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Updated: August 8, 2024
Langdon openly boasted that he was going to have a dressing contest between them for large stakes as soon as the war was over. But all the young Southerners were in good spirits now. They had learned of the alarm caused in the North by Kernstown, and that a third of McClellan's army had been detached to guard against them. Nor had Banks and Shields yet dared to attack them.
Every blow struck in the Valley campaign, from Kernstown to Cross Keys, was struck at Lincoln and his Cabinet; every movement, including the advance against Pope on Cedar Run, was calculated with reference to the effect it would produce in the Federal councils; and if he consistently advocated invasion, it was not because Virginia would be relieved of the enemy's presence, but because treaties of peace are only signed within sight of the hostile capital.
The Germans halted, fired a few harmless volleys, and then, turning as one man, bolted to the shelter of the wood, twelve hundred yards in rear. According to an officer of the 14th Indiana, the Federals at Kernstown were in much the same condition as the Germans at Worth. "The Confederates fell back in great disorder, and we advanced in disorder just as great.
Their assaults had been piecemeal, like those of the Confederates at Malvern Hill, and they had been defeated in detail by the inferior numbers. The Northern soldiers were strangers to those general and combined attacks, pressed with unyielding resolution, which had won Winchester, Gaines' Mill, and the Second Manassas, and which had nearly won Kernstown.
Suddenly, on the twenty-third, a fight at Kernstown in the Shenandoah Valley gave a serious shock to the victorious Federals, not only there but all over the semicircle of invasion, from West Virginia round by the Potomac and down to Fortress Monroe. The fighting on both sides was magnificent. Yet Kernstown itself was a very small affair.
Yet, despite his energy, Jackson was eminently patient. He knew when to refuse battle, just as well as he knew when to deliver it. He was never induced to fight except on his own terms, that is, on his own ground, and at his own time, save at Kernstown only, and there the strategical situation forced his hand. And he was eminently cautious.
The 2nd Massachusetts, employed in the last effort to hold back Jackson's counterstroke, lost 16 officers out of 28, and 147 men out of 451. The Ohio regiments, which had been with Shields at Kernstown and Port Republic, and had crossed Cedar Run opposite the Confederate centre, were handled even more roughly. The 5th lost 118 men out of 275, the 7th 10 officers out of 14, and 170 men out of 293.
The artillery McLaughlin's, Carpenter's, and Waters's batteries found a cross-roads and thundered by, straining to the front. Ashby, together with Chew's battery of horse artillery, kept the pike the other side of Kernstown. In front of the infantry stretched a great open marshy meadow, utterly without cover.
The second diversion against Washington was as effective as the first, and the victory at Winchester even more prolific of results than the defeat at Kernstown. Within four-and-twenty hours the storm-cloud which had been gathering about Fredericksburg was dispersed. McDowell's army of 40,000 men and 100 guns was scattered beyond the hope of speedy concentration.
"Kernstown didn't shake it?" "Kernstown was as much a victory as a defeat, sir. No, it didn't shake it." "Morale good?" "Extraordinarily so. That army is all right, sir." "I wish," said Ewell plaintively, "that I knew what to make of General Jackson. What do you make of him, major?" "I make a genius, sir." Ewell raised his shoulder and ducked his head, his bright round eyes much like a robin's.
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