March 18, 1862

March 18, 1862: Eastern Theater, Shenandoah Valley Campaign – Gen. Shields, with a division of 6,000 Federal infantry, marches south from Winchester, while on a parallel road, Col. John Mason, with a regiment of infantry and a regiment of cavalry, also marches south. As Mason turns to join Shields, near Strasburg, they find Turner Ashby with 700 Rebel cavalry, at the bridge where the Valley Turnpike crosses Cedar Creek. Ashby sets fire to the bridge, and impudently fires a dozen rounds of cannon fire at Mason’s column, and withdraws. As Shields columns come up, and find that they cannot cross Cedar Creek that night, they bivouac near Middletown, several miles north. Strasburg, south of the burnt bridge, is safe for the night, although Shields sets engineers to building a flimsy temporary bridge for the morrow.


---William Howard Russell, the famed and influential correspondent for the London Times, writes about recent developments on the warfront:

The greatest results have been obtained in the capture of Fort Donaldson and Fort Henry, by Commodore Foote’s flotilla co-operating with the land forces. The possession of an absolute naval supremacy, of course, gives the North United States powerful means of annoyance and inflicting injury and destruction on the enemy; it also secures for them the means of seizing upon bases of operations wherever they please, of breaking up the enemy’s lines, and maintaining communications; but the example of Great Britain in the revolutionary war should prove to the United States that such advantages do not, by any means, enable a belligerent to subjugate a determined people resolved on resistance to the last.

—Jeremiah Stetson, an infantryman in the 23^rd Massachusetts with Burnsides’s Coastal Division, writes home about his participation in the battle, and the spoils afterward:

I stuck to it til a vile ball struck me on my brest plate the brest plate glanced the ball away it gave me quite a clip but did not hirt me I fired my gun twice more and a cannon ball struck a pine tree a gunk of pine timber flew and struck me on the side nocked me down carryed up my ramrod burst a hole in my coat but did not hurt me much we drove them out in about 2 hours they had a battery flung up a mile and a half long to fight behind and we had nothing but a little woods which did us much hirt as good Gen Burnsides sais he could take bulls run forty times with the men he has got here but he sais they have dun fighting enough so we expect to stay here to garison the place it is a very pleasant place they left the city for life we live well now we have chickens gess ducks pigs hogs fat cattle sweet potatoes eggs and every thing the boys can git hold of . . .