The Federal offensive in the Shenandoah Valley begun in May 1864 faltered in the summer with Confederate victories and Gen. Jubal A. Early's Washington Raid in July, but after Union Gen. Philip H. Sheridan took command in August he defeated Early at Winchester in September and Cedar Creek in October, burned mills and barns, and crushed the remnants of Early's force at Waynesboro on March 2, 1865, helping secure President Abraham Lincoln's reelection in November 1864 and denying Gen. Robert E. Lee's army provisions from the "Breadbasket of the Confederacy." During the Civil War, this was Brown’s Shop Crossing on the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad, and in October 1864, while Sheridan's army was beating Early's army in the Shenandoah Valley, the railroad was a vital Federal supply line that Lt. Col John S. Mosby's Partisan Rangers sought to disrupt. On the night of October 14, 1864, in a cut half a mile west where a bridge now crosses the line, Mosby's 84 men tore rails from the track, and at 2:30 A.M. Engine No. 27, pulling an eight-car passenger train from Baltimore, reached the break and fell onto its side. Pistol shots smashed car windows as some of the rangers entered shouting and forced out civilian men, soldiers returning to their units, women, and children, along with two army paymasters carrying $172,000 in paper "greenbacks." German immigrants bound for a new home in Ohio refused to leave, either from ignorance of English or stubbornness, until a ranger threw a flaming bundle of New York Herald newspapers into the car and the homestead-seekers exited the burning train. Two Federal soldiers were shot dead, a woman was wounded, and the money was seized before the rangers galloped east of the Blue Ridge to the relative safety of "Mosby's Confederacy" and divided the loot, with each share totaling more than $2,000 and Mosby declining his share. The rail line was broken only temporarily, and additional Union troops were detached to guard it anew.