The Battle of Front Royal
Near Front Royal, Virginia
On the twenty third of May, eighteen sixty two, the streets of this town became a battlefield. General Thomas Stonewall Jackson, deep in his celebrated Shenandoah Valley Campaign, had marched some sixteen thousand Confederate soldiers across Massanutten Mountain to fall upon a small Union garrison of about one thousand men holding Front Royal. The Federal troops, led by Colonel John Reese Kenly, were mostly from the First Maryland Infantry.
In a haunting twist, Jackson sent his own Confederate First Maryland regiment forward to lead the attack, so that Marylanders fought Marylanders through the streets and buildings of the town, brother against brother in the most literal sense. In one moment a Confederate captain named William Goldsborough took his own brother Charles prisoner. The fighting was fierce but brief.
More than six hundred and ninety Federal soldiers were captured, with roughly eighty more killed or wounded, while Jackson lost only about thirty six men. The victory here forced the larger Union army under General Nathaniel Banks into a desperate retreat toward Winchester. Jackson's lightning campaign in this valley tied down tens of thousands of Union troops who might otherwise have marched on Richmond.
