AUGUST 11, 1864:
Since
General Philip Sheridan U.S.A.’s August 1st appointment to command
Federal troops in the Shenandoah Valley, he has been girding up for a
large-scale confrontation with Jubal Early. Sheridan began moving against
Early’s HQ at Winchester, Virginia on August 10th. In response, Early evacuates Winchester this
day, and moves south.
In the wake of the explosion at City Point, Rebel War Clerk
John Beauchamp Jones writes with some (though ultimately false) hope in his
diary:
Dispatches from
secret agents at Washington state that Grant[’s
Petersburg] campaign is considered a
disastrous failure, and it is anticipated that henceforth [his
headquarters] is to be transferred from
Richmond to Washington. They say President Lincoln’s face expresses “great
terror.”