Waynesboro: The End of Jubal Early

On March second, eighteen sixty-five, the Shenandoah Valley's long war came to an abrupt and total end at the edge of this town.

For much of the war, Confederate General Jubal Early had used the Valley as a highway, marching troops north to threaten Washington and keeping tens of thousands of Union soldiers tied down chasing him through the mountains. By the autumn of eighteen sixty-four, Philip Sheridan had been sent specifically to destroy Early's force and burn the Valley's crops so thoroughly that a crow flying over it would have to carry its own provisions. Sheridan succeeded on both counts. By March of eighteen sixty-five, Early commanded barely a shadow of an army, perhaps a thousand to sixteen hundred ragged men dug in along a ridge west of Waynesboro, waiting for the weather to improve.

Sheridan sent George Armstrong Custer forward. The young general, twenty-five years old and already famous for his headlong cavalry charges, surveyed Early's position and spotted the fatal flaw: the Confederate left flank was anchored on what Early assumed was an impassable woodlot. Custer sent three regiments around it.

The attack took less than an hour. Union troopers rolled up the Confederate line from the flank while a frontal assault fixed their attention. Early's force simply disintegrated. Custer's men captured more than twelve hundred prisoners, all of the Confederate artillery, about sixteen battle flags, and Early's own headquarters wagon, which contained his personal papers and records. Early himself escaped into the mountains with perhaps a dozen men.

Lee relieved Early of command shortly after. The Shenandoah Valley, which had humiliated Union generals for nearly four years, was finished as a theater of war. Custer's men crossed the Blue Ridge and joined Sheridan in the final pursuit that would end at Appomattox five weeks later.