On the night of September 14, 1862, Confederate Colonel Edmund Pendleton and his men held Union forces in check from School House Ridge opposite Bolivar Heights. Pendleton believed a brief burst of musketry near the Confederate right had come from two Union regiments on picket duty mistakenly firing on each other, but he was wrong. The gunfire was part of General "Stonewall" Jackson's plan to outflank the Union stronghold on Bolivar Heights by moving artillery and infantry to the far left of the Union position. To conceal that maneuver and distract Union troops, Jackson ordered forces on School House Ridge to stage a feint attack against the Union skirmish line near the road below. Although the attack there lasted only a short time, it was a critical part of the Confederate strategy and a life and death struggle for the soldiers involved.
