red fragments behind the lines constructed in the former
campaigns for the defence of Winchester on the east. About five
o'clock Torbert and Crook, fairly at right angles to the first line
of battle, covered Winchester on the north from the rocky ledges
that lie to the eastward of the town nearly to the first position
of Braxton's guns. Thence Wright extended the line at right angles
with Crook and parallel with the valley road, while Sheridan drew
out Emory, who was naturally displaced by these converging movement,
and sent him to extend Wright's line toward the south.

The disorderly retreat of Early's men once begun, there was no
staying it. Torbert pursued the fugitives to Kernstown, where
Ramseur faced about, but Sheridan, mindful that his men had been
on their feet since two o'clock in the morning, many of them since
one, and had in the meantime fought with varying success a long
and hard fight ending in a great victory, made no attempt to send
his infantry after the flying enemy.

For what was probably the first time in their lives, his men had
seen every musket, every cannon, and every sabre put in use, and
to good use, by their young and vigorous commander. They had looked
upon a decisive victory ending with the rout of their enemy.
Sheridan himself openly rejoiced, and catching the enthusiasm of
their leader, his men went wild with excitement when, accompanied
by his corps commanders, Wright and Emory and Crook, Sheridan rode
down the front of his lines. Then went up a mighty cheer that gave
new life to the wounded and consoled the last moments of the dying,
for in every breast was firmly implanted the conviction that now
at last the end was in sight, and that deep-toned shout that shook
the hills and the heavens was not the brutal roar of a rude and
barbarous soldiery, coarsely exulting over the distress and slaughter
of the vanquished, but the glad voice of the American people (2)
rejoicing from the hill-top at the first sure glimpse of the final
victory that meant to them peace, home, and a nation saved.

When the President heard the news his first act was to write with
his own hand a warm message of congratulation, and this he followed
up by making Sheridan a brigadier-general in the regular army, and
assigning him permanently to the high command he had been exercising
under temporary orders.

The losses of the Army of the Shenandoah, according to the revised
statements compiled in the War Depart