On May 26, 1864, Union Gen. David Hunter marched south from Cedar Creek near Winchester to drive out Confederate forces, lay waste to the Shenandoah Valley, and destroy the railroads at Lynchburg as part of Gen. Ulysses S. Grant's strategy to attack Confederates simultaneously throughout Virginia. After defeating Gen. William E. "Grumble" Jones at Piedmont on June 5, Hunter marched to Lexington, burned Virginia Military Institute, and headed to Lynchburg, where on June 17-18 Gen. Jubal A. Early repulsed him and pursued him to West Virginia before turning north in July to threaten Washington. When Hunter's 18,000-man force left Staunton on June 10, 1864, Gen. George Crook's infantry division and Gen. William W. Averell's cavalry division advanced along the Brownsburg Turnpike. To delay them, Confederate Gen. John McCausland's cavalry brigade charged the Federals five times, each time forcing the cavalry to dismount and the infantry to deploy. Averell left the turnpike at Newport with most of his men and moved down the Walker's Creek Valley in an unsuccessful attempt to get in McCausland's rear, then bivouacked at Bellevue, the home of the Rev. James Morrison, on Hays Creek two miles west of Brownsburg. David S. Creigh, a prominent resident of Greenbrier County, West Virginia, accompanied the Federals as a prisoner after being convicted and condemned for killing a Federal soldier plundering his house, and Averell's men hanged him behind Bellevue. Crook and the main Union force skirmished with McCausland at Brownsburg before bivouacking there for the night; Crook's officers included future presidents Rutherford B. Hayes and William B. McKinley. McCausland fell back to the Valley Turnpike and camped on the Andrew Cameron farm near Lexington, and on June 11, 1864, Crook and Averell continued toward Lexington, where on June 11-14 the raiders shelled and occupied the town, sacked Washington College, burned the home of Virginia Governor John Letcher, and destroyed much of the Virginia Military Institute. The Confederates later burned Chambersburg, Pennsylvania, in retaliation.