Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: May 8, 2025
I asked General Crook, who was acquainted with many of the Union people of Winchester, if he knew of such a person, and he recommended a Miss Rebecca Wright, a young lady whom he had met there before the battle of Kernstown, who, he said, was a member of the Society of Friends and the teacher of a small private school.
Harry sleeping on his bed of fence rails did not dream of the extraordinary things that the little army of Jackson, beaten at Kernstown was yet to do. McClellan was just ready to start his great army by sea for the attack on Richmond, when suddenly the forgotten or negligible Jackson sprang out of the dark and fixed himself on his flank.
The battle of Pea Ridge in Arkansas, the shelling of Newbern in North Carolina, the exploits of the Merrimac in Hampton Roads, the battle of Kernstown in the Valley so at the moment ran the newspapers. And day by day recruits were coming in; comrades as well who had been in hospital or home on furlough. In that fortnight the Army of the Valley grew to number nearly six thousand men.
"What is it?" asked Jackson. "We're coming upon our old battlefield of Kernstown. I know those hills even in the dark." "So we are. You have good eyes, boy. It's been a long march, but here we are almost back in Winchester." "The enemy are massing in front, sir," said Dalton. "It looks as if they meant to make another stand."
Moving with the first light of morning, we came to Kernstown, three miles from Winchester, and the place of Jackson's fight with Shields. Here heavy and sustained firing, artillery and small arms, was heard. A staff officer approached at full speed to summon me to Jackson's presence and move up my command. A gallop of a mile or more brought me to him. Winchester was in sight, a mile to the north.
They sometimes failed to break the enemy's line at the first rush; but, except at Kernstown, the Federals never drove them from their position, and Taylor's advance at Winchester, Trimble's counterstroke at Cross Keys, the storming of the battery at Port Republic, and the charge of the cavalry at Cedarville, were the deeds of brave and resolute men.
In a report to Johnston, written four days after Kernstown, he administered what can scarcely be considered other than a snub, delicately expressed but unmistakable:
Yet in that moment I saw an ambition boundless as Cromwell's, and as merciless. This latter quality was exhibited in his treatment of General Richard Garnett, cousin to Robert Garnett, before mentioned, and his codisciple at West Point. I have never met officer or soldier, present at Kernstown, who failed to condemn the harsh treatment of Garnett after that action.
As the dawn rose, in a quiet undertone he gave the word to march. The order was passed down the column, and, in the dim grey light, the men, rising from their short slumbers, stiff, cold, and hungry, advanced to battle. Jackson had with him on the turnpike, for the most part south of Kernstown, his own division, supported by the brigades of Scott and Elzey and by nine batteries.
Such was the battle of Kernstown, in which over 1200 men were killed and wounded, the half of them Confederates. Two or three hundred prisoners fell into the hands of the Federals. Nearly one-fourth of Jackson's infantry was hors de combat, and he had lost two guns. His troops were undoubtedly depressed.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking