Salem, renamed Marshall in 1882, lay in the heartland of Col. John Singleton Mosby’s Confederacy, where his 43rd Battalion of Partisan Rangers was summoned by the grapevine when needed and carried out successful raids, often under cover of darkness. On October 5, 1864, one mile southwest of Salem on Stephenson’s Hill, Mosby’s men lobbed artillery shells at Federal soldiers as they tried to repair the Manassas Gap Railroad just east of Salem. Confederate Gens. Lee, Longstreet, Jackson, and Stuart all stayed in or marched through Salem during the war. On August 25, 1862, Gen. Stonewall Jackson bivouacked there on the way to the Battle of Second Manassas. One day later, Gen. Robert E. Lee, with Longstreet’s Corps, spent the evening at the home of Mrs. John Marshall, daughter-in-law of U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice John Marshall. On August 27, Lee, accompanied by 12 staff officers and couriers, set out for Manassas well in advance of his troops, and when Federal cavalry approached dangerously close, his officers formed a line across the road to screen his flight as he rode quickly to the cover of his advance guard; the Federals, believing they faced a large cavalry force, turned back, in what is believed to have been one of the few times during the war that Lee was actually in danger of capture. After Lee’s surrender to U.S. Grant on April 9, 1865, Mosby called the Rangers together on April 21 in Salem and, rather than surrender, formally disbanded the battalion at a site one-half mile away.