Battle Of McDowell

After Gen. Thomas J. "Stonewall" Jackson's unsuccessful attack on Union forces at Kernstown on March 23, 1862, Federal officials sent additional troops into the Shenandoah Valley to protect Washington, D.C. During the valley campaign in May and June, Jackson's "foot cavalry" marched 350 miles, defeated three Union armies in battles at McDowell, Front Royal, Winchester, Cross Keys, and Port Republic, inflicted twice as many casualties as it suffered, and tied down 60,000 Federal troops, making Jackson the Confederacy's foremost hero. At the Battle of McDowell on May 8, 1862, Cemetery Hill was crowded with Federal cannon, including those of Capt. Henry Hyman's Battery I, 1st Ohio Light Artillery, posted with the 55th Ohio Infantry behind them. As Union forces attacked Sitlington's Hill, where Gen. Edward "Allegheny" Johnson's Confederates waited under Jackson's command, Hyman fired on the Confederate position. Because the hill was so steep, the artillerists dug trenches for their cannon trails to raise the muzzles enough to reach the enemy. Union Gens. Robert C. Schenck and Robert H. Milroy launched the assault up Sitlington's Hill as a spoiling attack, hoping to delay a Confederate advance long enough for an orderly Federal withdrawal. Schenck urged the attackers, many of them Ohio regiments, with the words, "Remember that you are from Ohio!" Before darkness and Confederate reinforcements ended the fighting, luck, capable leadership, and high morale among the Ohio infantry nearly brought Union success. The battle ended as a costly Confederate victory in which Jackson lost twice as many men as the Federals, but it became the first of his string of victories in the campaign. Sgt. Oscar D. Ladley of the 75th Ohio Infantry sketched the battlefield and Sitlington's Hill from near this position, crossed Cemetery Hill with his regiment to join the attack, saw the regiment lose 39 killed, wounded, and missing, and survived the war to leave the army in 1865 as a captain.

McDowell, Virginia · United States