This has created the Sheridan legend, turning him into a hate-figure like Himmler or Cromwell, ideologically committed to his grim task. The single most deadly charge against Sheridan is not that he was directly responsible for any particular death or massacre but that he coined the phrase ‘The only good Indian is a dead Indian’, attributed to him in the Oxford Dictionary of Quotations and cited by Brown as fact. Sheridan, the United States’ leading Western commander in the 1868–86 period, bears the blame for the cruel clearances of the tribes from traditional hunting-grounds.
These books in turn have inspired a series of popular revisionist films, starting with Soldier Blue in 1970 through to Dances with Wolves in 1990. From works like Dee Brown’s Bury my heart at Wounded Knee he emerges as a racist bigot and an employer of inhumane methods of war. While he is still regarded as a highly effective field commander, a focus on the plight of American Indians has damaged Sheridan’s reputation. Time has somewhat diminished the lustre of his career.
Sherman, three outstanding generals (two of them presidents), the regard in which Sheridan was held becomes obvious. When it is realised that the previous three were George Washington, Ulysses S. In 1888, on his deathbed, Sheridan became only the fourth person to be promoted to the rank of General of the Army. Kennedy, arguably no Irish-American rose as high in American esteem as Philip Henry Sheridan, who became general-in-chief of the United States Army in 1883. Sheridan gallops to Cedar Creek, Virginia, 19 October 1864, where his Union army has been attacked by Confederates in his absence, and reverses a near disaster.
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