On May 26, 1864, Union Gen. David Hunter marched south from Cedar Creek near Winchester as part of Gen. Ulysses S. Grant’s strategy to attack Confederate forces simultaneously throughout Virginia, with orders to drive out Confederates, lay waste to the Shenandoah Valley, and destroy transportation facilities at Lynchburg. After defeating Gen. William E. “Grumble” Jones at Piedmont on June 5, Hunter marched to Lexington, burned Virginia Military Institute, and moved toward Lynchburg. On June 14, after occupying Lexington and burning the institute, Hunter’s 18,000-man force advanced through Buchanan, a river port at the western terminus of the James River and Kanawha Canal. When Union Gen. William W. Averell’s cavalry tried to seize the Buchanan Bridge across the James River, Confederate Gen. John C. McCausland’s troopers, who had been harassing them, confronted them there. Before Averell arrived, the Confederates had packed the wooden covered bridge with coal oil-soaked hay, and McCausland ignited the north end before escaping in a small boat to the near side of the river beneath the burning structure. An artillery duel followed, and Federal shells struck Oak Hill, the large house on the hill above. Wind carried embers from the bridge across the river to dwellings in Pattonsburg, and although Averell’s men helped extinguish the flames, eleven houses burned. The bridge survived but was unusable, forcing Union soldiers, wagons, and artillery to ford the river upstream and lose a day’s march. The next morning Hunter’s force crossed the Blue Ridge Mountains on present-day Route 43. At Lynchburg on June 17-18, Gen. Jubal A. Early repulsed Hunter and pursued him to West Virginia, then turned north in July to threaten Washington.