One of the most intriguing and storied episodes of the Civil War, the 1862 Shenandoah Valley Campaign has heretofore been related only from the Confederate point of view. Moving seamlessly between tactical details and analysis of strategic significance, Peter Cozzens presents a balanced, comprehensive account of a campaign that has long been romanticized but little understood. He offers new interpretations of the campaign and the reasons for Stonewall Jackson's success, demonstrates instances in which the mythology that has come to shroud the campaign has masked errors on Jackson's part, and provides the first detailed appraisal of Union leadership in the Valley Campaign, with some surprising conclusions.

Copyright date 1996; previously published: Doubleday & Co., 1976.

This battle is also known as Bull Pasture Mountain and was fought on May 8, 1862.

In a few short months in the Shenandoah Valley, Stonewall Jackson rewrote military history. Accompanied by George Patton's great-uncle and a staff of able subordinates, the Bible-quoting general used his own unique view of past military doctrine to defeat a series of converging enemy armies. American military strategy has never been the same since. Jackson's aggressive personality enabled him to constantly maintain the initiative. While cloaking his own operations in tight security, he was often able to discern the aims of his opponent. Frequently outnumbered, he managed to keep enemy units separated, and to defeat them in detail. Jackson was able to co-ordinate infantry, cavalry, and artillery operations, and was particularly successful in turning the normally slow-moving infantry into an effective mobile strike force.Jackson's Valley Campaign is supplemented by sidebars on famous units, weapons, incidents, and in-depth personality profiles of Jackson and his opponents. Complete orders of battle and special maps that clearly illustrate Jackson's operational doctrine are enhanced by unique charts that show the distances and rates of march of Jackson's "foot cavalry" between all major points in the Shenandoah Valley.In the long-awaited revision of his out-of-print classic, the author describes Jackson's war of maneuver and the tactical ideas it represented, without losing sight of the individuals and units on both sides who tested military theory with their lives. John C. Frémont, "Napoleon" Banks, Turner Ashby, Belle Boyd, the Louisiana Tigers, Blenker's German Division, and the Stonewall Brigade all live again in this colorful but thoughtfully written account.

Virginia's Shenandoah Valley was known as the "Breadbasket of the Confederacy" due to its ample harvests and transportation centers, its role as an avenue of invasion into the North and its capacity to serve as a diversionary theater of war. The region became a magnet for both Union and Confederate armies during the Civil War, and nearly half of the thirteen major battles fought in the valley occurred as part of General Thomas J. "Stonewall" Jackson's 1862 Valley Campaign. Civil War historian Jonathan A. Noyalas examines Jackson's Valley Campaign and how those victories brought hope to an infant Confederate nation, transformed the lives of the Shenandoah Valley's civilians and emerged as Stonewall Jackson's defining moment.

"Stonewall" Jackson's troops pose a threat to Washington, D.C.

The region known as the Valley of Virginia, or the Shenandoah Valley, played an important part in the Civil War from the beginning almost to the end. Indeed Lee's little army was hastening toward that region in its very last march, and, if it had not been headed off by Sheridan's cavalry at Appomattox, the last hostile action on Virginia soil, like the first, might have taken place in the Shenandoah Valley. The situation of Richmond and Washington fore-ordered that Virginia, rather than Kentucky or other border State, should become the principal theater of operations, and the mountain region of the Shenandoah formed a strong natural barrier covering its left flank. All things combined to make the Valley the best line of communications with Virginia and the base at Richmond, for a Confederate army invading the North in this theater of the war; twice it was used for this purpose by Lee. Thus, the general direction of this Valley was northeast, and the Potomac, more easily forded here than farther east, crossed it within fifty miles of Washington. On its eastern or exposed flank it was covered by the Blue Ridge Mountains south of the Potomac, and South Mountain north of this river. These mountains could be crossed only at certain passes, or gaps, through most of which there were good roads. The Valley was connected with Richmond, the Confederate base, by two systems of railway, one leading out of it by way of Strasburg and Manassas Gap, the other by way of Staunton and Rockfish Gap. A good system of roads connected all the towns and villages in the region. The main thoroughfare was the Valley Turnpike, stretching from Staunton near the head of the Valley, to Martinsburg at its lower end, a distance of 120 miles; and passing through Harrisonburg, New Market, Woodstock, Strasburg, and Winchester. The main Valley of the Shenandoah, averaging about twenty miles in width, is closed on its western side by the Alleghenies, a more difficult chain of mountains than the Blue Ridge.