Union cavalry commander Major General Philip Sheridan has been dissatisfied with his role in the campaign up to this point.

His Cavalry Corps has been assigned to the Army of the Potomac, under Major General George G. Meade, who reports to Grant.

Meade has employed Sheridan's forces primarily in the traditional role of screening and reconnaissance, whereas Sheridan sees the value of wielding the Cavalry Corps as an independently operating offensive weapon for wide ranging raids into the rear areas of the enemy.

On May 8, 1864, Sheridan had gone over Meade's head and told Grant that if his Cavalry Corps were let loose to operate as an independent unit, he could defeat "Jeb" Stuart, long a nemesis to the Union army.

Grant, intrigued, persuades Meade of the value of Sheridan's request.

The most powerful cavalry force ever seen in the Eastern Theater—over ten thousand troopers with thirty-two artillery pieces—had ridden to the southeast on May 9 to move behind Lee's arm.

They have three goals: first, disrupt Lee's supply lines by destroying railroad tracks and supplies; second, threaten the Confederate capital in Richmond, which would distract Lee; third, and most important, defeat Stuart.

The Union cavalry column, which at times stretches for over thirteen miles (twenty-one kilometers), had reached the Confederate forward supply base at Beaver Dam Station that evening.

The Confederate troops had been able to destroy many of the critical military supplies before the Union arrived, so Sheridan's men destroy numerous railroad cars and six locomotives of the Virginia Central Railroad, destroy telegraph wires, and rescue almost four hundred Union soldiers who had been captured in the Wilderness.

Stuart has moved his forty-five hundred troopers to get between Sheridan and Richmond.

The two forces meet at noon on May 11 at Yellow Tavern, an abandoned inn located six miles (ten kilometers) north of Richmond.

Not only does the Union outnumber the Confederates by three divisions to two brigades, it has superior firepower—all are armed with rapid-firing Spencer carbines.

The Confederate troopers tenaciously resist from the low ridgeline bordering the road to Richmond, fighting for over three hours.

A counter-charge by the 1st Virginia Cavalry pushes the advancing Union troopers back from the hilltop as Stuart, mounted on horseback, shouts encouragement.

As the 5th Michigan Cavalry streams in retreat past Stuart, a dismounted Union private, forty-eight-year-old John A. Huff, a former sharpshooter, turns and shoots Stuart with his .44-caliber pistol, from a distance of ten to thirty yards.

The fighting keeps up for an hour after Stuart is wounded, Major General Fitzhugh Lee taking temporary command.

Stuart will die in Richmond the following day.

With the Shenandoah Valley clear of Union forces, Early launches a raid into northern territory, the last made by a substantial Confederate force during the war, burning Chambersburg, Pennsylvania as retribution for David Hunter's burning of civilian houses and farms earlier in the campaign. (Hunter had also burned the Virginia Military Institute in Lexington, but Early's orders to his cavalry under John McCausland did not mention this as a justification.)

They also attack Union garrisons protecting the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad near Cumberland, Maryland.

As a result of this defeat and McCausland's burning of Chambersburg on July 30, Grant returns the VI and XIX Corps to the Valley and appoints Major General Philip Sheridan as commander of Union forces here, turning the tide once and for all against the Confederates in the Valley.

Sheridan, after his victory at Fisher's Hill, pursues Early's Confederate army up the Shenandoah Valley to near Staunton.

He begins withdrawing on October 6, as his cavalry burns everything that can be deemed of military significance, including barns and mills.

Reinforced by Major General Joseph B. Kershaw's division, Early follows.

Major General Thomas L. Rosser arrives from Petersburg to take command of Major General Fitzhugh Lee's Confederate cavalry division and harasses the retreating Federals.

On October 9, Brigadier General Alfred Torbert's Union troopers turn on their pursuers, routing the divisions of Rosser and Lunsford L. Lomax at Tom's Brook.

With this victory, the Union cavalry attains overwhelming superiority in the Valley.

Lee begins his final offensive in Petersburg.

Union Major General Philip H. Sheridan crushes a main Confederate force under Major General George E. Pickett and General Fitzhugh Lee at Five Forks on April 1; ...

...driving the defenders back within the Petersburg inner defenses the next day.

American President Abraham Lincoln had supported the republicans under Juárez, but was unable to intervene due to the American Civil War.

Immediately after the end of the war, in 1865, United States Army General Philip Sheridan, under the supervision of President Andrew Johnson and General Ulysses S. Grant, had assembled fifty thousand troops, and dispatched them to the border between Mexico and the United States.

Here, his corps run patrols to visibly threaten intervention against the French, and also supply weapons to Juárez's forces.

The United States Congress had unanimously passed a resolution which opposed the establishment of the Mexican monarchy on April 4, 1864.

On February 12, 1866, in accordance with the Monroe Doctrine, the U.S. requests the French withdraw their forces from Mexico, while moving soldiers to positions along the Rio Grande, and setting up a naval blockade to prevent French reinforcements from landing.

Napoleon III, choosing Franco-American relations over his Mexican monarchy ambitions, will soon announce  the withdrawal of French forces beginning May 31.

The Republicans, taking immediate advantage of the end of French military support to the Imperial troops, win a series of crippling victories, occupying Chihuahua on March 25.

The U.S. officially protests to Austria about the Austrian volunteers in Mexico on May 6, 1866.