Grant and Sherman had spent many nights sitting around the campfire out west in the early days of the war talking about what it would take to end the thing, while everyone on both sides was talking about a big win strategy, Grant and Sherman realized that the war would be won with a full court press: fighting on all fronts at once was actually pronounced insane for suggesting that the war would require big armies for years not months. By the conclusion of the battle at Gettysburg everyone else was forced to come around to their point of view, no one was going to quit just because they lost one battle no matter how big. The result of this belated conversion was the appointment of Grant as the supreme commander of the Union forces and his movement out of the Western Theater back east to the Army of the Potomac.

As part of his grand strategy, Grant, busy with Robert E. Lee on his Overland Campaign, ordered attacks on all fronts. Unfortunately for Grant one of his generals in the field was Franz Sigel. Sigel responded by marching his army of 10,000 into the Shenandoah Valley, the breadbasket of the Confederacy. Breckinridge responded by marching his army of 4,700, including 257 VMI students, in to meet the Union threat Sigel and Breckinridge met at New Market.

Follow the trail back along the river bluffs, very nice. There is a beautiful old stone wall and some river overlooks.

General Sigel had a checkered military career. On a good day, like at Pea Ridge, he could be quite effective; on a bad day, like at Wilson’s Creek, he could be worse than useless. So for the Union cause the question hung in the air as to which Sigel would show up at New Market.

For the South, General Breckinridge was a known quality, wounded at Shiloh Breckinridge established his reputation by capturing Port Hudson in the lower Mississippi Valley. He fought under Braxton Bragg at Stones River, Chattanooga, and Chickamauga. Later Breckinridge was given responsibility for the defense of the Shenandoah Valley which got him out from under Bragg.

As can be seen in the pictures the battlefield at New Market is an open landscape covered with low rolling hills. The Confederates appropriately enough moved in from the south and brushing back Union skirmishers off Manor’s Hill moved up to take positions on the Bushong Farm. The left of the Confederate line was anchored on the banks above the Shenandoah River and stretched east across the Valley Turnpike to Smiths Creek.

The Union took positions along the top of the ridge that formed Bushong’s Hill and stretched into a grove of cedars across the freeway. In a sense this left the Union left hanging. While the freeway wasn’t there in 1864 it oddly does divide the battlefield in two in a way that matches the day’s events quite appropriately. The battle can almost be looked at as two separate but related actions. I think this can be explained by another ridge running north and south that the freeway follows that and kind of channeled Confederate right into a series of gully’s that hid them from Union observation and protected them from fire.

The bulk of the Confederate forces took positions along the rail fence that separated the Bushong orchard from their back 40 field. The Union had the high ground and the center of the Confederate line caught hell as the two side banged away at each other. A gap opened in the line which Breckinridge filled with the VMI students, putting them in the middle of the worst part of the battlefield. Sigel saw the movement in the Confederate position and ordered an attack. The Union troop charged down across the field which turned out to be a muddy mess due to heavy rains earlier and lurched to a stop. Seeing the attack repulsed Sigel order the artillery to begin a withdrawal.