In the summer of 1864 I was on detached duty as an acting aide on the staff of Major-General Philip H. Sheridan, then in command of the Army of the Shenandoah. I was one of two officers who rode to the front with him “from Winchester down” on October 19, 1864, the day of the battle of Cedar Creek. It seemed as though the campaign in the valley of the Shenandoah in the year 1864 was practically over. Twice within four days General Sheridan had attacked and defeated the Confederate army under General Early: first, on September 19th, at the crossing of Opequon Creek, in front of Winchester, Virginia, and again at Fisher’s Hill, twenty-two miles farther up the valley, on the twenty-second day of the same month. Both victories had been wrung from the enemy by dint of hard fighting and good judgment on the part of the commanding general of the United States forces, and his reputation as the commander of an army was now seemingly as secure as the brilliant record he had already made as a brigade, division, and corps commander. The Federal troops lay quietly in camp in fancied security near Strasburg, just in rear of Cedar Creek, one of the tributaries of the Shenandoah River, and the shattered forces of the enemy were supposed to be somewhere in the vicinity of Gordonsville, Virginia; but the Confederate general, Jubal A. Early, was a soldier unused to defeat, a bitter enemy and a desperate foe, and as later events went to show, an officer willing to risk his all on the mere possibility of regaining, by a sudden and unexpected blow, the lost prestige of himself and army. In my opinion, but for the opportune arrival of General Sheridan on the field of battle, there is no reasonable doubt that he would have succeeded in accomplishing his object. * * * * * On the morning of October 19th, about daylight, word was brought from the picket-line south of Winchester of heavy firing at the front. General Sheridan interviewed the officer who brought the information, and decided that it must be the result of the reconnoissance that General Wright had notified him the night before was to take place this morning. Little apprehension was occasioned by the report. After breakfast, probably nearly or quite nine o’clock, we mounted and rode at a walk through the town of Winchester to Mill Creek, a mile south of the village, where we found our escort awaiting us.