er reached the bridge first. The Seventh,
under Lieutenant Colonel Briggs, charging through a field, captured,
seemingly, more prisoners than it had men. The Sixth, under Major
Deane, who knew the country well, did not pause until it reached
Buckton's Ford, on the Shenandoah river, returning late at night with
many prisoners and a battle flag for which Private Ulric Crocker, of
Troop "M," received one of the medals awarded by act of congress. The
Fifth, under Major Hastings, charged down a road leading to one of the
fords of the Shenandoah, Major Philip Mothersill, with one battalion,
going so far that he did not rejoin the command till the next day.[41]

Thus ended the battle of Cedar Creek. Darkness, alone, saved Early's
army from capture. As it was, most of his artillery and wagons were
taken.

It is needless to tell how Sheridan broke Early's left by an assault
with the Nineteenth corps and Custer's cavalry at the same moment of the
last successful charge upon his right. It was a famous victory, though
not a bloodless one. Of the gallant men who went into the fight that
morning on the union side, 588 never came out alive. Three thousand five
hundred and sixteen were wounded. Early did not lose so many but his
prestige was gone, his army destroyed and, from that moment, for the
confederacy to continue the hopeless struggle was criminal folly.

Cedar Creek was the ending of the campaign in the Shenandoah valley.
There was some desultory skirmishing, but no real fighting thereafter.

Among the wounded were Captain Charles Shier, jr. and Captain Darius G.
Maynard, both of the First Michigan cavalry. Captain Shier died on the
31st of October. He was wounded in the charge on the confederate
battery. Captain Shier was as gallant an officer as any who periled his
life on that famous battle field; and not only a fine soldier but a
polished scholar and an accomplished gentleman as well. He was a
distinguished son of the state of Michigan and of the noble university
which bears its name. In his life and in his death he honored both.
Massachusetts remembers the name and reveres the memory of Charles
Lowell. Mothers recite to their children the circumstances of his heroic
death, and in the halls of Harvard a tablet has been placed in his
honor. Charles Shier is a name which ought to be as proudly remembered
in Michigan and in Ann Arbor as is that of Charles Lowell in
Massachusetts and in Cambridge. But fate, in its irony, has