this is phil sheridan's pedigree when he is appointed commander. henry hallock says, who do you want to command? he suggests sheridan. grants response is just a fellow i had in mind. sheridan is a drinker. he is 5'2". he could scratch his angles without bending over. [laughter] he had a large bullet shaped head. he has a guy who was known for having a titanic irish temper. this will come into play. we have to replace the first division commander. this fellow ends up in command of the first division. torbert of delaware, commissioned in the confederate army. he thinks better of that, resigns his commission, remains loyal to the union, spends up until the winter of 1864 his time commanding infantry. he has this much calvary command experience. not a single day. this is the division commander. it should have gone to this man, buford's protege. he will spend 43 years in the regular army commanding calvary. he is very much john buford's protege and will command the calvary core as is last commander. he gets skipped over. this creates another problem. we

our topic today is the second raid conducted by phil sheridan that climaxed in the today slugging match known as battle intrevilian station fought 1864. this is one of the few calvary battles one can use the word decisive. -- decisive means it had an impact on the war. ofmuch as i love the battle brandy station and have devoted my life to studying it and understanding it, in the end the battle of brandy station delayed the outside of the gettysburg campaign by one day. it was not decisive. outcomen station had an on the war. we will address that. let's do some stage setting for you. i'm going to introduce the important personnel. i'm going to begin with bringing ulysses grant east and promoting him to lidded it -- to attend in general. he has a lot of challenges with the army of the potomac. he has to decide whether he is going to leave george meade in command. this is an army that has a lot of casualties in the 1863. several were either badly wounded or killed outright. william the likes of french, the only aggressive he made in his life was on a bottle of whiskey. [laughter] commandin

phil sheridan had written off with the cavalry corps. he yet convinced grant petty could lead the cavalry corps toward richmond and draw stuart into a battle and destroy the confederate cavalry. and this he did at a place called yellow tavern about six miles north of richmond. during the battle, stewart was mortally wounded by a union soldier from michigan with a pistol, shot him in the side. he was taken to richmond and he died there the next day. so there was, that was a big hole in the confederate army. they had some good confederate commanders that could take his place, more or less but nothing quite like stuart. so that was another loss during that campaign. >> by the end of the battle, the situation as far as military supplies, guns and ammo, where those well supplied? >> guns and mo -- >> you know, after cold harbor. >> yes. actually -- the question was after those battles were the armies well supplied with arms and ammunition. and they were with those two things, both armies. the difference was the confederate army didn't have en

and bark, he's put his face on hard war more than any other american general, and that includes phil sheridan. shelby foote views his meridian campaign in february of '64 as a rehearsal for the atlanta campaign. he marches toward it, tore the place up, wrecked the railroad. in march of '64, when grant goes to richmond, goes to virginia as general and chief, he puts sherman in charge of essentially all troops from the appalachians across the mississippi river. and sherman takes command of three armies. mcpherson's army of the tennessee -- that's 110,000 troops. grant never told sherman to go after atlanta. rather, bloody johnston's army and use up the enemy's resources. others say atlanta's importance was not only factories, railroads, supplies, medical centers, it was a psychological defensive point. if the confederates could hold atlanta through november, lincoln stood a chance of being defeated in the november u.s. elections. head master peebls has written an excellent monograph in which he asked the cabinet members to sign, sign sight unseen, and which he said it's extremely likely this ad

phil will talk about this afternoon with the 1864 shenandoah valley cam bane. i'll suggest to you that by beating fill sthare dan at trevilian station, this was a decisive battle of calvary fight. by defeating sheridan and his preventing him from linking up with hunter, that in turn enabled the movement to the valley. and the movement to the valley abought the confed rassy another six months of life that it otherwise might not have had because hampton defeated sheridan at trevilian station. i want to finish with a touching story. this is sergeant robert tolls. he had enlisted with his . others one of the brothers was killed in october of 1863. the other one was killed at todd's tavern. robert towels was mortally wounded on the first day of trevilian station and he will daie few days later. his family decided that they were going to keep the brothers together even in death. the other two brothers were disentered and they were brought to luisa and all three of them rest under a single monument in the cemetery. it's a very moving thing. it's sort of akin to a civil war version of the saving private ryian type of a story. you can go visit the towles brothers to this day. there's another grave a few feet