June 6, 1862 - Battle of Harrisonburg

June 6, 1862

Battle of Harrisonburg (or the Battle of Good's Farm; or Chestnut Ridge)

Harrisonburg, VA

USA- Frémont:

1st New Jersey Cavalry Regiment > Colonel Percy Wyndham; Brigadier General George D. Bayard: the 1st Pennsylvania Cavalry and the 13th Pennsylvania Reserves

vs.

CSA- Jackson:

Confederate scouts > infantry of the 58th Virginia; 7th Virginia Cavalry under Colonel Turner Ashby; reinforcements from the 1st Maryland Infantry under Col. Bradley Johnson

* A small rear-guard engagement, with nary its own website, part of Jackson's 1862 Valley Campaign. This is/occurs simultaneously with the cavalry raid in which Ashby dies.

* Soldiers of the 13th Pennsylvania Reserves claimed credit for the shot that killed Ashby, though some accounts blame friendly fire.

* Despite the quick death of an infamous traitor, it wasn't really a great day: the PA Reserves retreated after a counterattack, and during a "hasty and disorganized retreat" the 1st NJ left behind Colonel Wyndham, 3 Captains, the regimental colours, and about a twelfth of their men; Colonel Thomas L. Kane, wounded in the leg, and Captain Charles Frederick Taylor were both captured 

* Silver lining: McNeil (of the Raiders) dies here two years later. 

* Johnson survives to invade Maryland in 1864 with Harry Gilmore, under that desperate bastard, Jubal Early. 

https://www.hmdb.org/m.asp?m=253876

Chestnut Ridge

Death of Ashby

—1862 Valley Campaign—

On June 6, 1862, the vanguard of Union Gen. John C. Frémont’s force, pursuing Confederate Gen. Thomas J. “Stonewall” Jackson’s army south up the Shenandoah Valley, reached this point near Harrisonburg. Jackson’s rear guard, led by Gen. Turner Ashby, engaged Federal cavalry here and captured Col. Sir Percy Wyndham, the English commander of the 1st New Jersey Cavalry who had earlier boasted that he would “bag Ashby.” The 1st Maryland Inf. and 58th Virginia Inf. set an ambush for the Federals. At about 6 p.m., however, Union forces appeared not in the road as expected, but in a concealed position near Ashby’s force. When Ashby’s horse was shot from under him, he rolled off the mount, regained his footing and ordered his men to stop shooting and use the bayonet, shouting, “Charge, men! For God’s sake charge!” Then a Union bullet pierced Ashby’s side and passed through his chest. He fell dead while his men cleared the Federals from the woodline.

The next day, Ashby’s body lay in state in the Frank Kemper house in Port Republic, where a brief funeral service was held. Jackson viewed the body there in private. Although Ashby’s lack of discipline had drawn Jackson’s sharp rebuke two months earlier, he later praised Ashby. “As a partisan officer I never knew his superior,” Jackson wrote. “His daring was proverbial ... his tone of character heroic, and his sagacity almost intuitive in divining the purposes of the enemy.”

On June 6, 1898, the Turner Ashby Monument was dedicated under the auspices of Turner Ashby Chapter 162, United Daughters of the Confederacy. The Chapter continues to maintain the death site.

https://www.hmdb.org/m.asp?m=58591

Gen. Turner Ashby

C. S. A.

was killed on

this spot,

June 6, 1862,

gallantly leading

a charge.

Honestly, I have seen a lot worse from the UDC. I appreciate the early date at which this memorial was erected - and its nearly objective stance. (As a reminder, traitors are not gallant.) Ashby's name seems to have been chiseled away, but hard to say when or how; it was like that when I got here! 

https://www.hmdb.org/m.asp?m=40317

 On wooded Chestnut Ridge the evening of Friday, June 6, 1862, Pennsylvania Bucktails under Col. Kane were defeated in a hard fight with the 58th Va. under Col. Letcher and Gen. Turner Ashby and the 1st Md. under Col. Bradley Johnson. Gen. Ashby killed; Col. Kane captured. Stonewall Jackson said of Gen. Ashby: “I never knew his superior, his daring was proverbial.”

That ridge is out by JMU. Now, heading into downtown Harrisonburg...

https://www.hmdb.org/m.asp?m=39330

Confederate General Hospital

Harrisonburg Female Academy

Harrisonburg was Rockingham County’s seat of government and largest town, and it was an ideal site for a hospital. When the Civil War began in 1861, although the railroad had not yet extended to Harrisonburg, the town sat at the intersection of four turnpikes, including the macadamized Valley Turnpike, the main avenue for travel through Virginia’s Great Valley.

Various buildings in Harrisonburg were used as temporary hospitals from the outset of the war. The most important of these was the Harrisonburg Female Academy at this location on Main Street. The large, three-story building had been built on this site in 1852. It was converted to hospital use in 1861, and Harrisonburg physician Dr. W.W.S. Butler was appointed surgeon in charge.

The academy building became an official Confederate General Hospital in October 1862. By the next July, 763 patients had been treated. Of that total, only 19 had died, a remarkable record for any Civil War hospital. Many of the fatalities were buried in Harrisonburg’s Woodbine Cemetery. There were so many sick and wounded in Harrisonburg during the summer of 1863, as troops retreated from Gettysburg, the hospital could not hold them all.

As control of Harrisonburg alternated back and forth from Confederate to Union forces several times during the war, doctors staffing the hospital also changed sides. After the Battle of Cross Keys, more than 100 sick and wounded Union soldiers were left in and around the town with five Federal surgeons remaining behind to take care of them.

“Only a little time elapsed … before the building used as a school house in days of peace was converted into a hospital, and from that time until the summer of 1865 it was never without the sick and wounded. … Several battles were fought near the town, and the hospitals were often filled with the wounded of both armies.”

— Orra Gray Langhorne, Our Women of the War (1885)

https://www.hmdb.org/m.asp?m=263480

From Home to Hospital

Suffering in the Warren House

—Virginia Civil War Trails—

The Civil War brought trauma and pain to this stately home, built in 1856. Before the conflict began, Edward T.H. Warren, his wife, Virginia Watson Magruder, and their three children, Elizabeth, James, and Virginia resided here. With them, lived Warren's mother Harriet, his grandmother, his sister, as well as Virginia's two sisters.

The 1860 census records indicate that this house was also home to eight enslaved persons owned by the Warrens. They would have likely been working around the house, but still treated as property. Three of these individuals are named in a letter between the Warrens: Martha Ann, Fanny, and Bill. Their ages ranged from 6 to 17 years old and it is assumed that four of the eight of them were a family.

Edward Warren was active in the local militia, and joined the 10th Virginia Infantry when the war broke out. He led his regiment, and at times a brigade, through some of the most savage battles of the war. At the Battle of the Wilderness, Va., on May 5, 1864, he was shot seven times and died at age 34.

After the Battle of Gettysburg in July 1863, the General Hospital down the street overflowed with wounded, and some were brought to the Warren house. The home's most famous patient, 19-year-old artillery Maj. Joseph Latimer, died in the house on August 1, 1863, after gangrene set in following an arm amputation.

Many Confederate hospital records were lost at the end of the war. Today, it may never be known exactly how many soldiers received care at the house, and how many enslaved individuals and women worked here to save their lives.

Yep, 'cause when I think of enslaved people, I think of them saving the lives of Confederate soldiers. Go on; tell me more, Virginia Civil War Trails...

https://www.hmdb.org/m.asp?m=256375

Hardesty-Higgins House

Banks's Headquarters

This was the home of Harrisonburg’s first mayor, Isaac Hardesty, an apothecary. Elected in 1849, Hardesty served until 1860. His Unionist sympathies compelled him to leave for Maryland after the Civil War began. Early in the first week of May 1862, Union Gen. Nathaniel P. Banks established his headquarters here while attempting to locate Confederate forces under Gen. Thomas J. “Stonewall” Jackson and Gen. Richard S. Ewell. Banks telegraphed Washington several times during his stay here, speculating on Jackson’s and Ewell’s whereabouts. Banks and his army departed Harrisonburg for New Market on May 5, hoping to engage Jackson’s Valley Army and destroy the rail and supply centers at Staunton and Charlottesville. Jackson stymied him, however, by destroying the bridges over the North River at Mount Crawford and Bridgewater, and obstructing the fords with farm harrows. Before the month ended, Jackson drove Banks from the Shenandoah Valley; in June, Jackson defeated two other Union armies to crown his Valley Campaign.

Later in the war, the Strayer sisters, whose dwelling in eastern Rockingham County had been ransacked after the Battle of Port Republic, were renting the Hardesty house when Union Gen. Philip H. Sheridan’s army occupied the town in 1864. A young slave woman named Fanny, who had grown up with the sisters, cooked the soldiers’ rations in exchange for a share, which she took to wounded Confederates in a nearby hospital. At the end of the occupation, Fanny and her elderly parents left for freedom with Sheridan’s army.

Again, I'm going to accuse VA historians of cherry-picking to the point of deception: of all the stories from all the enslaved people in VA, the only stories the signs tell are again about them helping their oppressors. This is why the world needs public historians. 

Oh and next, Cumberland, MD called; they said, "FUCK McNeil and his lawless, treasonous, kidnapping raiders."  

https://www.hmdb.org/m.asp?m=39331

McNeill’s Rangers

“Hurah for McNeal”

Harrisonburg is associated with the exploits of McNeill’s Rangers, a famous Confederate partisan unit. In 1862, John Hanson McNeill, a native of Hardy County in present-day West Virginia, recruited men for Co. E, 18th Virginia Cavalry. With McNeill as captain, the unit entered Confederate service on September 5, 1862, as partisan rangers under Gen. John Imboden’s nominal command.

McNeill’s Rangers attacked Federal camps, raided railroads, and seized Union supplies. Early in March 1863, McNeill and his men rode into Harrisonburg with captured “horses and harness,” which he auctioned off at the courthouse for $36,000. A local resident noted in his diary, “A good haul don’t you think hurah for McNeal.”

On the morning of October 3, 1864, McNeill attacked Federal troops in Mount Jackson in the Shenandoah Valley. Seriously wounded, McNeill ordered his men to leave him at a nearby house. He was rescued from captivity a few days later and brought to Hill’s Hotel, which was located to your left on the corner of Main and Water Streets. He died there on November 10, and his son, Lt. Jesse C. McNeill, took command of the Rangers.

McNeill orchestrated the Rangers’ greatest coup. On February 21, 1865, the unit kidnapped Union Gens. George Crook and Benjamin F. Kelley from a hotel in Cumberland, Maryland. Crook had come there late in 1864 to command the Department of Western Virginia. The Rangers quickly returned to Virginia and, in a snowstorm, brought the generals here and treated them to “a hearty breakfast at Hills Hotel.” Crook and Kelley were soon exchanged. The Rangers continued to operate until they surrendered on April 24, 1865.

(sidebar)

The capture of Union Gen. Benjamin F. Kelley may have been especially satisfying to Lt. Jesse C. McNeill. In 1863, McNeill’s mother, sister, and young brother were arrested under Kelley’s orders and confined briefly in Camp Chase, Columbus, Ohio. The arrest was a futile attempt to intimidate Capt. John H. McNeill.

https://www.hmdb.org/m.asp?m=16482

Court Square & Springhouse

Temporary Prison Cam

During the Civil War, a road (Market Street) ran east and west through the courthouse square, dividing it roughly in half. The courthouse occupied the northern portion while the jail, clerk’s office, and springhouse were in the southern section. Plank fences surrounded both yards. These enclosures occasionally were used as holding pens for prisoners during the conflict. After the First Battle of Winchester on May 25, 1862, Gen. Thomas J. “Stonewall” Jackson confined about 2,000 Union prisoners of war in the yards briefly before they were marched to Richmond.

Civilians and soldiers alike quenched their thirsts at the springhouse (later reconstructed) in the southwestern corner of the square. Artist J.E. Taylor sketched the original springhouse while traveling with Gen. Philip H. Sheridan’s Federal army in the fall of 1864.

Fighting occurred on Harrisonburg’s doorstep several times during the war, especially in 1862. On June 6, just before the nearby battles of Cross keys and Port Republic, a rearguard engagement southeast of town resulted in the death of Gen. Turner Ashby, Jackson’s cavalry chief.

For a town of its size (about 1,400 in 1860), Harrisonburg had a large number of hotels, reflecting its importance as the county seat and a regional commercial center. The American Hotel (built about 1820), also known as the McMahon’s Tavern, which stood on main Street opposite the southeastern corner of the square, was a popular stopping place during the war. On June 5, 1863, the local newspaper reported that the famous Confederate spy, Belle Boyd, had “been in Harrisonburg for a few days past, stopping at the American.” The hotel was destroyed in the great Harrisonburg fire on Christmas Day, 1870

* " courthouse grounds were used as a prison pen following the first battle of Winchester in 1862"

https://www.hmdb.org/m.asp?m=263579

Urban Water Movement

Black's Run - 

And Its Importance To Harrisonburg's Past, Present, and Future

In the Natural World

In forests and meadows, about 80-percent of rain and melted snow soaks into the ground. Roots, soil, and rocks filter impurities, and then the water joins underground reservoirs. Only during heavy rains or rapid snow melts does water run across the surface to get to a stream or river.

In an Urban World

Urban environments have hard surfaces such as parking lots, roads, sidewalks, and roofs. Water cannot soak into these impervious surfaces, so gutters and storm drains move the water directly to streams. This water is not slowed or filtered, increasing the potential for flooding, erosion, and pollution. Streams and rivers then carry those pollutants downstream.

Slow Down

Drainage plans with plantings that allow water to soak into the ground instead of being channeled directly to the stream create many benefits. The water is filtered by soil and foots, replenishing ground-water, before slowly entering streams. As you walk, look for how water moves in downtown Harrisonburg.

Sorry to end anticlimactically with the spring instead of a battlefield, but there's plenty more to see in the Valley...

https://www.visitharrisonburgva.com/civil-war-trails-battles-on-the-home-front/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Good%27s_Farm