America’s Civil War: George Custer and Stephen Ramseur

While the infantry tangled at Spotsylvania, Maj. Gen. Philip H. Sheridan and the Yankee cavalry trotted south to Richmond, hoping to pick a fight with Stuart. In the resulting battle at Yellow Tavern, Custer and his Wolverines once again distinguished themselves. Old Curly now showed he could temper his headlong aggressiveness with careful preparation. As the brigade moved forward at a trot, bands playing, he had dismounted details ready to dismantle the five fences in front of them. As they cleared the last one, the band switched to a familiar tune. At Yankee Doodle every man’s hand went to his sabre, remembered a trooper. It was always the signal for a charge. With a yell the Wolverines went in, pushing back the Confederate line. Stuart’s men held, barely, but a shot — probably from one of Custer’s men — gave the Bold Cavalier his death wound. As the Federal pressure increased, the outnumbered Rebels withdrew in the twilight, leaving the field to Little Phil’s bluecoats.

After the fighting sputtered out at Spotsylvania, Baldy Ewell led his corps around the Union flank, only to run into a superior Federal force at Harris’ farm. Ramseur’s brigade led the column in the initial attack, then resolutely held its ground when things went sour on the left end of the line. Thus, when Lee reorganized the II Corps in late May, he moved Ramseur up to command of Jubal Early’s division, while Old Jube took over the corps. Ramseur wrote his wife that his promotion would leave him less exposed, and recounted his narrow escapes so far. I have had three horses shot from under me and disabled, one of these was struck three times. In addition to these, the pony was also slightly wounded in the leg but not disabled. My saddle was shot through the pommel. I got four holes through my overcoat besides the ball that passed through my arm. I tell you these things, my darling wife, in order that you may be still more grateful to our Heavenly Father for his most wonderful and merciful preservation of my life.

Ramseur’s next battle, his first as division commander, went less well. He rashly pitched into the enemy at Bethesda Church without first making a thorough reconnaissance, only to see one of his brigades slaughtered when it ran up against an entrenched Federal position that he had failed to discover. It got him off to a bad start with his men, one of whom opined that he ought to be shot for the part he played in it. Nevertheless, he won his long-coveted promotion to major general four days later, a day after his 27th birthday.

Lee now sent Ramseur’s corps into the Shenandoah Valley, where it provided relief for Lynchburg and marched north to raid to the very gates of Washington. On the way back, Ramseur endured his most humiliating reverse thus far near Winchester while trying to stop a Union force moving down from Harpers Ferry. Through a series of errors and another case of faulty reconnaissance, his division collapsed and fled after being hit on the flank by superior numbers of Federal cavalry near Stephenson’s Depot, losing 267 men captured and four guns. Ramseur, weeping with frustration, could not stop the most perfect rout I ever saw. He blamed his men who, he complained, had behaved shamefully. Although Dodson Ramseur professed to care little for the opinions of newspaper editors and home croakers, he was privately mortified at the bad press about the Battle of Stephenson’s Depot.

Custer had his trials as well. At Trevilian Station in June he had boldly taken Wade Hampton’s Rebel cavalry in the rear, but once there had been jolted by an attack by Rosser (who had been promoted to brigadier general as well) and then surrounded when Maj. Gen. Fitzhugh Lee suddenly appeared behind him. Thanks to a relieving attack by Wes Merritt, he managed to escape, but the Confederates kept his personal wagon and delighted in reading his spicy letters. In August, he too ended up in the Shenandoah Valley, when Grant dispatched Sheridan there with two cavalry divisions, placing Little Phil in command of all the Union forces in the valley. Sheridan moved cautiously at first, and the men called the next six weeks of indecisive marching and skirmishing the Mimic War.