SHENANDOAH VALLEY CAMPAIGNS

(July 1861March 1865), in the American Civil War, important military campaigns in a four-year struggle for control of the strategic Shenandoah Valley, Virginia, running roughly north and south between the Blue Ridge and Allegheny mountains. The South used the transportation advantages of the valley so effectively that it often became for the North the valley of humiliation until late in the war, when Union forces finally took undisputed control. Whenever a Confederate army moved north, it drew nearer to Washington, but when a Union army moved up the valley, it was pulled away from Richmond. When a Southern army crossed the Potomac (where the Shenandoah River joined it), the army cut across the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad and was only 60 miles northwest of Washington. Hence the presence of a Confederate army in the northern part of the Shenandoah Valley was often considered a sufficient menace to justify calling back troops from campaigns elsewhere to ensure the security of the capital. During the first several years of the war, the valley was the arena for a series of Confederate attacks and manoeuvres under such generals as P.G.T. Beauregard, T.J. Stonewall Jackson, Richard S. Ewell, and Wade Hampton. These campaigns tied up thousands of troops and posed a continual threat to the Northern capital. Finally in May 1864 Union Gen. Ulysses S. Grant dispatched Gen. Philip H. Sheridan to clear the valley once and for all. On March 2, 1865, Confederate forces under Gen. Jubal A. Early suffered a decisive defeat that ended Southern resistance in the valley. The Confederacy collapsed the following month.