Campaign Year Description:
The year 1864 saw the turning point in the Civil War for the Valley. It was a complex year of multiple military operations that ended Confederate control of the Valley and wrought the near total destruction of its agricultural economy.
In May, a Federal army under Gen. George Crook advanced south through West Virginia with orders to cut railroad links from Virginia to the west. To support Crook, Union Gen. Franz Sigel was to move south through the Shenandoah Valley almost to Harrisonburg. This would also prevent any Confederate movement out of the Shenandoah Valley to assault Grant’s flank as it advanced south toward Richmond. Sigel met defeat at New Market (May 15) in a battle with Confederate forces reinforced by cadets from the Virginia Military Institute. Sigel was relieved and replaced by Gen. David Hunter. In June, Hunter gained a victory in the rolling landscape at Piedmont east of Staunton. With most Confederate resistance checked, Hunter moved south and burned the Virginia Military Institute in Lexington. He was defeated ultimately by Gen. Jubal Early at Lynchburg, outside the Valley.
In an effort to divert Federal troops from Gen. Ulysses S. Grant’s Overland Campaign north of Richmond, Gen. Robert E. Lee sent Early north through the Valley with instructions to strike all the way to Washington D.C., if possible. His assaults near the Federal capital in early July caused the Lincoln Administration great consternation. After withdrawing to the Valley and delivering more Federal defeats at Cool Spring (July 17-18) and at the Battle of Second Kernstown (July 24), Early’s cavalry moved north and burned Chambersburg, Pennsylvania, in retaliation for the burning of Lexington. The July battles would be the Confederacy’s last major victories in the Shenandoah Valley. Federal leaders turned to a new commander, Gen. Philip H. Sheridan with instructions to defeat Jubal Early and to bring a new level of war to the Valley: “Do all the damage to railroads and crops you can. Carry off stock of all descriptions… so as to prevent further planting. If the war is to last another year, we want the Shenandoah Valley to remain a barren waste.”
In the early fall, Sheridan delivered shattering defeats at the Battles of Third Winchester (September 19), and Fisher’s Hill (September 22), dashing Confederate hopes. Federal cavalry then embarked on a 13-day campaign of destruction to neutralize the Shenandoah Valley’s agricultural base, this “breadbasket of the Confederacy”. Early’s cavalry pestered the Union raiders from Augusta County north until Sheridan routed the Confederates at Tom's Brook and pursued them 20 miles south to Woodstock. In a final attempt to destroy Sheridan’s full army, then encamped between Strasburg and Middletown, Gen. Jubal Early met a smashing defeat at the Battle of Cedar Creek on October 19. Thereafter, the Confederacy, for all purposes, had lost control of the Shenandoah Valley. Six months later, the war in Virginia ended 50 miles away in the small Virginia town of Appomattox.
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