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In Virginia’s Shenandoah Valley, Sigel, with 10,000 Union troops, had started south in coordination with Grant’s drive to destroy the railroad and canal complex at Lynchburg. Advancing from Cedar Creek, he was attacked by Major General John Breckinridge, with 5,000 men. At a crucial point, a key Union battery was withdrawn from the line to replenish its ammunition, leaving a weakness that Breckinridge was quick to exploit. He ordered his entire force forward, and Sigel’s stubborn defense collapsed. Sigel was driven back and failed to maintain further pressure in the Valley. Notably, among the Confederate soldiers was the young cadet corps of the Virginia Military Institute.
Further Reading
Please browse our website for a full listing of our extensive selection of American Civil War titles. Our set of four Essential Histories books – The American Civil War (1) The war in the East 1861–May 1863, The American Civil War (2) The war in the West 1861 - July 1863, The American Civil War (3) The War in the East 1863–1865 (extract below) and The American Civil War (4) The War in the West 1863–1865 together present a comprehensive, in depth look at the various campaigns of the war, from beginning to end, while also offering portraits of individual civilians and soldiers involved in the conflict.
We have a number of Elite, Men-at-Arms and Warrior series books focusing on the uniforms, equipment and experiences of Civil War soldiers, including Elite 73: American Civil War Commanders (1) Union leaders in the East, Elite 88: Confederate leaders in the East, Warrior 60: Sharpshooters of the American Civil War and our best-selling Men-at-Arms 179: American Civil War Armies (3) Specialist Troops.
An extract from Essential Histories 5: The American Civil War (3) The war in the East 1863–1865.
The Shenandoah Valley Campaign of 1864
In the spring of 1862, General Thomas J. ‘Stonewall’ Jackson catapulted to lasting fame by waging a campaign in Virginia’s fertile and lovely Shenandoah valley that captured the imagination of the South and transformed the nature of the war. By turns careful and then dazzling in his maneuvers, Jackson utilized the valley’s features to his own advantage. The two forks of the Shenandoah river served as moats, being crossed at only three places in 100 miles (160km) by bridges. The Massanutten Mountain massif ran down the heart of the valley for 50 miles (80km) as an immense bulwark and shield. The northeastern end of the valley reached a latitude north of Washington, and looked like a shotgun pointed at the Northern capital. A Unionist who fought in the region described its military character: ‘The Shenandoah Valley is a queer place, and it will not submit to the ordinary rules of military tactics. Operations are carried on here that Caesar or Napoleon never dreamed of. Either army can surround the other, and I believe that both can do it at the same time.’
As Confederate options near Richmond and Petersburg narrowed in 1864, General Lee determined to take advantage of the valley again. He sent his trusted and able lieutenant, General Jubal A. Early, to raise Jackson-like hell in that vulnerable sector.
Significant operations had been under way in the valley for several weeks by the time Early arrived. General Grant’s comprehensive plan to keep pressure up all across the Confederacy’s frontiers included the dispatch of two tentacles toward the valley. General William W. Averell led an expedition in southwestern Virginia against the Virginia and Tennessee Railroad. He was successful in a stubbornly contested action at Cloyd’s Mountain on 9 May 1864, but Averell’s mission did not have a major direct impact on the war’s main theatre.
At the same time, General Franz Sigel pushed a force of some 10,000 men south up the valley (the rivers run nominally northward, so south is ‘up’ the valley) toward the vital Confederate depot and rail junction at Staunton. The German-born Sigel offered Grant and President Lincoln more political energy than military prowess, appealing as he did to the large population of German-born immigrants living in the North. A non-German in Sigel’s army described the men’s ‘most supreme contempt for General Sigel and his crowd of foreign adventurers.’ Even Grant admitted that he could not ‘calculate on very great results’ in western Virginia.
Against Sigel the Confederates mustered an army about half the size of their adversary’s, led by General John C. Breckinridge, a former Vice-President of the United States and a future Confederate Secretary of War. The disparate fragments that made up Breckinridge’s army included a detachment of boys who would become famous in the impending fighting, the teenaged cadets of the Virginia Military Institute (VMI). On 15 May 1864 the two small armies clashed at the crossroads village of New Market, with control of the valley at stake. A steady rain complicated the brutal business of firing muskets and cannon, holding the acrid gunsmoke close to the ground and making the battlefield an eerie stage. Men from Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Connecticut peered down from a commanding crest on the Virginians pressing toward them. Colonel George S. Patton I commanded a key Southern brigade; his grandson and namesake would win fame 80 years later in a very different war.
In the midst of the Confederate line marched the 250 young cadets. Several had just turned 15 years of age. ‘They are only children,’ Breckinridge said worriedly to an aide, ‘and I cannot expose them to such fire.’ The exigencies of the moment left him no choice, and the youngsters dashed forward through sheets of lead so ‘withering,’ their commander wrote, that ‘it seemed impossible that any living creature could escape.’ The boys charged in a torrential thunderstorm across a fire-swept field so muddy that it sucked some of their shoes from their feet, then dashed into the midst of the Federal cannon. Regular troops on either side of them had played an important role, but the VMI cadets had behaved like veterans. Their youthful assault fostered a legend. Fifty-seven of them (21 percent) fell as casualties, 10 of those mortal. Among the dead lads was a grandson of Thomas Jefferson.
Breckinridge and his men chased Sigel north for miles, but the victory proved to be temporary. Breckinridge hurried across the Blue Ridge Mountains to help General Lee around Richmond. Sigel’s military debits had finally outweighed his political assets and President Lincoln shelved him. General David Hunter reorganized Sigel’s command and led it south again. On 5 June he destroyed a small, hurriedly assembled force led by Confederate General William E. ‘Grumble’ Jones (the nickname being well earned on the basis of Jones’s personality) in the Battle of Piedmont. Ill-disciplined Confederate cavalry failed to perform at the crisis. When Jones fell dead his rag-tag army dissolved, and for the first time during the war, a Northern force gained control of the invaluable railroad junction and warehouses of Staunton. Hunter then moved south to Lexington, burning homes as he went – some of them belonging to his own kin, who seemed to receive especially harsh treatment. Soldiers torched the home in Lexington of Virginia’s former governor, John Letcher, denying the family’s women and children the chance to remove even clothing from the house before it became engulfed by the flames.
Further Reading
Please browse our website for a full listing of our extensive selection of American Civil War titles. Our set of four Essential Histories books – The American Civil War (1) The war in the East 1861–May 1863, The American Civil War (2) The war in the West 1861 - July 1863, The American Civil War (3) The War in the East 1863–1865 (extract below) and The American Civil War (4) The War in the West 1863–1865 together present a comprehensive, in depth look at the various campaigns of the war, from beginning to end, while also offering portraits of individual civilians and soldiers involved in the conflict.
We have a number of Elite, Men-at-Arms and Warrior series books focusing on the uniforms, equipment and experiences of Civil War soldiers, including Elite 73: American Civil War Commanders (1) Union leaders in the East, Elite 88: Confederate leaders in the East, Warrior 60: Sharpshooters of the American Civil War and our best-selling Men-at-Arms 179: American Civil War Armies (3) Specialist Troops.
An extract from Essential Histories 5: The American Civil War (3) The war in the East 1863–1865.
The Shenandoah Valley Campaign of 1864
In the spring of 1862, General Thomas J. ‘Stonewall’ Jackson catapulted to lasting fame by waging a campaign in Virginia’s fertile and lovely Shenandoah valley that captured the imagination of the South and transformed the nature of the war. By turns careful and then dazzling in his maneuvers, Jackson utilized the valley’s features to his own advantage. The two forks of the Shenandoah river served as moats, being crossed at only three places in 100 miles (160km) by bridges. The Massanutten Mountain massif ran down the heart of the valley for 50 miles (80km) as an immense bulwark and shield. The northeastern end of the valley reached a latitude north of Washington, and looked like a shotgun pointed at the Northern capital. A Unionist who fought in the region described its military character: ‘The Shenandoah Valley is a queer place, and it will not submit to the ordinary rules of military tactics. Operations are carried on here that Caesar or Napoleon never dreamed of. Either army can surround the other, and I believe that both can do it at the same time.’
As Confederate options near Richmond and Petersburg narrowed in 1864, General Lee determined to take advantage of the valley again. He sent his trusted and able lieutenant, General Jubal A. Early, to raise Jackson-like hell in that vulnerable sector.
Significant operations had been under way in the valley for several weeks by the time Early arrived. General Grant’s comprehensive plan to keep pressure up all across the Confederacy’s frontiers included the dispatch of two tentacles toward the valley. General William W. Averell led an expedition in southwestern Virginia against the Virginia and Tennessee Railroad. He was successful in a stubbornly contested action at Cloyd’s Mountain on 9 May 1864, but Averell’s mission did not have a major direct impact on the war’s main theatre.
At the same time, General Franz Sigel pushed a force of some 10,000 men south up the valley (the rivers run nominally northward, so south is ‘up’ the valley) toward the vital Confederate depot and rail junction at Staunton. The German-born Sigel offered Grant and President Lincoln more political energy than military prowess, appealing as he did to the large population of German-born immigrants living in the North. A non-German in Sigel’s army described the men’s ‘most supreme contempt for General Sigel and his crowd of foreign adventurers.’ Even Grant admitted that he could not ‘calculate on very great results’ in western Virginia.
Against Sigel the Confederates mustered an army about half the size of their adversary’s, led by General John C. Breckinridge, a former Vice-President of the United States and a future Confederate Secretary of War. The disparate fragments that made up Breckinridge’s army included a detachment of boys who would become famous in the impending fighting, the teenaged cadets of the Virginia Military Institute (VMI). On 15 May 1864 the two small armies clashed at the crossroads village of New Market, with control of the valley at stake. A steady rain complicated the brutal business of firing muskets and cannon, holding the acrid gunsmoke close to the ground and making the battlefield an eerie stage. Men from Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Connecticut peered down from a commanding crest on the Virginians pressing toward them. Colonel George S. Patton I commanded a key Southern brigade; his grandson and namesake would win fame 80 years later in a very different war.
In the midst of the Confederate line marched the 250 young cadets. Several had just turned 15 years of age. ‘They are only children,’ Breckinridge said worriedly to an aide, ‘and I cannot expose them to such fire.’ The exigencies of the moment left him no choice, and the youngsters dashed forward through sheets of lead so ‘withering,’ their commander wrote, that ‘it seemed impossible that any living creature could escape.’ The boys charged in a torrential thunderstorm across a fire-swept field so muddy that it sucked some of their shoes from their feet, then dashed into the midst of the Federal cannon. Regular troops on either side of them had played an important role, but the VMI cadets had behaved like veterans. Their youthful assault fostered a legend. Fifty-seven of them (21 percent) fell as casualties, 10 of those mortal. Among the dead lads was a grandson of Thomas Jefferson.
Breckinridge and his men chased Sigel north for miles, but the victory proved to be temporary. Breckinridge hurried across the Blue Ridge Mountains to help General Lee around Richmond. Sigel’s military debits had finally outweighed his political assets and President Lincoln shelved him. General David Hunter reorganized Sigel’s command and led it south again. On 5 June he destroyed a small, hurriedly assembled force led by Confederate General William E. ‘Grumble’ Jones (the nickname being well earned on the basis of Jones’s personality) in the Battle of Piedmont. Ill-disciplined Confederate cavalry failed to perform at the crisis. When Jones fell dead his rag-tag army dissolved, and for the first time during the war, a Northern force gained control of the invaluable railroad junction and warehouses of Staunton. Hunter then moved south to Lexington, burning homes as he went – some of them belonging to his own kin, who seemed to receive especially harsh treatment. Soldiers torched the home in Lexington of Virginia’s former governor, John Letcher, denying the family’s women and children the chance to remove even clothing from the house before it became engulfed by the flames.
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