With Sigel at New Market: The Diary of Colonel D. H. Strother

WITH SIGEL AT NEW MARKET: THE DIARY OF COLONEL D. H. STROTHER Edited by Cecil D. Eby, Jr. When Grant launched his spring campaign of 1864, a comprehensive plan to overwhelm the Confederacy by concerted blows throughout the South, General Franz Sigel was in command of the Department of West Virginia and was charged with two objectives—to destroy the New River bridge of the Virginiaand Tennessee Railroad near Dublin and to divert Confederate General John C. Breckinridge from this attack by menacing the Virginia Central Railroad at Staunton. In accordance with this plan, Federal Generals George Crook and William W. Averell marched from the Kanawha Vatley early in May while Sigel started up the Valley of Virginia from Martinsburg. Although Crook succeeded in defeating the Confederates at Cloyds Mountain and in burning the New River bridge Sigel was humiliatingly trounced at New Market on May 15 and was replaced by Hunterfour days later. For the South the engagement at New Market possessed greater psychological than military significance. The courageous charge of the V.M.I, cadets forms one of the most colorful pages in American history, but the Confederate victory was cancelled only three weeks afterward when Hunter smashed the Confederate army at Piedmont and thereby gave the lie to the designation of the Shenandoah Valley as the "Valley of Humiliation" for the Northern armies. Sigel, of course, had no business at New Market in thefirst place. On the day of the battle his troops were strung out for nineteen miles along the Valley turnpike, and while his total force was numerically superior to that of Breckinridge, it was outnumbered and ill-managed on the field. That the retreat of his army Dr. Eby is associate professor of English at Madison College, Harrisonburg, Virginia. A native of Charles Town, West Virginia, he received his Ph.D. in American literature from the University of Pennsylvania. His latest book is The Old South fllustrated, an edition of the best writings and drawings of "Porte Crayon" (David Strother), from whose war journal the following excerpt was taken. 73 74CECIL D. EB Y, JR. did not become a rout is largely the result of a wet day, the fatigue of the Confederates, and the mismanagement of the Confederate cavalry under General John D. Imboden, which were hors de combat on the wrong side of Smith's Creek. A dearth of eye-witness reportsof the battle were written by Northern observers, who were perhaps more inclined to forget than to remember the events of New Market. However, the recent discovery of the military notebooks of Colonel D. H. Strother, one of SigeTs staff officers, supplies us with a graphic view of the battle as seen from the Union lines. David H. Strother (1816-1888) was nominally the commander of the 3rd West Virginia Cavalry, but as his regiment was split up among other contingents, he served throughout the war as a staff officer. He was a Virginian from Martinsburg who had joined General Robert Patterson 's staff as a civilian topographer and had been promoted to the ranks of captain, lieutenant colonel, and colonel. Before his assignment to Sigel, he served as an aide-de-camp to BanL·, Pope, McClelhn, and Kelley. He was particularly valuable as an aide, because prior to the war he had been a travel writer and artist for Harper's Magazine and was intimately familiar with much of the ground on which the war was fought. Strother never doubted that he would some day write about his wartime experiences, and he kept a series of notebooks into which he recorded each day's events. His "Personal Recollections of the War" which cover the period from Fort Sumter through Antietam, were published serially in Harper's from 1866 to 1868; his subsequent career is recorded in his unpublished notebooks. Strother's account of New Market is of greatest value in its characterization and description of General Sigel, who was distrusted by army and by staff alike. Professor Edward Turner's hypothesis that many of SigeFs men were disheartened before the campaign began in earnest is convincingly confirmed. Normally, Strother carried his notebook into battle with him, but not when campaigning...