In the spring of 1864, as United States forces pressed Confederate armies across scattered fronts, Union Gen. Franz Sigel was assigned to secure the Shenandoah Valley, one of the Civil War’s most hotly contested areas. On the last day of April 1864, Sigel marched south from Martinsburg with 9,000 men and 28 guns, and by May 11 his advance encountered Confederates at Rude’s Hill under Capt. T. Sturgis Davis, a Maryland Confederate. Davis and Gen. John Imboden delayed the Federal advance until Gen. John C. Breckinridge reached New Market with his small army, including the Virginia Military Institute Cadet Battalion. On the eve of his May 15 success at New Market, Breckinridge moved his artillery to the crest of the hill and shelled Sigel’s disorganized, retreating Federals. Rude’s Hill again became a Confederate refuge after the demoralizing defeat at the Battle of Fisher’s Hill on September 22, 1864, when Gen. Jubal Early deployed infantry along the crest to check the Federal advance before retiring to Brown’s Gap in the Blue Ridge. On Oct. 3, 1864, Capt. John H. McNeill led about 50 men in a predawn attack on a Federal detachment guarding the Shenandoah River bridge; mortally wounded, he was carried to Locust Grove, formerly the Rude home, for care before being removed to Harrisonburg, where he died. While at Locust Grove, his disguised identity was uncovered by Gen. Philip Sheridan, the Federal commander, who called him “the most daring and dangerous of all the bushwackers in this section of the country.”

Photo: J. J. Prats

Photo: J. J. Prats

Photo: Devry Becker Jones (CC0)

Photo: J. J. Prats

Mount Jackson, Virginia · USA