On September 19, 1864, the decisive assault in General Grant’s campaign to free the Shenandoah Valley from Confederate control took place here. This high ground formed part of Winchester’s defensive rampart against attack from the east. At daybreak, General Ramseur’s North Carolinians opened the fighting by firing on Capt. Hull’s New York cavalry as it emerged from the Berryville Canyon 1.5 miles northeast of here. Throughout the day, General Philip Sheridan’s 39,000 Federal troops converged on Winchester from the east and north to compel the withdrawal of General Jubal A. Early’s 15,000 Confederates. Federal troops pressed relentlessly against every part of the shrinking Confederate front in mortal combat. Overpowered, the Confederates withdrew southward through town at sundown, with Ramseur serving as their rear guard. General Archibald C. Godwin was killed here as his men rallied to him and is buried in this cemetery. At sunset, this cemetery ridge was the southern anchor of the Confederate battle line, which stretched in an arch east and north of town to the vicinity of Fort Collier and Star Fort. Many buried here lie near where they fell in battle, and the remains of many who died in local fields, homes, or hospitals between 1861 and 1865 are also interred here or in family plots. Union dead lie in the National Cemetery just across Woodstock Lane.
