Earning the ire of his superiors and subordinates alike, Union General Franz Sigel loses a critical battle—and his command.
Ulysses Grant never had much faith in Major General Franz Sigel, a former professional soldier from Germany known more for his adept recruiting skills than for any success on the battlefield. But when Abraham Lincoln, eyeing re-election and anxious to keep the North’s important German-American community happy, gave Sigel command of the fractious Department of West Virginia in March 1864, Grant tried to make the best of the situation.
As he planned a grand sweep toward Richmond that spring, Grant sent Sigel up the Shenandoah Valley to capture the important rail town of Staunton, about 95 miles south of Winchester. The move on Staunton, Grant surmised, would both threaten Rebel supply lines and draw essential troops away from Robert E. Lee’s army outside Richmond.
But Sigel never made it to Staunton. He ran into Maj. Gen. John C. Breckinridge’s ragtag command on May 15 outside the town of New Market and, in a driving rainstorm, joined battle. The Battle of New Market proved to be an important, though short-lived, morale booster at a critical time for the South, and produced one of the war’s most poignant moments when a group of raw cadets from the Virginia Military Institute led a charge that helped turn the battle’s tide. By mid-afternoon Sigel’s position began to unravel, and he and his men soon made an ignominious retreat back down the Valley.
Even though the Federals now had the Shenandoah River between them and their pursuers, there was little time for rest as they reorganized several miles to the north of the New Market battlefield. General Sigel maintained a defensive front on the ridges north of the river, but realizing that his position could be turned, he ordered another retreat. About 9 p.m., the weary troops headed for Edinburg, with a rearguard composed of five companies from the 116th Ohio, a section of artillery and a cavalry escort, all under the command of the 116th’s Colonel James Washburn.
Many of the men had spent much of the day standing in line of battle and fighting in a pouring rain, and in some cases had marched nearly 20 miles just to get into the battle—most with little or nothing to eat. As a result, more marching was simply not possible for many of Sigel’s enervated troops. “We were all soaked to the skin from the heavy rain, completely exhausted by the long and most strenuous days work,” recalled one New York cavalryman, who left an interesting account of his experience that night after the battle:
A great fire of fence rails was burning in a field just north of the town [Mount Jackson] and I felt that I would risk losing everything—everything in the world, even life itself, for the drying comfort of that fire. It was then dark and I slipped out of the ranks unnoticed, tied my old mare to a post at the side of the road and ran over to that fire. Oh, how good it felt; my wet clothes began steaming and in five minutes I fell asleep. An officer of our rear guard awoke me and told me to skip along if I didn’t want to be captured. I ran over to where I had left my old mare but she was gone and I never saw her again….I had my carbine, revolver and saber and as I started down the road afoot, I threw the carbine into a large pond of water so [I] had one less thing to carry. For an hour I marched along with the rear guard—an infantry detachment who had half a dozen Confederate prisoners. Every mile or so we stopped to rest for about five minutes, and these prisoners asked to be allowed to sit down, which was denied them. Thinking that I was an officer because I was carrying a sword they appealed to me. I said that I had no objection and then they were allowed to sit down. I stole away in the dark before they discovered that I was not an officer and I climbed over a fence and lay down in some bushes for I felt that [I] must have rest and sleep no matter what the risk.
Two Ohio soldiers set off in search of something to eat and, returning to the Valley Pike, found themselves a good distance ahead of the retreating column “at the heels of Sigel and his generals, making good time.” When they had put enough distance between themselves and the Confederates, one of them wrote, “Not the most powerful gun in the Confederacy could have reached Dave, me, or the Generals who led.”
The army’s demoralization and confusion was apparent to all and admitted to by even its senior commanders. “The manner in which this chaotic mass of wagons, horsemen, artillery, and stragglers moved on (sometimes two or three wagons abreast) was exceedingly fatiguing to the infantry,” reported Colonel Augustus Moor, commander of the 1st Brigade. This was “especially [so] to those regiments that marched out with me on the 14th, they having been continually on their legs for two days and nights without a cup of coffee or even meat rations, numbers of them barefooted.”
Throughout the long retreat nearly all the civilians they encountered greeted the soldiers with derision. “The people of this valley are all jubilant over this disaster to our arms,” noted a West Virginia officer, “and were tickled almost out of their senses at seeing us on our way back.”
When the column rested for the night at Edinburg, about 15 miles away, many of the senior officers of the 1st New York Veteran Cavalry, including L.J. Alleman, the regiment’s assistant surgeon, shared accommodations with Generals Sigel and Stahel. Alleman was more than a little bitter about the way the army had been handled, and the cavalry in particular, and so was in no mood to put up with the generals. The doctor had just fallen asleep when orders arrived to continue the retreat. Before mounting, Alleman and his comrades “made some coffee and supplied the Gen [Sigel] and staff…and Stahl [sic] with the same beverage.
“I heard General Stahl say that he hoped there would be enough for them,” Alleman scribbled in his journal. “I think the old cuss ought to have been satisfied and especially after receiving as solid a whipping as he did.”
Many of the Federal wounded from the battle were left in the vast Confederate hospital compound on the northern edge of Mount Jackson, where three buildings were filled with as many as 300 injured soldiers. The medical staff worked throughout the night to save as many men as they could, sending those lightly wounded north after the column.
Sigel’s men marched all night. When the leading elements of the column reached Woodstock about 6 a.m., the Federals rested in their old camps until the middle of the afternoon. By nightfall the army was once again at its old camp grounds along the northern banks of Cedar Creek between Strasburg and Middletown.
About the same time that Sigel’s army reached familiar ground around the Belle Grove Plantation and Cedar Creek, General Grant was wondering why he had not heard recently from his commander in the Shenandoah. It had been several days since Sigel last telegraphed the general in chief asking for clarification on what, exactly, he was supposed to be doing in the Valley. Two days after the defeat at New Market—apparently Grant had yet to receive word about the defeat, even though Sigel had telegraphed Washington on the night of the battle—Grant inquired of his superiors, “Cannot General Sigel go up the Shenandoah Valley to Staunton? The enemy is evidently drawing supplies largely from that source, and if Sigel can destroy the road there, it will be of vast importance.” The reply from General Halleck increased Grant’s disgust with Sigel. “Just when I was hoping to hear of good work being done in the Valley, I received instead the following announcement from Halleck: ‘Sigel is in full retreat on Strasburg. He will do nothing but run; never did anything else.’” Grant immediately requested that Sigel be relieved of his command, “and someone else put in his place.”
Sigel, however, interpreted his defeat as nothing more than a temporary setback—or at least he presented it that way. “We were beaten but not disheartened,” he insisted. But regardless of how or for whom he spun it, Sigel had not only lost the confidence of his superiors, he had lost the confidence of most of the officers and men in his defeated army. “How uncertain are my prophesies,” lamented one West Virginian just hours after the disastrous battle ended. “Thought this morning that we could whip anything in the Valley and would go right on to Staunton. But how different.” Confessed an Ohio officer, “Very few of us wanted to fight any more ‘mit Sigel.’…Had he gotten his army well in hand at first, and given battle with it, he might have been victorious.”
Hoping to regain the reins of army control, the German general resumed drill and inspections. Grant and Halleck, however, had already made up their minds. Sigel had lived up to the doubts they had harbored about him before the campaign even began. Grant submitted Maj. Gen. David Hunter’s name as a possible replacement. On the afternoon of May 18, just three days after the defeat, Grant received word from Washington that Hunter was acceptable to the Lincoln administration. Grant’s reply demonstrated just how much he wanted Sigel out of the picture: “By all means I would say appoint General Hunter, or anyone else, to the command of West Virginia.” It was official. Sigel was out.
On the evening of May 21, Hunter arrived at Sigel’s headquarters at Belle Grove to officially assume command of the department. Sigel was relegated to heading up the department’s “Reserve Division.” The new commander’s reputation as a general who believed civilians should be made to feel the hard hand of war was soon put into action. A Massachusetts officer described Hunter as “a stern, unrelenting soldier, who believes in making war of the sternest character wherever he moves in the enemy’s country.”
Hunter wasted no time regrouping the small army. With hundreds of Ohio militia pouring into the department to guard the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad, thus freeing up other troops, Hunter added the 5th New York Heavy Artillery to his command, offsetting most of the losses suffered at New Market. Before the month expired, Hunter would move south almost all the way back to New Market, en route to Staunton and beyond. He would take with him a new style of warfare the people of the Valley had yet to fully witness—and one that would earn for him the ire of most of the populace and set the stage for a much larger campaign in the Shenandoah that summer and fall.
With Sigel on the retreat, two plausible options presented themselves to Lee. His first instinct was to order Breckinridge to follow the retreating Federals and try to drive them from the Valley and “into Maryland,” which would focus Federal attention on the Valley and thus away from his own army. His other option was to gamble that the Federals would stay put in their camps in the lower Valley, which would allow him to transfer Breckinridge’s force to the east to reinforce the embattled Army of Northern Virginia.
Later that same day (on May 16), after rethinking his initial aggressive response to Breckinridge, Lee sent another message to his Valley commander:
If you [do not deem] it practicable to carry out the suggestion of my dispatch of this morning to drive the enemy from the valley & pursue him into Maryland, you can be of great service with this army. If you can follow Sigel into Maryland, you will do more good than by joining us. If you cannot, & your command is not otherwise needed in the Valley or in your Department, I desire you to prepare to join me.
Breckinridge’s men fully expected to follow Sigel. “I suppose we will move down the Valley as soon as we can cross the River,” wrote one cavalryman. Captain William Taylor led a detachment of the 18th Virginia Cavalry across the Shenandoah River on the morning of the 16th. Their horses had to swim the flooded and now treacherous waterway. Major Harry Gilmor and his Marylanders also managed to cross the river which, Gilmor recalled, was almost even with its banks.
Gilmor’s men and the 18th Virginia Cavalry, however, were apparently not operating together, for Taylor’s detachment reported riding as far north as Woodstock, finding burning wagons and abandoned equipment all along the road. No mention was made of encountering any enemy troops between Mount Jackson and Woodstock, but Gilmor claimed to have encountered a flag of truce carried by Major Charles Otis, 21st New York Cavalry, at Mount Jackson. Otis sought to retrieve the body of Captain William Mitchell of his regiment. Gilmor halted his command and sent the message back to Breckinridge, wasting most of the day until his courier returned near nightfall bearing orders to push down the Valley as rapidly as possible.
As Gilmor resumed his pursuit, Major Otis rode with him. As they talked, Otis recognized Gilmor’s horse and asked him if he had been wounded a few days previously near where they were now riding. When Gilmor responded yes, Otis told him that he had been the man who shot him. The pair of enemies continued on to Woodstock that night, swimming Stony Creek at Edinburg, but did not encounter any Yankees. The following morning, Gilmor—still accompanied by Major Otis—pressed on toward Strasburg, where they encountered Federal pickets and a sizable force at Hupp’s Hill just beyond. Otis returned to his lines and Gilmor returned to Woodstock, dispatching a courier with his findings back to New Market.
With Sigel already back in his old position at Cedar Creek and a flooded river between his defeated army and Breckinridge, the Kentucky general decided he could do no further good in the Valley. The Federals were gone from his front, and he had no idea how long it would be before he could get his own army across the Shenandoah to move on Sigel. There were other logistical obstacles as well. The farther north Breckinridge moved, the farther away from his own base of supplies—and friendly troops—he would be. If Sigel continued falling back, however, he would be shortening his supply line. Breckinridge’s army was already very small. Another battle, even if it ended in a victory, would leave him too weak to mount any offensive across the Potomac. While Lee’s suggestion to pursue Sigel into Maryland to draw off Federal forces from Lee’s front was strategically sound—he would employ that exact strategy several months later with Jubal Early—the force at Breckinridge’s disposal was so small as to constitute nothing more than a minor nuisance, and surely not large enough to warrant the reaction Lee desired. Lee desperately needed troops to offset his Wilderness and Spotsylvania losses, and the Confederacy could not afford to let Breckinridge’s men sit idle in western Virginia. There was, of course, a risk involved in withdrawing them from the Valley, but at that time there was no evidence of any pending new Federal offensive there. (This conclusion was incorrect, as subsequent events would prove, but it seemed a safe gamble at the time.)
After spending the 16th in and around New Market, Breckinridge gave orders for his infantry and artillery to return to Staunton. From there, they were to travel by rail to join Lee’s army north of Richmond. Brigadier General John Imboden’s cavalry would remain behind to keep an eye on Sigel, but the cavalryman would not have the services of the 62nd Virginia Mounted Infantry for the task. Since the 62nd (mounted in name only) was the lone dismounted unit in Imboden’s command and Lee needed all the foot soldiers he could get, Breckinridge added the 62nd to Wharton’s Brigade. Neither would the VMI Cadets be joining the Army of Northern Virginia. Their newfound fame having generated a buzz in Richmond, they were on their way to the capital.
Adapted from Valley Thunder: The Battle of New Market and the Opening of the Shenandoah Valley Campaign, May 1864, by Charles R. Knight (Savas Beatie LLC, 2010).
Originally published in the September 2010 issue of America’s Civil War. To subscribe, click here.
