What Owen missed on June 8th was the Battle of Cross Keys. Here Jackson secured an escape route across a bridge over the North River into Port Republic. In that town the following day, Jackson handily shredded his final barrier to escape.[1] By the time the Fourteenth arrived to reinforce the rest of Kimball’s brigade they met only their defeated comrades from Samuel Carrol’s and Daniel Tyler’s brigades.[2]

Jackson escaped. His Valley Campaign was over.

The cat loses

Jackson had successfully mystified his enemy. In one month, he had kept the Union focused on a 400-mile cat-and-mouse chase up and down the valley, preventing 40,000 troops from joining McClellan’s assault on Richmond.[3]

Commenting on Jackson’s maneuvers in the Shenandoah Valley, Federal General Irwin McDowell said: “If the enemy can succeed so readily in disconcerting all our plans by alarming us first at one point, then at another, he will paralyze a large force with a very small one.”

Owen’s prediction that the war would continue for another six months would prove to be an understatement.

[1]Battles and Leaders 2 pg. 312

[2]Gallant Fourteenth pg 79

[3]Ward, Burns & Burns, “the Civil War.”