During the second year of the American Civil War, the invasion of Maryland brought Confederate General Robert E. Lee against Harpers Ferry in September 1862, where he ordered "Stonewall" Jackson to attack. Jackson arrived on Schoolhouse Ridge with 14,000 men to begin the Battle of Harpers Ferry, facing mountain obstacles and a determined Union army defending Bolivar Heights. In a three-day battle, his forces overcame the terrain and the Union defenses, defeated the Union, and forced the largest surrender of U.S. troops during the Civil War. That victory enabled Lee to make his stand at nearby Antietam. By the late summer of 1862, Major General Thomas J. "Stonewall" Jackson was the Confederacy's most successful general, and after beginning his Confederate service at Harpers Ferry as a colonel in April 1861, he returned 17 months later and used his knowledge of the area's rugged terrain to outmaneuver Union troops.
