Shenandoah Valley

First Manassas: The Battle of Bull Run

On March 4, 1861, with war clouds threatening the land, Abraham Lincoln was inaugurated the 16th president of the United States. Read more

Shenandoah Valley

Lord Dunmore’s War: The Battle of Point Pleasant

In the lengthening shadows of a late October afternoon, a column of tired marchers attired in dusty, fringed hunting dress emerged from the trees along the north bank of the Kanawha River, raising an exhilarating shout upon sighting its confluence with the Ohio. Read more

Shenandoah Valley

West Virginia: Seceding from the Confederacy

During the Civil War western Virginia was crucial to the Union. The region that lay west of the Shenandoah Valley and north of the Kanawha River held nearly a quarter of Virginia’s nonslave population when the war began in 1861. Read more

Shenandoah Valley

Rose O’Neal Greenhow: The Spy Who Won Bull Run

“But for you, there would have been no Battle of Bull Run.” When Confederate President Jefferson Davis made that blanket statement in the summer of 1862, he was not addressing Pierre G.T. Read more

Shenandoah Valley

Patriots’ Great Day: The Battle of Sullivan’s Island

By the early 1770s, with a full century of settlement already behind it, Charleston, S.C., had come into its own as a thriving urban center. Read more

Shenandoah Valley

How Did Stonewall Jackson Actually Die?

Following his greatest victory, at the Battle of Chancellorsville on May 2, 1863, Confederate Lt. Gen. Thomas J. Read more

Shenandoah Valley

Stonewall Jackson & Nathaniel Banks at Cedar Mountain

Following the completion of Union Maj. Gen. George B. McClellan’s unsuccessful Peninsula campaign earlier in the month, General Robert E. Read more

Shenandoah Valley

War So Terrible: The Battle of Fredericksburg

Word spread like wildfire through the camps of the Army of the Potomac during the second week of November 1862: “Little Mac” was out, “Old Burn” was in. Read more

Shenandoah Valley

The Battle of Kernstown: Stonewall’s Victorious Defeat

Sunday morning, March 23, 1862, was sunny and warm in Virginia’s Shenandoah Valley. Confederate general Thomas J. “Stonewall” Jackson, a devout Christian, did not like to fight on the Lord’s Day. Read more

Shenandoah Valley

Battle of Mechanicsville: McClellan’s Unexploited Victory

After an almost uninterrupted, four-month-long string of Union successes beginning in early 1862, followed by the advance of a 100,000-man enemy army to the eastern outskirts of its capital at Richmond, Virginia, the Confederacy suddenly found itself in a life-or-death struggle for its very survival. Read more

Shenandoah Valley

“God Has Been Our Shield”

The regiment of Yankees, which was largely composed of German immigrants, advanced through a field of clover in the Shenandoah Valley in search of the Rebel line to its front on June 8, 1862. Read more

Shenandoah Valley

Civil War Intelligence

The Union officer saw it quite clearly across the Rappahannock River: a hand-painted sign held up by a Rebel soldier that read, “Burnside and his pontoons stuck in the mud. Read more

Shenandoah Valley

The 5th U.S. Cavalry: “A Hard Duty” at Gaines Mill

The celebrated 2nd U.S. Cavalry, like its brother regiment the 1st U.S. Cavalry, was formally created by an act of Congress in March 1855. Read more

Shenandoah Valley

The History of Maj. Gen. Edward ‘Braddock & Braddock’s Road’

Braddock’s Road originally began at Cumberland, Maryland and ended with its tragically premature terminus a few miles short of Fort Duquesne. Read more

Shenandoah Valley

The Civil War’s Western Territories As Leadership Dumping Grounds

Strategically isolated from the South, geographically isolated from the Far West, and separated from the Union plains states by the Indian Territory (present-day Oklahoma), Texas was a backwater whose ultimate fate depended on the success of the Confederacy. Read more

Shenandoah Valley

Civil War Quarterly Preview: General Phillip Sheridan and the Battle of Winchester

For General Philiip Sheridan, war was a tonic.

“He was a wonderful man on the battle field,” one of his fellow Union officers recalled, “and never in as good humor as when under fire.” Read more

Shenandoah Valley

The Confederate Army: Letters Home

On May 10, 1861 the Confederate Secretary of War, L.P. Walker, assigned “control of the forces of the Confederate States in Virginia” to Maj. Read more

Shenandoah Valley

The Frémont Emancipation Proclamation

As the early days of the Civil  War were unfolding and the destiny of the republic was beginning to be contested on the battlefield, Abraham Lincoln was engaged in a no less perilous type of battle. Read more

Shenandoah Valley

The Worst American Civil War Generals and Commanders

Confederate Maj. Gen. Gideon Pillow. After gaining ground trying to cut an escape path for the Confederates during the February 1862 siege of Fort Donelson by Union forces led Brig. Read more

Shenandoah Valley

“Put the Boys In”: Confederate Cadets at the Battle of New Market

As the Civil War continued in the spring of 1864, a Shenandoah Valley resident lamented, “Our prospects look gloomy, very gloomy.” Read more