Battle of Kernstown I
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The First Battle of Kernstown was fought on March 23, 1862, in Frederick County and Winchester, Virginia, the opening battle of Confederate Army Major General Thomas J. "Stonewall" Jackson's campaign through the Shenandoah Valley during the American Civil War. Although the battle was a Confederate defeat, and in fact Jackson's only defeat in the war, it represented a strategic victory for the South and started Jackson on the road to being one of the most celebrated Confederate generals.
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[edit] Background
Jackson's division had been retreating down the Valley (to the northeast) to cover the flank of Joseph E. Johnston's forces, falling back from Centreville. On March 21, 1862, Jackson received word that the Union force pursuing them was splitting, with one half pulling back to guard the upper Shenandoah Valley. To take advantage of this, Jackson turned his men around and marched 25 miles on March 22 and another 15 on the morning of March 23.
[edit] Battle
Relying on faulty intelligence from his cavalry commander, Colonel Turner Ashby, that reported the Union forces at Winchester numbered only four regiments (about 3,000 men), Jackson marched aggressively north with his 3,400-man division. The Union forces, however, constituted a full infantry division, almost 9,000 men. They were commanded by Col. Nathan Kimball, replacing Brig. Gen. James Shields, who had been wounded the previous day. Jackson moved north from Woodstock and arrived before the Union position at Kernstown at 1:00 p.m., March 23. He found that Ashby had been forced back and immediately reinforced him with one brigade. With the other two brigades Jackson sought to envelop the Union right by way of Sandy Ridge. But Colonel Erastus B. Tyler's brigade countered this movement, and, when Kimball's brigade moved to his assistance, the Confederates were driven from the field. There was no effective Union pursuit.
[edit] Aftermath
Despite this Union victory, President Abraham Lincoln was disturbed by Jackson's threat to Washington, D.C., and redirected substantial reinforcements to the Valley—two divisions (35,000 men) of Nathaniel P. Banks's army—at the expense of George B. McClellan's Army of the Potomac. McClellan claimed that the additional troops would have enabled him to take Richmond during his Peninsula Campaign.
After the battle, Jackson arrested the commander of his old Stonewall Brigade, Richard B. Garnett, for retreating from the battlefield before permission was received from Jackson. The Stonewall Brigade's withdrawal, which came after it received the bulk of the Union fire and suffered the majority of Confederate casualties, uncovered the right of Fulkerson's Brigade, forcing it to also withdraw and starting a panic. Garnett suffered from the humiliation of his court-martial for over a year, until he was finally killed in Pickett's Charge at the Battle of Gettysburg.
A Second Battle of Kernstown would occur in the Valley Campaigns of 1864.
