At the beginning of the Civil War, the house at Rude’s Hill was occupied by Lutheran minister Rev. Anders R. Rude. After retiring from the battle at Kernstown on March 23, 1862, Gen. Thomas J. “Stonewall” Jackson’s small Confederate force took a defensive position here while Confederate cavalry under Col. Turner Ashby held the slowly advancing Federals beyond Stony Creek near Edinburg, about nine miles north. By April 2, 1862, Jackson and his staff occupied the Rude home and remained quartered there until April 17, and dispatches from this headquarters carried the dateline “Rude’s Hill,” a name that endured even after Rev. Rude left the Valley in the fall of 1862. On April 6, 1862, the Union army under Gen. Nathaniel P. Banks broke through Ashby’s Stony Creek line, and Jackson ordered Ashby to burn the railroad property in Mt. Jackson and the bridge over the Shenandoah River if pressed. The next morning, the Federal army advanced and forced the retreat of Ashby’s rearguard. During the withdrawal, Ashby personally tried to help burn the Shenandoah River bridge and was nearly killed when four Union troopers charged him; his white horse, Tom Telegraph, suffered a mortal wound in the lungs, and at least three of the attackers were wounded by Confederates who turned back to rescue their commander. After Ashby reached the safety of the Confederate batteries on Rude’s Hill, his horse was unsaddled and led away to die. Late on April 17, Jackson sent word for Gen. Richard Ewell to reinforce him at Swift Run Gap in the Blue Ridge Mountains east of Harrisonburg, where he would prepare the Valley army for the next phase of the Valley Campaign of 1862.

Photo: Bradley Owen

Photo: Linda Walcroft

Photo: J. J. Prats

Photo: Devry Becker Jones (CC0)

Mount Jackson, Virginia · USA