First Battle of Kernstown, 1862: Stonewall Jackson's only defeat

Stonewall Jackson lost only one battle in his two years of Confederate service, and he lost it on a cold Sunday south of Winchester, Virginia. Kernstown was a tactical defeat that still did what his superiors wanted. It was also the first battle of his 1862 Shenandoah Valley Campaign.²

A small army with a big task

In early March 1862 Jackson's orders from General Joseph E. Johnston were to keep the Union forces in the Shenandoah Valley from moving east to join McClellan's offensive against Richmond. He had barely 4,000 men at Winchester against some 20,000 under Major General Nathaniel Banks. When Banks advanced on 11 March, Jackson withdrew south to Mount Jackson.³

Then some of the Union troops were sent east, and Jackson saw his chance. On 22 March his cavalry commander, Colonel Turner Ashby, skirmished south of Winchester and reported that most of Banks's force was leaving and only a small number of Federals remained. In that skirmish Brigadier General James Shields was wounded, and command of his division passed to Colonel Nathan Kimball. Ashby's report was wrong. Shields's division of nearly 8,000 men was still at Winchester.⁴

Pritchard's Hill

The morning of Sunday, 23 March, was cold and raw, with patches of snow on the ground. Around 9 a.m. Ashby's cavalry, with a battery and four companies of the 2nd Virginia Infantry, opened the battle near the hamlet of Kernstown. Kimball brought up more troops and placed ten rifled guns on Pritchard's Hill, just west of the Valley Pike, and Ashby's attempts to get around the Union flank were driven back by their fire.⁵

Jackson's main body had marched nearly 20 miles from Strasburg and began to arrive around 2 p.m. He judged an attack on Pritchard's Hill unwise and sent two of his three brigades, Brigadier General Richard Garnett's Stonewall Brigade and Colonel Samuel Fulkerson's, west to Sandy Ridge to turn the Union position. There they took cover behind a stone wall that crossed the ridge. When his staff officer Sandie Pendleton came back from scouting and reported that they might be facing as many as 10,000 men, Jackson told him: "Say nothing about it. We are in for it."⁶

The fight on Sandy Ridge

Kimball sent Colonel Erastus Tyler's brigade against the ridge. Tyler advanced his regiments one behind another rather than side by side, so only the leading regiment could fire on the Confederates behind the wall, and the rest had to deploy under fire. The National Park Service says the formation almost proved disastrous for the Federals, who were saved by reinforcements from Kimball and the guns on Pritchard's Hill.⁷

Tyler finally formed his five regiments in one line, and with Kimball's reinforcements the Union numbers began to tell. The American Battlefield Trust notes that Jackson's men fought hard against Kimball's counterattack. After several hours the Confederates ran low on ammunition, and Garnett ordered a retreat from Sandy Ridge without orders from Jackson. Jackson tried in vain to rally his outnumbered men and, as evening fell, the Confederates withdrew south along the Valley Pike.⁸

Counting the cost

The two main sources give slightly different numbers. The American Battlefield Trust puts the forces engaged at 8,500 Union and 3,800 Confederate, with 590 Union and 718 Confederate casualties. The National Park Service gives about 7,200 Union and some 3,700 Confederates engaged, with about 575 Union losses and nearly 740 Confederate, over 22 percent of Jackson's force.⁹

Jackson was furious with Garnett and later brought charges against him, although the NPS judges that retreat was the right decision.¹⁰

A defeat that worked

The Lincoln administration, always anxious about the safety of Washington, believed Jackson's force was much larger than it was and feared he might invade Maryland. Lincoln sent substantial reinforcements, troops meant for McClellan's campaign against Richmond, back to the Valley. In that sense, as the NPS puts it, Jackson's defeat at Kernstown accomplished exactly what Johnston had wanted. Read more in our profile of Stonewall Jackson.¹¹