Stonewall Brigade - 1864

1864

In the Overland Campaign, at the Battle of the Wilderness, the brigade fought along the Orange Courthouse Turnpike. At Spotsylvania Court House, the brigade was on the left flank of the "Mule Shoe" salient, in the part of the line known as the "Bloody Angle", where Winfield S. Hancock's II Corps launched a massive assault. All but 200 men of the brigade were killed, wounded, or were among the 6,000 captured Confederates following the bloody hand-to-hand fighting. The prisoners included Johnson, the division commander, while Walker was seriously wounded. Spotsylvania Court House was the official end of the road for the Stonewall Brigade. The brigade was disbanded and its surviving members were consolidated into one (small) regiment.

The remaining regiment fought as part of Brig. Gen. William Terry's brigade (which itself was the remnant of the Stonewall Division) in the Valley Campaigns of 1864 under Jubal A. Early. It figured prominently in the Battle of Monocacy on July 9, 1864, routing the Union defenders and opening the road to Washington. Early's army was eventually defeated in the Valley by Philip Sheridan and they rejoined Robert E. Lee and the Army of Northern Virginia for the Siege of Petersburg and the Appomattox Campaign. Of the 6,000 men who served in the Stonewall brigade during the war, by the time of the surrender at Appomattox Court House, only 219 soldiers were left, none above the rank of captain.