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.