The Battle of New Market: May 15, 1864

The Battle of New Market was a battle fought on May 15, 1864, in Virginia during Valley Campaigns of 1964 in the American Civil War. A small Confederate army forced Union Major General Franz Sigel and his army out of the Shenandoah Valley. In the spring of 1864, Union commander in chief Lieutenant General Ulysses S. Grant set in motion a grand strategy designed to press the Confederacy into submission. Control of the strategically important and agriculturally rich Shenandoah Valley was a key element in Grant's plans. While he confronted General Robert E. Lee's Army of Northern Virginia in the eastern part of the state, Grant ordered Major General Franz Sigel's army of 10,000 to secure the Velley and threaten Lee's flank, starting the Valley Campaigns of 1864. Sigel was to advance on Staunton, Virginia in order to link up with another Union column commanded by George Crook, which would advance from West Virginia and destroy the Virginia & Tennessee Railroad and other Confederate industries in the area. Receiving word that the Union Army had entered the Valley, Major John C. Breckinridge pulled together all available forces to repulse the latest threat. On the morning of May 13, Breckinridge decided to move north to attack Sigel. By the evening of May 14, Sigel's advance forces had reach a position north of the village of New Market, while Breckinridge was a Lacy Spring eight miles south of New Market. The Confederates started toward the Union positions at 1:00 a.m. on May 15, hoping to trap and crush the Union army.