America’s Civil War: Front Royal Was the Key to the Shenandoah Valley

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If this valley is lost, Virginia is lost,’ insisted Confederate Major General Thomas Jonathan ‘Stonewall’ Jackson in early 1862, speaking of the strategically and agriculturally vital Shenandoah Valley. And if Virginia was lost, so too was the Confederacy. The key to the valley, and thus to the Confederacy, was the huge Massanutten Mountain, which bisected much of the valley, and the key to Massanutten was the sleepy little hamlet of Front Royal. Whoever controlled Front Royal controlled, to a great degree, the outcome of the war.

Front Royal, in the northern reaches of the Shenandoah Valley, had a strategic importance that belied its small size. A mile and a half north of the town, the North and South forks of the Shenandoah River united to become one stream. Also nearby was the Manassas Gap Railroad, which passed over the South Fork on a 450-foot-high wooden trestle. Unfortunately, Front Royal was virtually indefensible. High mountain peaks commanded the terrain from three directions. Gaps in the mountains also presented dangers–a swift-moving foe could pop through them at any time to seize the town. Jackson, a prewar resident of the Shenandoah town of Lexington, Va., knew that Front Royal could not be held. He also knew that the Yankees would try.

In the early spring of 1862, Confederate forces in Virginia braced themselves for a renewed Federal push into their territory. This time the offensive would manifest itself in the Peninsula campaign orchestrated by Maj. Gen. George B. McClellan. His main strike force, five corps from the newly organized Army of the Potomac–about 100,000 men in all–steamed down the Chesapeake from Alexandria, Va., to Fort Monroe, Va., and was to march up the peninsula between the York and James rivers to attack Richmond from the south and east. On March 11 President Abraham Lincoln had relieved McClellan as Union general-in-chief so that the general could better concentrate on the peninsula operation, and in the interim Washington coordinated the operations of the Union armies. Elsewhere in Virginia, plans called for Maj. Gen. Irvin McDowell’s 40,000-man corps in Fredericksburg to assist McClellan’s force by threatening Richmond from the north; Maj. Gen. John C. Frémont’s army, 15,000 strong, was to begin operations in the forested Allegheny Mountains; and Maj. Gen. Nathaniel Banks’ 20,000-man army would operate in the Shenandoah Valley to prevent Confederate forces there from either reinforcing the Richmond defenders or driving north toward the Union capital. If all went as planned, the rebellion would be crushed by Christmas 1862.

To counter the winter Union buildup, Confederate President Jefferson Davis had finally acquiesced to General Joseph E. Johnston’s pleadings to merge the disparate military departments of the Northwest, the Valley, the Potomac, the Aquia, the Peninsula and Norfolk into one department, the Department of Northern Virginia, and place it under Johnston’s command. With this new unified department–120,000 men in all–Johnston believed that he could not only drive the 150,000 Federals back across the Potomac but also set the stage for future offensive operations north of that river.

To facilitate his eventual counterstroke, protect Fredericksburg and Richmond and better unify his command, Johnston judiciously decided to pull the old Confederate Army of the Potomac back 25 miles from Manassas to the south side of the Rappahannock River. He did, however, keep one reinforced division in the Shenandoah Valley–Stonewall Jackson’s.

On Sunday, March 9, 1862, in accordance with Johnston’s orders, the Confederate encampment at Centerville was once again abandoned, and the men marched south and crossed the rain-swollen Rappahannock into Culpeper and Orange counties. By early April, as the Federals’ intentions became clearer, Johnston decided to move the bulk of his army farther south, closer to the Confederate capital, leaving only Maj. Gen. Richard Ewell’s division behind to guard the Rappahannock line.

Stonewall Jackson, meanwhile, had upset Union plans. On March 23 at Kernstown, Va., he had attacked Banks’ army. Although Jackson was defeated, Lincoln believed the Confederate general’s division was still a threat, and he ordered McDowell’s force, which was to reinforce McClellan near Richmond, to re-main in place so that it could defend Washington if needed. Johnston countered by ordering Ewell to march west into the Shenandoah Valley with Colonel Thomas Munford’s 2nd Virginia Cavalry and Colonel Thomas Flournoy’s 6th Virginia Cavalry to reinforce Jackson’s grandly named Army of the Valley–a single large division–which was busily holding off five invading Federal divisions under Banks and Frémont.

Jackson’s division was arguably one of the best in the Confederate Army. It consisted of 12 regiments of infantry–11 from Virginia and one from Maryland–and six batteries of artillery. Many of its soldiers were already veterans who had’seen the elephant’ at the battles of First Manassas, Kernstown and Romney. Ewell’s division was equally impressive, consisting of six Virginia regiments, four Louisiana regiments and one each from North Carolina, Georgia, Alabama and Mississippi. Ewell also possessed the famed Louisiana Special Battalion from the docks of New Orleans, Major Roberdeau Wheat’s much-feared Tiger Zouaves.

When Ewell’s division moved out of its encampment on April 18 to join Jackson in the valley, the men had to march in a steady, soaking rain, sometimes coupled with sleet or wet snow. Freezing precipitation continued to torture them for the next 10 days. Louisianian T.A. Tooke remarked: ‘We have [done] nothing but march, march, march, and halt and sleep in wet blankets and mud. I thought that I [knew] something about soldiering, but I find that I had never soldiered it this way.’

On Wednesday evening, April 30, Ewell’s division crossed over the Blue Ridge through Swift Run Gap and marched into Jackson’s camp at Conrad’s Store. While the exhausted men established their bivouac sites in the dark, Ewell met with his new commander.

Jackson informed Ewell that he planned to march his own division 50 miles to the west, through Keezletown and Harrisonburg, to the hamlet of McDowell at the foot of the Alleghenies. He fully intended, he said, to drive Frémont out of the valley. In the meantime, Ewell’s division, reinforced by Munford’s and Flournoy’s cavalries, was to hold Banks in check by preventing his army from taking Staunton (from either the east or west side of Massanutten Mountain) or, per Johnston’s instructions, by discouraging him from sending reinforcements east over the Blue Ridge Mountains to support McClellan’s siege of Richmond.

When Jackson marched his division out of Conrad’s Store the next morning, May 1, Ewell was left to his own devices. At the time, unbeknown to Ewell, Banks’ army consisted of only one two-brigade division under Brig. Gen. Alpheus Williams and some assorted cavalry. The Federals in the valley were so reduced because soon after Banks had taken Winchester in March, he was ordered by his commander in chief, Abraham Lincoln, to send two of his three divisions, those of Brig. Gens. John Sedgwick and James Shields, east by rail to reinforce McDowell at Manassas. McDowell was then to support McClellan on the peninsula. Williams’ lone division, now Banks’ entire army, was therefore spread thin throughout the northern reaches of the Shenandoah Valley, from Winchester to Strasburg in the west, and from Columbia Bridge to Front Royal in the east. The army’s wide dispersal, however, did not mask its relative weakness.

Over the next month, while Jackson marched west to drive Frémont back over the Alleghenies, Ewell established several outposts north of Conrad’s Store and sent numerous patrols down both sides of Massanutten to ascertain the whereabouts, strength and intentions of Banks’ army as best he could. On May 7, one of these patrols, led by Major Wheat, ran into elements of Banks’ army just south of Columbia Bridge at the hamlet of Somerville in the Luray valley. Wheat’s force consisted of his battalion of Zouaves, a company from the 9th Louisiana, two cavalry companies from Flournoy’s 6th Virginia and one cannon.

As Wheat’s men approached the South Fork of the Shenandoah River just north of Somerville, they were surprised and driven back by Colonel Robert Foster’s 13th Indiana Volunteers and a company from the 1st Vermont Cavalry. In the early phase of the skirmish, known as the Battle of Somerville Heights, the Federals were able to push Wheat’s forces back two miles to Dogtown, where the Zouave Tigers and others were reinforced by Colonel Harry Hays’ 7th Louisiana. Once assembled, Hays and Wheat counterattacked and pushed the now outnumbered Federals back to Columbia Bridge, their starting point. Although the Special Battalion surprisingly listed no casualties in the engagement, the 7th Louisiana lost two dead, four wounded and one deserter, said to be a ‘crazy Greek.’

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Tags: 19th Century, America's Civil War, American Civil War, Historical Conflicts

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