Tags
Virginia, Lynchburg,
June 17–18, 1864
US General Hunter’s Federals raided the upper Shenandoah Valley after the battle of Piedmont. They occupied Staunton, wrecked the railroads and warehouses, and on June 10 continued south to Lexington. US General Crook, advancing after his victory at Cloyd’s Mountain, joined Hunter, bringing the Union force to 18,500. On the eleventh, as Hunter’s vanguard prepared to cross the Maury River, it was fired on by Confederates posted on the grounds of the Virginia Military Institute. Hunter called up artillery. Against the objection of many of his officers, including the chief of artillery, US Captain Henry A. du Pont, Hunter ordered the buildings to be burned in retaliation for the VMI cadets’ role in the battle of New Market. The superintendent’s quarters were excepted. (After the war, when du Pont was a U.S. senator, he sponsored legislation awarding $100,000 to VMI to repair the war damage.)
While Hunter was in Lexington, CS President Jefferson Davis urged CS General Lee to send more men to the Valley. Lee consented but noted the cost: “I think that is what the enemy would desire.” Lee detached the 9,000 men of CS Lieutenant General Jubal A. Early’s Second Corps from the Cold Harbor lines to drive Hunter out of the Valley, cross the Potomac, and threaten Washington, D.C. On June 17 Early’s troops boarded trains for Lynchburg.
The Federals left Lexington and crossed the Blue Ridge by way of Peaks of Otter to threaten the Confederate rail depot at Lynchburg. Lynchburg housed thirty-two hospitals and served with Charlottesville as a recuperation point for wounded Confederate soldiers. CS General Breckinridge assembled two brigades and the VMI cadets to hold the fortifications around Lynchburg. They repulsed Hunter’s first tentative attacks from the southwest and the south on June 17. Units of Early’s Corps arrived that night, and by the following morning, 13,000 Confederates manned the defenses.
Although Hunter’s forces outnumbered Early’s, the Federals’ attacks from the Liberty Turnpike against the strong Confederate earthworks were easily repelled, so they began to retreat after dark. Since Hunter feared the late CS Lieutenant General Stonewall Jackson’s old corps, as well as a return march of one hundred miles through the Valley that his forces had devastated, he made a disastrous decision: he led his men westward along the railroad toward Salem and into West Virginia’s Kanawha Valley, which was held by Union forces. This route back to the Potomac took his army to the Ohio River and out of the war for nearly a month. The Shenandoah Valley was open to a Confederate advance toward the Potomac River, Maryland, and Washington. Early pursued Hunter on June 19 and defeated the Union rear guard at Liberty (now Bedford) and at Hanging Rocknear Salem on the twenty-first before breaking off the chase to advance north down the Valley. On July 4 the Confederates occupied Harpers Ferry on their march to Maryland, compelling the defenders to seek protection on the impregnable Maryland Heights.
Estimated Casualties: 700 US, 200 CS
