Sheridan, Philip Henry

Philip Henry (1831-1888), an American general. He was born at Albany, New York, March 6, 1831. He died at Nonquitt, Massachusetts, August 5, 1888. As a lad he clerked in a store. The Mexican war led him to become a soldier. He was graduated at West Point in 1853, standing thirty-fourth in a class of fifty-two. Prior to the Civil War he served in the West as a lieutenant. He rendered service in the Oregon Indian war of 1856. In 1861 he was promoted to be a captain of infantry, and was made quartermaster to the Union army in southwestern Missouri. The following year, at his earnest request, he was appointed colonel of a Michigan regiment of cavalry, and later in the same year was made a brigadier-general. He took part in the battles of Chickamauga and Chattanooga. In 1864 Grant transferred him to the army of the Potomac and made him commander of his cavalry. At this time Sheridan weighed 115 pounds. President Lincoln thought him too small for so important a post. "The officer you brought on from the West seems rather a little fellow to handle your cavalry." Grant replied: "You will find him big enough for the purpose before we get through with him."

Sheridan took part in the battles of the Wilderness, Spottsylvania Court House, and Cold Harbor. In August he received instructions from Grant to drive the Confederates out of the Shenandoah Valley and to lay the valley waste so that the Confederate troops could no longer draw supplies from it, much less maintain their horses and men while passing through it. Although acting under Grant's express orders, Sheridan has been much criticized for the thoroughness with which he did his wasteful work. Every food animal that his soldiers could find was destroyed. Buildings were spared sometimes, but grain, poultry, and every vestige of food was either consumed, taken away, or destroyed. The inhabitants of this peaceful, fertile valley, many of whom had taken no part whatever in the war, were reduced to the verge of starvation or were ruined financially for life.

Sheridan was an exceedingly active commander. At the close of the war, he held command on the Rio Grande, in New Orleans, and in Missouri. He opposed President Johnson's reconstruction plans, but was a favorite of Grant. On the latter's election to the presidency, Sheridan became lieutenant-general. During the Franco-Prussian War of 1870-1, he accompanied the German army for purposes of observation. In 1883 he succeeded Sherman as commander-in-chief of the army. Sheridan was a student of maps and a maker of maps. Comrades said of him that his knowledge of localities surpassed that of any other soldier in the Civil War.

Sheridan was a short, stout, gruff, kindly man, a devout Catholic. His men had the utmost confidence in his courage and ability, and called him "Little Phil." The popular judgment of Sheridan is well expressed in Sheridan's Ride, a stirring poem by T. B. Read.

In 1908 a statue was unveiled in Sheridan Square, Washington. The treatment of the subject is in line with Read's poem. The statue represents the general on his famous black horse, Rienzi, meeting his men in flight from Cedar Creek, when he shouted: "Turn, boys, we are going back," and led them on to turn defeat into victory. General Porter, the orator of the occasion, summed up Sheridan's military virtues in the following tribute: "Possessed of the highest characteristics of the soldier-bold in conception, self-reliant, prompt in decision, fertile in resources, possessing an intuitive knowledge of topography, combining the restlessness of a Hotspur with the patience of a Fabius-no wonder Sheridan stands in the front rank of the world's great captains."

See Read; T. B