Philip Henry Sheridan

Union Army solider Thomas Buchanan Read based this painting on his famous 1864 poem “Sheridan’s Ride.” Both poem and painting commemorate Union General Philip H. Sheridan’s legendary ride on October 19, 1864, to rally troops at the Battle of Cedar Creek in Virginia, turning defeat into a victory that helped secure President Abraham Lincoln’s reelection. This painting remained in Ulysses S. Grant’s family for many years.

Beginning in the late 1860s, Sheridan adopted the scorched earth tactics he used against the Confederate Army for his wars against the Plains Indians. As commander of the Military Division of Missouri—one of the highest-ranking officials of the U.S. Army—he played a pivotal role implementing federal imperial ambitions. The resultant genocidal dispossession of nomadic Native American societies of the Great Plains helped define the era histo-rians now call the “Greater Reconstruction,” which encompasses the West as well as the South.