An Afternoon in May

By George Tomezsko

An Afternoon in May is the true story of four companies of heroes. In May of 1864 the Corps of Cadets, mostly teenagers, from the Virginia Military Institute helped turn the tide of battle at an obscure Virginia town called New Market. Though little-known outside the South, their story is arguably one of the most compelling military stories in American history. This book should, therefore, capture the attention of not only historians but of anyone with an interest in the War Between the States. But it should also command the attention of a wider audience. It is a must-read for anyone seeking examples of inspiration. NOTE: this book is available in ebook format!

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Jan 26, 2007
• ISBN: 9781453515785

George Tomezsko

George Tomezsko is a writer, essayist and historian with several previous books to his credit. His major interest in history is the War Between the States. The war in the Shenandoah attracted his attention when he wrote an earlier book, An Afternoon in May, that told the story of the Corps of Cadets from the Virginia Military Institute at the Battle of New Market in 1864. He wrote the present book to ensure the real significance of the military drama then being played out in the Shenandoah Valley is not forgotten.

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Copyright © 2007 by George Tomezsko.

Library of Congress Control Number:   2006904866

ISBN:      Softcover      978-1-4257-1788-9

      eBook         978-1-4535-1578-5

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

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Rev. date: 05/19/2017

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Contents

Prologue

Introduction

Daughter of the Stars

Seed Corn

Whitsunday

Always Faithful to Virginia

Gallant Conduct

The Growth of Legend

Life Went On

New Market Day

The Story of Mother Crim

Bibliography

Prologue

There once was a time when men believed in independence, national independence, and they were more than willing to pledge their lives, their fortunes, and their sacred honor to uphold that belief. But modern men wear a veneer of internationalism, just thick enough for them to pass muster with fashionable opinion, which seeks to rule the whole world in the name of Liberte, Egalite, Fraternite while believing in none of this trinity. Yet something more fundamental lies written deep in the human soul, the love of kith and kin, of home and country. This love abides, and bides its time. It moves men and boys to great deeds in unlikely places…

Disregard public opinion when it interferes with your duty (Gen. Thomas Stonewall Jackson, Book of Maxims).

Introduction

So stunning had been the Virginia sunset and the transition to night on the Tenth of May in 1864 the memories of it years later moved a former cadet to poetry. In Lexington on that day, the Corps of Cadets from the Virginia Military Institute had been drawn up, near sundown, for dress parade. When the evening gun sounded, the four companies of cadets marched back to their barracks, and in their leisure time after supper, the boys watched the moon rise over the mountains.

Perfume was in the air, silence in the shadows, John Sergeant Wise wrote in his monumental work, The End of An Era, more than thirty years later. "How beautiful this night. Well might we quote:

Heaven’s ebon vault

Bestudded with stars unutterably bright

Through which the moon’s unclouded

Splendor rolls, seems like a canopy which

Love hath spread, to shelter its sleeping world."

Wise had been a cadet corporal on that night, and its remembered beauty moved him to write words even more fitting: and so, tranquil, composed by the delightful scenes around us, three hundred of us closed our eyes and passed into the happy dreams of youth in springtime.

On the very next day these boy soldiers started toward the war, and the springtime of their youth would be over and gone. But they were soldiers, their country was at war and they were eager. They trained hard, studied hard, drilled hard and marched even harder.

And they were good at it.

Wise recalled that the cadence of the boys as they marched over the gravel walks of the Institute grounds would have made a muley cow keep step. That cadence would come in handy; military necessity was about to lead them to an obscure Virginia town called New Market, many miles away.

The Battle of New Market on Sunday, the Fifteenth of May in 1864 ensured that the Shenandoah Valley would remain in Confederate hands until almost the very end of what the South considered its war for national independence. The valor of those mostly teenaged cadets in service to the Lost Cause was instrumental in the defeat of the Union Army that day.

The key to the whole battle was a short, sharp action in a small orchard of only passing military significance. Great and heroic deeds were done there. At a critical point in history, the cadets helped the Confederacy purchase a commodity it needed most: time. It took discipline, of course, and devotion, and no small measure of honor and courage.

And it was horrible.

Perhaps Cadet John C. Howard said it best, after the gunfire, blood, smoke and rain of that long ago afternoon were over.

I look back upon that orchard as the most awful spot on the battlefield, he wrote.

They carried their cause on their flag. The Corps had a handsome flag, with a picture of George Washington set against a white and gold ground. Washington had fought for independence three generations before; now these brave boys were about to do likewise; it was his spirit and his cause that animated them.

But when seen from this distance of time, the events of that day appear now as in a dream. It is as if the character of each generation, when confronted with the virtues of a world gone by, has shrunken down and become progressively smaller. Once you know the story of what had happened there, it is humbling to stand on the battlefield at New Market. You could not do or feel otherwise because those who fought there had stood so tall. I hope we always remember.

For this reason, their story deserves to remain under the magnifying glass of history.

Daughter of the Stars

All the romance of the war is in this valley, wrote Major Charles G. Halpine, a journalist with the Union army, in May of 1864, and he was not far wrong. Many Valley residents regarded their home as a wonderful, magical place. To prove it, many of them claimed that the word Shenandoah was an Indian word, which translated to Daughter of the Stars, and was therefore a proof or sign that the Valley was special.

In fact, the Shenandoah Valley was, in a tactical or strategic sense, vital to both sides during the War. It formed a natural pathway for invasion for both of the contending armies. A Confederate force poised at the northern end of the Valley could easily strike at Washington. Likewise, a Federal force operating at its southern end could seize Richmond, the Confederate capital.

The Valley also afforded an army operating within it excellent possibilities for maneuver. Since it could be reached from the east by only a few gaps in the Blue Ridge, an army entering it from either end could move its entire length and remain unseen by the enemy simply by closing off these openings with troop deployments. In addition, a hostile force based in the Valley could race through any one of the Blue Ridge gaps to deliver a fatal blow to an exposed enemy flank barely sixty miles away.

Moreover, the crops from this abundantly fertile land were chiefly responsible for keeping the Confederate army in the East fed. Upon the produce of this region rested much of the hope, and fate, of the new nation. The Valley was a good place to grow families as well, and many did just that, ensuring a steady crop of strong sons to work the fields, factories, and flour mills, and daughters to help when needed. And when war came, many of those sons and daughters came readily to the service of their new country.

The Valley also contained the Virginia Central Railroad, the chief link between its east and west sides. The Confederacy maintained important hospitals, railyards, and supply warehouses in Staunton, one of the largest towns in that region. The Valley also had another asset, namely, the Valley Turnpike, then one of the longest all-weather roads in North America. Built with a macadam surface in the 1840s, this wide, graded roadway allowed large armies to move rapidly up and down the Shenandoah.

I have only to say this – that if this Valley is lost, Virginia is lost, said General Thomas Stonewall Jackson early in the war.

In the spring of 1864, with these facts firmly in mind, Lieutenant General Ulysses S. Grant set in motion a grand plan to force the Confederacy into surrender while he confronted General Robert E. Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia in the eastern part of the state.

My primary mission, Grant had said, is to bring pressure to bear on the Confederacy so no longer could it take advantage of interior lines.

The Union had organized its war efforts by geographical regions called departments, and by the late winter of that year, the Department of Northern Virginia, which bordered the Shenandoah, needed a new commander. One man who had lobbied openly for the position was Major General Franz Sigel. Control of the Shenandoah was a key element of Grant’s plan, and to achieve it he ordered a federal force commanded by Sigel to secure the Valley and threaten the left flank of Lee’s army. But Grant had little confidence in Sigel, and with good reason.

Sigel was born on 18 November 1824 at Sinsheim in the grand duchy of Baden, Germany. He graduated from the German Military Academy in Karlsruhe in 1843 and joined the German army. But he resigned in 1847 and became involved in radical politics. In 1848 he took part in the German Revolution, but the forces under his command were defeated and he was forced to flee to Switzerland. He made his way to England and lived there for a while until migrating to the United States in 1852. He taught school in both New York City and St. Louis for several years, and held a commission as a major in the 5th New York Militia. He joined the Union Army soon after the outbreak of the War, and was commissioned Colonel of the 3rd Missouri. He was promoted to the rank of brigadier general not long after for purely political reasons. Sigel was extremely popular among the large German communities of the northern states, and many in Washington thought that popularity would help Union recruitment efforts. But Sigel possessed only limited military capabilities. One commentator has said of him nowhere else in the Union Army could there be found such an example of the folly of letting politics govern promotions than Franz Sigel.

His war