Toms Brook: The Woodstock Races
Near Front Royal, Virginia
On the morning of October ninth, eighteen sixty-four, Union General Alfred Torbert sent two cavalry divisions charging into Confederate horsemen camped along Tom's Brook near Woodstock. The Federals outnumbered the Rebels nearly two to one. The Confederate line broke fast, and the retreat became a rout. Union troopers chased the Southern cavalry south for almost twenty miles, all the way to Mount Jackson.
Valley residents and Union soldiers alike had a name for what they witnessed: the Woodstock Races. The joking title captured how completely the chase humiliated the Confederate cavalry. Union losses were around sixty men; the Confederates lost roughly six times as many. Historians count Tom's Brook among the most decisive Union cavalry victories of the war. After that October morning, Union cavalry held overwhelming superiority in the Shenandoah Valley.
