Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SATURDAY, May 15, 1993 TAG: 9305150161
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: C3 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE:
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
"Find out where your enemy is," Grant ordered. "Get him as soon as you can. Strike him as hard and as often as you can, and keep moving on."
Maj. Gen. Franz Sigel USA was sent to disrupt rebel communications and supply lines in the Shenandoah Valley. Given command for his political influence over other German immigrants in Missouri, the 39-year-old former European revolutionary was known for self-promotion and a tendency to lapse into his native tongue when excited. Sigel's tactically unwise division of a superior 6,000-man force would ultimately lead to its defeat.
The Shenandoah Valley had been a breadbasket resource for produce and livestock essential to Lee's Army of Northern Virginia, massed east of the Blue Ridge to defend Richmond.
Maj. Gen. John C. Breckinridge, a 43-year-old former vice president of the United States under James Buchanan, was the Confederate department commander in Southwest Virginia who met advancing Union forces at the farm community of New Market, the second week of May 1864. He had hastily assembled a mixed defending force of 4,500 veterans, inexperienced home guards and assorted cavalry; Lee also authorized Breckinridge to call out the VMI Corps of Cadets, which he did with reluctance.
Skirmishing began May 13 at the Mount Jackson Bridge, eight miles north of the village. Federal forces pressed the Confederate cavalry southward through the following day. That night, the Union established a line on the north side of New Market and along the high ground west.
Instead of waiting for the Federals to come to him, Breckinridge cannily elected to confront his adversaries, who had been spread too thin to hold their positions.
"We can attack and whip them here," Breckinridge said, and he was right.
Amid a violent thunderstorm at 11 a.m. on May 15, the gray tide of Confederates washed over Shirleys Hill into the New Market Valley, pressing north to the ridge line beyond Bushong Farm. Federal artillery fire was withering. Breckinridge sent in 247 cadets to plug the weakened line with the 62nd Virginia.
"Charge! Charge! Charge!" Breckinridge roared.
And the Confederates swept on. The cultivated turf over which they moved became so muddy in the downpour that it sucked off footgear. Beyond "The Field of Lost Shoes," cadets overran the ridge and acquired an abandoned cannon from Capt. Albert Von Kleiser's battery.
The Union troops withdrew, temporarily preserving the resources of the Shenandoah Valley and securing the flank of Lee's embattled forces, just 75 miles east.
On May 19, Sigel was relieved of command. His Union force had lost almost 1,000 killed, wounded and captured; Breckinridge lost about 550, including 10 killed and 47 wounded among the cadet corps. Historian William C. Davis pronounced New Market "one of the most significant small battles of the war."
Within two weeks the same Federal army that had fled would vengefully return under a new commander, who would burn VMI in Lexington. Ultimately, the valley would be devastated anyway when Sheridan torched his way through in August. The Confederate victory merely prolonged a bloody conflict that finally ended at Appomattox 11 months later. - Landmark News Service
by CNB