shenandoahs

Updated: May 14, 2025

At the same instant the last of the Shenandoahs Kirby Smith's brigade, detrained just in the nick of time charged the wavering flank. Then, like the first quiver of an avalanche, a tremor shook the whole massed Federals one moment on that fatal hill: the next, like a loosened cliff, they began the landslide down.

William Charles Henry Wood - Captains of the Civil War; a chronicle of the blue and the gray

But on its reverse slope lay Jackson's Shenandoahs, three thousand strong, and by far the best drilled and disciplined brigade that either side had yet produced apart, of course, from regulars. Jackson had ridden up and down before them, calm as they had ever seen him on parade, quietly saying, "Steady, men, steady! All's well." In this way he had held them straining at the leash for hours.

William Charles Henry Wood - Captains of the Civil War; a chronicle of the blue and the gray

While the rest of the Shenandoahs were rallying, in rear of Jackson, Beauregard and Johnston came up, followed by two batteries. Miles behind them, all the men that could be spared from the fords were coming too. But the Federals on the Matthews Hill were still in more than double numbers; and they enjoyed the priceless advantage of having some regulars among them.

William Charles Henry Wood - Captains of the Civil War; a chronicle of the blue and the gray