Description: From Lexington, Maj. Gen. David Hunter advanced against the Confederate rail and canal depots and the hospital complex at Lynchburg. Reaching the outskirts of town on June 17, his first tentative attacks were thwarted by the timely arrival by rail of Lt. Gen. Jubal A. Early’s II Corps vanguard from Charlottesville.  Hunter withdrew the next day after sporadic fighting because of a critical shortage of supplies. His line of retreat through West Virginia took his army out of the war for nearly a month and opened the Shenandoah Valley for a Confederate advance into Maryland.

Although not geographically part of the Shenandoah Valley, Lynchburg served as a major rail and canal center, supply depot, and hospital complex for the Confederacy. Produce from the Upper Valley could be shipped there by road or stream and thence to Richmond on the James River Canal, the Southside Railroad, or the O&A Railroad via Charlottesville and Gordonsville. The Southside Railroad linked Richmond with the western Confederacy through its connections with the Virginia & Tennessee Railroad. The Southside Railroad continued to supply Richmond, with interruptions from Federal raiders, until the Battle of Five Forks (1 April 1865).

As the war progressed, Lynchburg, too, became an important objective of Union campaigns in the Valley. In 1864, several expeditions--up the Valley from Winchester, and north from Bulls Gap, Tennessee--were devised to capture Lynchburg, but the city remained in Confederate hands until the end of the war.

For the Union, defending the vulnerable B&O Railroad and the line of the Potomac River were essential considerations for any operations in the Shenandoah Valley. Because of implicit threats against Washington, a small Confederate army in the Valley could pin down three to five times its number in Union defenders, threaten vital Union transportation and communication lines, and carry the war to the North, if opportunity presented itself.

As the war continued, the Shenandoah Valley increased in importance to the Southern cause, and correspondingly it became more urgent that the Northern armies succeed there after dramatic failures in 1862, 1863, and May 1864. Ultimately, the Northern army was forced to lay waste to the agricultural abundance of the Valley in order to destroy support for the Southern war effort.

Result(s): Confederate victory

Sources: National Park Service; Official Records of the Union and Confederate Armies; National Archives.