As he waited for Phil Sheridan at his headquarters tent, Army of the Potomac commander George G. Meade knew an argument with “Little Phil” was inevitable. It was May 8, 1864, early afternoon, and the fiery generals were meeting to discuss that morning’s travesty at Snell’s Bridge, on the road to Spotsylvania. An unexpected convergence of infantry and Sheridan’s cavalry at the key river crossing had essentially grounded the Union army’s effort to outflank Robert E. Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia in the wake of three days of bloodshed at the Wilderness. The delay helped Lee outrace the Federals to Spotsylvania, setting the stage for l2 days of further slaughter there in what would be the Overland Campaign’s longest battle.
Although Meade and Sheridan’s meeting was perhaps always doomed to take a nasty turn, it nevertheless was breathtaking how quickly it occurred. Staff members clustered around the headquarters tent and listened in unabashedly to the bickering generals’ antics. “When Sheridan appeared,” recounted Horace Porter, Lt. Gen. Ulysses S. Grant’s personal secretary, “[Meade] went at him hammer and tong.” The “Old Snapping Turtle” would live up to his reputation. In no uncertain terms, he accused Sheridan of myriad blunders, not the least of which was Sheridan’s failure to leave the Snell’s Bridge crossing open for the advance of Maj. Gen. Gouverneur Warren’s 5th Corps. Meade claimed he had sent Sheridan orders to keep the road clear for the infantry, a directive Sheridan vehemently denied ever receiving.
Bordering on insubordination, Sheridan upbraided Meade for interfering in the inner workings of his command. “His language throughout,” Porter wrote, “was highly spiced and conspicuously italicized with expletives.” The wrathful Sheridan asserted he “could see nothing to oppose the advance of the V Corps…” and that the infantry’s behavior had been “disgraceful, etc., etc.”
“One word brought on another,” Sheridan would write, “until, finally, I told him that I could whip [J.E.B.] Stuart if he would only let me.” At the end of the “acrimonious interview,” Meade went directly to Grant to inform him of the belligerent Irishman’s declaration, drawing only a simple response from the phlegmatic Grant: “Did he say so? Then let him go out and do it.”
iven the go-ahead, Sheridan wasted little time in preparation. At 3 a.m. May 9, 12,000 troopers—three divisions under Brig. Gens. Wesley Merritt, David Gregg, and the relatively untested James Wilson—crossed at Ely’s Ford heading for Richmond. Over the next 15 days, while the Union and Confederate armies clashed in wood-tangled fields around Spotsylvania Court House, Sheridan keptvaunted horsemen at bay, reaching the outskirts of the capital city before reversing course and returning toward Spotsylvania. “We will give [Stuart] a fair, square fight,” Little Phil told his subordinates. “[W]e are strong, and I know we can beat him….I shall expect nothing but success.”
