May 6, 1862

May 6, 1862:  Eastern Theater – Shenandoah Campaign – However, Jackson’s move takes an interesting twist: rather than march directly west across the valley, he leaves his camp near Swift Run Gap with his 8,000 men and marched south to the town of Port Republic---and then across the Blue Ridge, as if headed toward Richmond.  At Mechum’s Station on the Virginia Central Railroad, he puts his troops on trains, and runs them back west to the town of Staunton, where he joins up with Gen. Allegheny Johnson’s brigade of 3,600.  At the same time, Maj. Gen. Richard Ewell, and his division of 8,000 men cross the Blue Ridge from the east side and camp at Jackson’s old spot at Conrad’s Store at Swift Run Gap, to keep the Luray Valley route plugged. 

To the east of the ridge, U.S. Gen. McDowell, whose job is to keep Jackson from reinforcing Johnston, is put on alert, and halts his progress southward to hook up with McClellan near Richmond.

---Brig. Gen. Robert Milroy, with his brigade of Union troops, is rapidly approaching Staunton from the mountainous region to the west.

---Josiah Marshall Favill, a young officer in the Army of the Potomac, writes about his regiment taking up new bivouac in liberated Yorktown, and going swimming:

Arrived at Yorktown at four P.M. and bivouacked in close column of division near to the shore. As soon as the tents were pitched and guards established, leave was given to all off duty to go in swimming. Of course, every one went and enjoyed themselves immensely, it being the first swim the men have had since their enlistment. The shore is formed of beautiful white sand and shelves out so gradually that one can walk out for three or four hundred yards without getting into deep water. It was a lively scene, as we saw it from the high bank, nearly ten thousand men, splashing and swimming in the sea at one time. After dinner, when the men were all in camp, we made up a party of officers and enjoyed a swim ourselves.

---Mary Boykin Chestnut writes her discouragement about continual Southern retreats:

It is this giving up that kills me. Norfolk they talk of now; why not Charleston next ? I read in a Western letter, “Not Beauregard, but the soldiers who stopped to drink the whisky they had captured from the enemy, lost us Shiloh.” Cock Robin is as dead as he ever will be now; what matters it who killed him?