Perhaps that was so, but Early was gambling on being able to out-bluff the Federals, and the ever-aggressive Custer was a hard man to bluff. Arriving outside Waynesboro at about 2 p.m. on March 2, Custer sent Colonel William Wells’ 2nd Brigade forward to probe the Confederate line. A brisk rattle of rifle fire convinced Custer that a frontal assault ‘would involve a large loss of life.’ Hastily, he looked for another approach, and soon discovered the dangerous gap between the Rebel left and the river. While Wells kept the enemy occupied in the front, Custer sent Lt. Col. Edward Whitaker, his chief of staff, to relay his orders to Colonel Pennington’s brigade. Custer directed Pennington to dismount three of his regiments and attack the enemy’s flank through a stand of woods that would obscure the troopers’ approach. The three attacking regiments — the 2nd Ohio, 3rd New Jersey and 1st Connecticut — were armed with seven-shot Spencer repeating rifles. The brigade’s fourth regiment, the 2nd New York, was held in reserve.

Subscribe Today

• Did you enjoy our article?
• Read more in America's Civil War magazine
• Subscribe online and save nearly 40%!!!
 

At a signal from bugler Joseph Fought, the Union forces began the attack. It did not last long. While Lieutenant C.A. Woodruff’s section of horse artillery blasted away at the Rebel breastworks, compelling the defenders to lie flat, Pennington’s men lifted a yell and attacked at a dead run, firing their Spencers as quickly as they could. Meanwhile, Colonel Capehart’s 3rd Brigade stormed into the works from the front. The overwhelmed Confederates broke for the rear in what a disgusted Jedediah Hotchkiss termed ‘one of the most terrible panics and stampedes I have ever seen. There was perfect rout along the road up the mountain.’

Early, who was watching the fight from a hill between the rifle pits and the river, saw at once that ‘everything was lost.’ Cutting through a nearby stand of trees, he and his staff raced for the bridge leading to Rockfish Gap. Early and Wharton made it, but Dr. Hunter McGuire, the army’s gifted medical director, was not so lucky. Attempting to jump his horse over a rail fence, McGuire and his mount went sprawling face first in the mud. When he looked up, a Union cavalryman was pointing a carbine at his head. Thinking quickly, McGuire made the arcane distress sign used by members of the Masonic Order. A Federal officer and fellow Mason immediately rode up and took charge of the shaken physician, telling the other soldier: ‘This man is my prisoner. Let him alone.’

McGuire was one of more than 1,200 Confederates captured at Waynesboro, along with all 11 artillery pieces, 17 battle flags and 150 wagons, including Early’s own headquarters wagon. Union losses were nine men killed or wounded. After a brief pursuit of the handful of Rebel stragglers who made it safely to Rockfish Gap, Custer broke off the attack and reported to Sheridan, who had arrived on the scene.

As Sheridan staffer Captain George B. Sanford remembered: ‘Up came Custer himself with his following, and in the hands of his orderlies, one to each, were the seventeen battle flags streaming in the wind. It was a great spectacle and the sort of thing which Custer thoroughly enjoyed.’

Sheridan, too, enjoyed the scene, praising Custer for the ‘brilliant fight’ and reporting to Washington with pardonable pride that the battle at Waynesboro had ‘closed hostilities in the Shenandoah Valley.’ It had also closed Early’s military career. Never again would Old Jubilee command troops in battle.

While Sheridan went on to complete a brilliant Civil War career and advanced to eventual command of the entire U.S. Army, Early retired to an embittered postwar career as one of the most unreconstructed of all unreconstructed Rebels. The fulcrum of fate that had held both men’s careers in the balance one October morning at Cedar Creek had tipped irreversibly in favor of Phil Sheridan, with a slight assist from his golden-haired protégé, George Armstrong Custer.

This article was written by Roy Morris, Jr. and originally appeared in the March 2001 issue of America’s Civil War. For more great articles be sure to pick up your copy of America’s Civil War.

Help HistoryNet by bookmarking to