The Shenandoah Valley held great logistical and strategic significance during the CiviL War. With the Blue Ridge Mountains on the east and the more imposing Alleghenies to the west, the valley runs southwest to northeast and drops gently in its course to meet the Potomac River, which means that an individual traveling to the Potomac goes “down the valley”—an odd circumstance in a world where north is almost always “up.” The premier graingrowing area in Virginia during much of the antebellum period, the valley produced a variety of agricultural products that helped sustain Confederate forces in Virginia. It also loomed large as a strategic avenue through which either side could mount a threat to the western parts of Washington D. C., and Richmond, Virginia.
The 1862 Shenandoah Valley campaign of Gen. Thomas J. (Stonewall) Jackson had its origins in Gen. Robert E. Lee’s desire to limit the size of the Union threat against Richmond. In late April 1862 Gen. George Brin-ton McClellan’s 100,000-man Army of the Potomac advanced toward the Confederate capital up the Virginia peninsula between the York and James Rivers. Fifty miles north of Richmond lay another major Union force commanded by Gen. Irvin McDowell. Smaller armies under Gen. Nathaniel P. Banks in the lower Shenandoah Valley and Gen. John C. Fremont in the Alleghenies farther west completed the roster of Union threats in Virginia. Lee functioned as jEFFERSON Davis’s principal military adviser, and he wanted Stonewall Jackson, who commanded a modest force in the valley, to pin down all Federals west of the Blue Ridge; otherwise, Fremont and Banks could potentially join McDowell at Fredericksburg for an advance against Richmond in conjunction with McClellan.
Preliminary operations had commenced that March when Lee ordered Jackson to protect the valley from the 38,000-man force of Gen. Banks, an imposing task considering that the Confederates were outnumbered nine to one. But Jackson concluded, “If the valley is lost, Virginia is lost,” and determined to seize the offensive and deny the initiative to the invaders. Taking 3,800 infantry and 600 cavalry, he departed his headquarters at Winchester on March 11, 1862, and encamped at Mount Jackson to check the Union reaction. Jackson observed that the advance division of Gen. James Shields occupied his former headquarters at Winchester, and at this point he decided to strike before the main force under Banks could arrive. He drove his footsore men northward, covering 41 miles in only 48 hours, and prepared to attack the following day. Unfortunately for Jackson, cavalry reconnaissance conducted by Gen. Turner Ashby had failed to discover that the bulk of Shields’s men at Kernstown were sequestered in nearby woods. On March 23, 1862, the Confederates attacked Kernstown as ordered, but, badly outnumbered, they were driven back after a stiff three-hour engagement. Jackson thus lost the first engagement of his vaunted valley campaign, but he had scored an immediate strategic victory: Authorities in Washington, D. C., convinced that Confederate forces were aggressive because they had been reinforced, feared for the capital’s safety and ordered Banks to remain in the vicinity with his entire force. This effectively prevented a valuable source of manpower, better deployed elsewhere, from moving for several weeks. Shortly afterward Jackson was reinforced by the arrival of Gen. Richard Stoddert Eweee’s veteran division, which brought Confederate numbers up to 17,000 men.
Meanwhile, the Union offensive against Richmond continued unabated. For the Confederates protecting their capital, it became imperative that this Union offensive not be reinforced by Banks’s force or the soldiers of Fremont, then stationed in the nearby Allegheny Mountains. Confederate authorities were also alarmed that the I Corps of Gen. McDowell at Fredericksburg, 40,000 strong, could lend its weight to McClellan’s already imposing force in the peninsula. Once again, Lee indicated that Jackson’s small forces should take the offensive to pin down these sizable detachments.
Jackson soon demonstrated how a resourceful commander of an inferior force could use speed and imagination to achieve great results. On May 3 he ordered half his force onto cars of the Virginia Central Railroad at Mechum’s River
Station, near Charlottesville, and headed for the Allegheny Mountains. Then, following another speedy forced march, they prepared to confront a Union detachment under Gen. Robert H. Milroy. On May 8, 1862, he concentrated part of his troops at the village of McDowell, in the Alleghenies west of Staunton, Virginia, defeating the advance guard of Fremont’s army and forcing its retreat into the wilds of western Virginia. Returning to the valley, Jackson marched northward and captured several hundred Federals in a minor battle at Front Royal on May 23. Two days later he won the first Battle of Winchester against Banks, driving the Federals toward the Potomac River and capturing a huge quantity of military supplies. By May 29 Jackson’s troops skirmished with Federals near Harpers Ferry, having cleared most of the lower valley of Union forces. Thus far Jackson’s offensive had cost the Confederacy only 400 men, but it accounted for 3,030 Union captives, 9,300 small arms, and a huge amount of quartermaster stores—so much that Southerners derisively nicknamed their Federal adversary “Commissary Banks.” Jackson’s success yielded further strategic benefits when President Abraham LinCOlN personally directed General McDowell’s I Corps to remain near Fredericksburg to protect Washington, D. C. And in spite of tremendous odds, the Shenandoah Valley remained firmly in Confederate hands.
Near Harpers Ferry, Jackson’s force occupied a vulnerable position. From Washington, Lincoln sensed an opportunity to deliver a decisive blow. He envisioned a three-pronged pincers movement to isolate Jackson in the lower valley. Fremont would march from the west, a division from McDowell’s command under Gen. James Shields would move east from Front Royal, and Banks would apply pressure from the north. “I think the evidence now preponderates that Ewell and Jackson are still about Winchester,” commented the president to McDowell. “Assuming this, it is, for you a question of legs. Put in all the speed you can. I have told Fremont as much, and directed him to drive at them as fast as possible.” But Jackson pushed his men to the limit and, aided by incredibly slow movements by all three Union commanders, escaped the trap and marched to the southern end of Massanutten Mountain near Harrisonburg. In doing so, he drove his men to march at rates of 20 to 30 miles a day, which earned them the well-deserved moniker of Jackson’s “foot cavalry.” Then he defeated part of Fremont’s force in the Battle of Cross Keys on June 8. The next day he turned back Shields’s command in the Battle of Port Republic. Fremont and Shields soon retreated northward on both sides of Massanutten Mountain, and Jackson moved to reinforce Lee’s army outside Richmond.
Jackson had accomplished his strategic goals quite effectively. He pinned down Banks and Fremont and convinced the Federals to hold McDowell at Fredericksburg, thereby denying McClellan thousands of reinforcements.
None of Jackson’s battles had been a tactical masterpiece; indeed, he had struggled to win despite having superior numbers at McDowell and again at Port Republic, and Banks’s soldiers had escaped from the battlefield at First Winchester with minimal damage. Still, these small victories reached a Confederate populace starved for good news from the military front and made Jackson a popular Southern hero.
Casualties in the 1862 Shenandoah Valley campaign were modest compared with the bloodier battles of the Civil War. They totaled just fewer than 5,500 Federals (more than half of whom were prisoners) and just more than 2,750 Confederates. Aside from having inflicted twice as many losses as they had sustained, the Confederates had marched 676 miles and fought four pitched battles and many skirmishes in 48 days of hard campaigning. Jackson’s ability to tie down and thwart 64,000 Union soldiers with a force that never numbered more than 17,000 marks him as one of the most accomplished strategists of American military history. It certainly constitutes a striking example of strategic initiative and economy of force. Along with Lee’s own success against McClellan in the PENINSULAR CAMPAIGN of that spring, events in the Shenandoah helped raise morale and renewed public faith in the Confederate cause.
Further reading: Paul C. Anderson, Blood Image: Turner Ashby in the Civil War and the Southern Mind (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2002); Gary W. Gallagher, The Shenandoah Valley Campaign of 1862 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2003); David G. Martin, Jackson's Valley Campaign, November 1861-June 1862 (Cambridge, Mass.: Da Capo Press, 2003); Robert G. Tanner, Stonewall in the Valley: Thomas J. “Stonewall” Jackson's Shenandoah Valley Campaign, Spring 1962 (New York: Doubleday, 1976.
—Gary W. Gallagher
World History
