Having remained with his command near Winchester since the Battle of Sharpsburg/Antietam, General Thomas J. “Stonewall” Jackson was again on the march by November 22, 1862. With more than 32,000 soldiers, his force moved up the snow-covered Shenandoah Valley toward New Market and then toward Columbia Bridge by way of this gap. Late on November 23, after reaching a point atop Massanutten Mountain, Jackson took the rare opportunity to rest and camped nearby. The next morning, as his staff admired the commanding view of the Page Valley below, Jackson emerged from his tent wearing the signs of his recent promotion to lieutenant general: a new coat given by General J.E.B. Stuart, a tall hat purchased by his mapmaker Jedediah Hotchkiss, and a captured sword donated by a cavalryman. Ignoring their stares, he announced, “Young gentlemen, this is no longer the headquarters of the Army of the Valley, but of the Second Corps of the Army of Northern Virginia.” In the following days, the new corps crossed the South Fork of the Shenandoah at the site of Columbia Bridge near Alma, passed across Fisher’s Gap, and left the Valley to rendezvous with General Robert E. Lee and the main body of the Army of Northern Virginia. Less than three weeks later, Jackson’s Corps held the Confederate right flank at the Battle of Fredericksburg, Virginia, as Federal forces under General Ambrose Burnside unsuccessfully tried to dislodge Lee from his strong defensive line on December 13, 1862.