were about 800, but the greatest loss of them all was Stuart himself.
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