best fed, best clothed, best rested in the armies en either side, but
on no troops was there more constant call for endeavor, and they were
never found to fail him. In action he is described as severe,
peremptory, dominating, but his determinations were mighty things,
not to be interfered with. He wanted things done and done at once.
His men of all grades soon conceded that he knew best what to do, and
set about doing it accordingly. Out of action he was joyous of
spirit, but, in fight or out of it, his alertness and his
lightning-like decisions marked him apart from every other commander.
His career in the Tennessee campaign was meteoric. Of his score and
more of great conflicts, the most picturesque was his wonderful
battle at Cedar Creek, to fight which he rode at breakneck speed
"from Winchester twenty miles away" through the dust and debris of a
broken army to the extreme front, rallying the scattered regiments
and turning a defeat into a crushing victory, which recovered all
that had been lost, taking 25 cannon and 1,200 prisoners, and driving
for miles the lately victorious enemy under Early. Captain P.J.
O'Keefe was one of the two who made the ride beside him. The battles
of Waynesboro, Five Forks, and Sailor's Creek showed the same
brilliant generalship on the part of Sheridan. His hold on the
affection of the army and the admiration of the people continued to
the day of his death, August 5, 1888, when he held the headship of
the United States army as general in succession to the great Sherman.

General Sheridan, towards the end of the war, had a soldier's
difference with Major-General George G. Meade, commander of the Army
of the Potomac, but that did not blind "Little Phil" to the real
merit of the victor in the tremendous three days' battle of
Gettysburg, handling an army new to his hand against Robert E. Lee.
The Meade family is of Irish descent. George Meade, the grandfather,
came from Dublin and was a patriot in the American Revolutionary War.
General Meade commanded a division at Antietam and a corps at
Fredericksburg, and held command of the Army of the Potomac to the
end of the war. He was a fine soldier and gentleman. Of quiet manners
at most times, he was most irascible in the hour of battle, but his
temper did not becloud his judgment. General James Shields and
General Irwin McDowell, both fine Irish soldiers, have already been
mentioned.

It would be hard to compass in a brief article even the n