In May 1864, the Army of the Potomac was locked in a desperate struggle with Robert E. Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia in the dense Virginia wilderness around Spotsylvania Court House. Two of the Union army’s most prominent commanders were at odds: Major General George G. Meade, the army’s irritable commander, known behind his back as “the old snapping turtle,” and Major General Philip Sheridan, the brash and aggressive chief of the cavalry corps.
Their clash came to a head on May 8, 1864, and the result would decide the fate of one of the Confederacy’s most famous horsemen. The immediate dispute began with a practical problem on the roads near Spotsylvania. Sheridan later wrote in his memoirs that he had ridden to join General Wesley Merritt along the Spotsylvania Road when he found General Gouverneur K. Warren, commanding a Union infantry corps, complaining that Sheridan’s cavalry was blocking his column.
Sheridan pulled his troopers off the road so Warren’s lead division could push forward, but when the infantry advanced to take the village around one o’clock that afternoon, they struck Confederate General Anderson’s corps and were thrown back with heavy losses. That ended any attempt to take Spotsylvania Court House that day. Shortly before noon, Meade sent for Sheridan. When Sheridan reached headquarters, he found Meade in a fury.
The army commander was casting blame in all directions for the day’s failures, and he was especially harsh on the cavalry. Among other complaints, Meade charged that the cavalry had impeded Warren’s Fifth Corps by occupying the Spotsylvania Road. Sheridan pushed back. He insisted that Meade himself had ordered the cavalry there without his knowledge.
He accused Meade of having broken up his combinations, exposing one of his divisions, General Wilson’s, to disaster, while leaving another, General Gregg’s, needlessly idle. He told Meade that the kind of disjointed operations the commanding general had been requiring of the cavalry for the past four days would render the corps inefficient and useless. Word led to word, and the exchange grew hotter until Sheridan delivered a blunt challenge. He told Meade that he could whip Confederate General J.
E. B. Stuart if Meade would only let him. But since Meade insisted on directing the cavalry without consulting or even notifying him, Sheridan declared that Meade could command the cavalry corps himself, because Sheridan would not give it another order.
With that, the bitter interview ended. Sheridan left headquarters. Meade went directly to his own superior, Lieutenant General Ulysses S. Grant, who commanded all U.
S. forces and was traveling with the Army of the Potomac. Meade repeated the conversation, including Sheridan’s claim that he could whip Stuart. Grant listened and then answered simply: “Did he say so?
Then let him go out and do it. ”
That was all the authorization Meade needed. He went back and issued orders that same day. The orders directed Sheridan to immediately concentrate his available mounted force and, with his ammunition and supply trains, proceed against the enemy’s cavalry.
Once his supplies were exhausted, he was to march via New Market and Green Bay to Haxall’s Landing on the James River, communicate with General Butler, procure fresh supplies, and return to the army. His dismounted men would be left behind with the train. Sheridan needed no further explanation. As soon as the order was received, Sheridan began concentrating the three divisions of his cavalry corps at Aldridge’s.
Three days’ rations were distributed to the men, and half rations of grain for one day were issued to the horses. He called together his division commanders, Gregg, Merritt, and Wilson, and told them plainly: “We are going to fight Stuart’s cavalry in consequence of his suggestion from me. We will give him a fair, square fight. We are strong, and I know we can beat him.
” He added that, in light of his recent representations to Meade, he expected nothing but success. The next morning, May 9, 1864, less than twenty-four hours after the confrontation at Meade’s headquarters, Sheridan and his troopers rode out. They were moving deep into enemy territory, with a clear mission: find Stuart and bring him to battle. For two days, the Union cavalry maneuvered south and east, hunting for Stuart’s horsemen.
They caught up with them on May 11 at Yellow Tavern, a crossroads a few miles north of Richmond. There, the two cavalry forces collided in battle. In the fighting, Stuart was struck down, mortally wounded. He was thirty-one years old.
Sheridan had made good on his boast. The confrontation between two proud Union generals had ended with Grant’s one-line verdict, and that verdict had sent the Army of the Potomac’s cavalry on a raid that cost the Confederacy one of its most celebrated commanders. J. E.
B. Stuart, the flamboyant cavalryman who had served as Lee’s eyes and ears throughout the war, died from his wound two days later on May 12, 1864. The episode was a turning point in the Overland Campaign. For Sheridan, it vindicated his aggressive approach and cemented his reputation as a commander who could deliver on his promises.
For the Army of the Potomac, it removed a dangerous enemy commander and demonstrated that Grant’s confidence in his cavalry chief was well placed. For Meade, it was a lesson in the limits of his authority and the cost of provoking the army’s most outspoken subordinate. Sheridan would go on to become one of the most celebrated Union generals of the war, a leader whose name would be linked to decisive victories in the Shenandoah Valley and at Five Forks. Stuart’s death left a permanent gap in the Confederate high command.
And all of it began with one heated argument on a Virginia road, a furious commander, a defiant subordinate, and Grant’s simple answer: let him go out and do it.