WThe action at Mount Zion Church was a cavalry skirmish during the American Civil War that took place on July 6, 1864. The skirmish was fought between Union forces under Major William H. Forbes and Confederate forces under Colonel John S. Mosby near Aldie in Loudoun County, Virginia as part of Mosby's Operations in Northern Virginia. After successfully raiding the Union garrison at Point of Rocks, Maryland, Mosby's Rangers routed Forbes's command, which had been sent into Loudoun County to engage and capture the Rangers. The fight resulted in a Confederate victory.
WThe Appomattox campaign was a series of American Civil War battles fought March 29 – April 9, 1865, in Virginia that concluded with the surrender of Confederate General Robert E. Lee's Army of Northern Virginia to forces of the Union Army under the overall command of Lieutenant General Ulysses S. Grant, marking the effective end of the war.
WThe Beefsteak Raid was a Confederate cavalry raid that took place in September 1864 as part of the Siege of Petersburg during the American Civil War. Confederate Maj. Gen. Wade Hampton led a force of 3,000 troopers of the Confederate States Army on what was to become a 100-mile (160 km) ride to acquire cattle that were intended for consumption by the Union Army, which was laying a combined siege to the cities of Richmond and Petersburg, Virginia.
WThe Bermuda Hundred campaign was a series of battles fought at the town of Bermuda Hundred, outside Richmond, Virginia, during May 1864 in the American Civil War. Union Maj. Gen. Benjamin Butler, commanding the Army of the James, threatened Richmond from the east but was stopped by forces under Confederate Gen. P.G.T. Beauregard.
WThe Bristoe campaign was a series of minor battles fought in Virginia during October and November 1863, in the American Civil War. Maj. Gen. George G. Meade, commanding the Union Army of the Potomac, began to maneuver in an unsuccessful attempt to defeat Gen. Robert E. Lee's Army of Northern Virginia. Lee countered with a turning movement, which caused Meade to withdraw his army back toward Centreville. Lee struck at Bristoe Station on October 14, but suffered losses in two brigades and withdrew. As Meade followed south once again, the Union army smashed a Confederate defensive bridgehead at Rappahannock Station on November 7 and drove Lee back across the Rapidan River. Along with the infantry battles, the cavalry forces of the armies fought at Auburn on October 13, again at Auburn on October 14, and at Buckland Mills on October 19.
WThe Burning Raid was a Union raid conducted in the Loudoun Valley of Loudoun and Fauquier counties in Virginia in November and December 1864 during the American Civil War. It was aimed at destroying the forage on which Confederate partisans operating in the area, specifically Mosby's Rangers, subsisted as well as at breaking the will of the citizens of the area for supporting the partisans.
WThe Gettysburg campaign was a military invasion of Pennsylvania by the main Confederate army under General Robert E. Lee in summer 1863. The Union won a decisive victory at Gettysburg, July 1–3, with heavy casualties on both sides. Lee managed to escape back to Virginia with most of his army. It was a turning point in the American Civil War, with Lee increasingly pushed back toward Richmond until his surrender in April 1865. After his victory in the Battle of Chancellorsville, Lee's Army of Northern Virginia moved north for a massive raid designed to obtain desperately needed supplies, to undermine civilian morale in the North, and to encourage anti-war elements. The Union Army of the Potomac was commanded by Maj. Gen. Joseph Hooker and then by Maj. Gen. George G. Meade.
WColonel Stonewall Jackson's operations against the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad in 1861 were aimed at disrupting the critical railroad used heavily by the opposing Union Army as a major supply route. A second goal was to capture the maximum number of locomotives and cars for use in the Confederate States of America. During this point in the war, the state of Maryland's stance was not yet determined. The B&O Railroad, then owned by the state of Maryland, ran through Maryland and along the Potomac River Valley in its pass through the Appalachian Mountains, but took a crucial turn at Harpers Ferry and passed south, through Virginia and Martinsburg while crossing the Shenandoah Valley. The railroad then continued on through much of present-day West Virginia, which then was still part of Virginia, meaning that a major portion of the route went through a state which later seceded.
WJackson's Valley campaign, also known as the Shenandoah Valley campaign of 1862, was Confederate Maj. Gen. Thomas J. "Stonewall" Jackson's spring 1862 campaign through the Shenandoah Valley in Virginia during the American Civil War. Employing audacity and rapid, unpredictable movements on interior lines, Jackson's 17,000 men marched 646 miles (1,040 km) in 48 days and won several minor battles as they successfully engaged three Union armies, preventing them from reinforcing the Union offensive against Richmond.
WThe Skirmish at Miskel Farm, also known as the Fight at Miskel Farm or Gunfight at Miskel Farm, was a skirmish during the American Civil War. It took place April 1, 1863, near Broad Run in Loudoun County, Virginia, between Mosby's Rangers and the 2nd Pennsylvania Cavalry as part of Mosby's operations in Northern Virginia. The 2nd Pennsylvania surprised and attacked the Rangers, who were bivouacked on the farm of Thomas Miskel. The Rangers successfully defended the attack and subsequently routed the 2nd Pennsylvania, inflicting heavy casualties and taking many prisoners.
WOn March 17, 1863, Captain John Singleton Mosby "The Gray Ghost" raided a union outpost at Herndon Station in Northern Virginia. The raid was a part of a series of such raids coordinated by confederate Captain Mosby and his raiders in 1863 in areas of Northern Virginia. The raid on Herndon Station was the furthest north into Union lines Mosby and his men ventured. During the raid of Herndon Station 25 Union picket men were captured, and four Union men having lunch at the home of Herndon resident Kitty "Kitchen" Hanna were also found and captured by Mosby's raiders. The Town of Herndon still remembers the raid to this day as an important part of the town's history and participation in the Civil War.
WThe northern Virginia campaign, also known as the second Bull Run campaign or second Manassas campaign, was a series of battles fought in Virginia during August and September 1862 in the Eastern Theater of the American Civil War. Confederate General Robert E. Lee followed up his successes of the Seven Days Battles in the Peninsula campaign by moving north toward Washington, D.C., and defeating Maj. Gen. John Pope and his Army of Virginia.
WThe Overland Campaign, also known as Grant's Overland Campaign and the Wilderness Campaign, was a series of battles fought in Virginia during May and June 1864, in the American Civil War. Lt. Gen. Ulysses S. Grant, general-in-chief of all Union armies, directed the actions of the Army of the Potomac, commanded by Maj. Gen. George G. Meade, and other forces against Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee's Army of Northern Virginia. Although Grant suffered severe losses during the campaign, it was a strategic Union victory. It inflicted proportionately higher losses on Lee's army and maneuvered it into a siege at Richmond and Petersburg, Virginia, in just over eight weeks.
WThe Peninsula campaign of the American Civil War was a major Union operation launched in southeastern Virginia from March through July 1862, the first large-scale offensive in the Eastern Theater. The operation, commanded by Maj. Gen. George B. McClellan, was an amphibious turning movement against the Confederate States Army in Northern Virginia, intended to capture the Confederate capital of Richmond. McClellan was initially successful against the equally cautious General Joseph E. Johnston, but the emergence of the more aggressive General Robert E. Lee turned the subsequent Seven Days Battles into a humiliating Union defeat.
WThe Richmond–Petersburg campaign was a series of battles around Petersburg, Virginia, fought from June 15, 1864, to April 2, 1865, during the American Civil War. Although it is more popularly known as the siege of Petersburg, it was not a classic military siege, in which a city is usually surrounded and all supply lines are cut off, nor was it strictly limited to actions against Petersburg. The campaign consisted of nine months of trench warfare in which Union forces commanded by Lt. Gen. Ulysses S. Grant assaulted Petersburg unsuccessfully and then constructed trench lines that eventually extended over 30 miles (48 km) from the eastern outskirts of Richmond, Virginia, to around the eastern and southern outskirts of Petersburg. Petersburg was crucial to the supply of Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee's army and the Confederate capital of Richmond. Numerous raids were conducted and battles fought in attempts to cut off the Richmond and Petersburg Railroad. Many of these battles caused the lengthening of the trench lines.
WStoneman's 1864 raid also known as Stoneman's raid into Southwest Virginia was an American Civil War expedition into southwest Virginia by Cavalry and Infantry regiments, including the 3rd North Carolina Mounted Infantry, under Union Maj. Gen. George Stoneman, designed to disrupt infrastructure beneficial to the Confederate war effort. This expedition resulted in the Battle of Marion and the Second Battle of Saltville against a Confederate force under the command of John C. Breckinridge and accomplished the destruction of the saltworks at Saltville, Virginia.
WStoneman's raid in 1865 was a military campaign in the Upper South during the American Civil War, by Union cavalry troops led by General George Stoneman, in the region of eastern Tennessee, western North Carolina and southwestern Virginia. It began on March 23, 1865, in Knoxville, Tennessee. The Union soldiers were tasked with orders to "dismantle the country". They headed east into North Carolina, destroying towns and plundering along the way, then headed north into Virginia on April 2, where they destroyed 150 miles of railroad track belonging to the Virginia & Tennessee Railroad. On April 9, 1865, they re-entered North Carolina and traveled south to the twin towns of Winston and Salem, now Winston-Salem, and on to High Point.
WThe Warrenton Junction Raid was a surprise attack by Confederate guerrilla warriors on a Union cavalry detachment during the American Civil War. The raid took place near a railroad junction in Virginia's Fauquier County, less than 10 miles (16 km) from the town of Warrenton. Confederate Major John S. Mosby led the attack against about 100 men from the Union's 1st (West) Virginia Cavalry. At first, the raid was very successful, as many of the Union soldiers surrendered to the rebels. The remaining portion of the surprised force was surrounded in a house, and two of their leaders were wounded. The house was set on fire, and the Union soldiers surrendered. As Mosby's men rounded up prisoners and horses, a detachment of the 5th New York Cavalry surprised the rebels and rescued most of the captured Union soldiers. After a short fight, more men from the 5th New York, and the 1st Vermont Cavalry, joined in the pursuit of Mosby's fleeing rebels.
WThe Wilson–Kautz Raid was a cavalry operation in south central Virginia in late June 1864, during the American Civil War. Occurring early in the Richmond-Petersburg Campaign, the raid was conducted by Union cavalry under Brigadier Generals James H. Wilson and August Kautz, who were ordered to cut railroads between Lynchburg, Virginia, and the vital Confederate rail supply center at Petersburg. While the raid had the intended effect of disrupting Confederate rail communications for several weeks, the raiding force lost much of its artillery, all of its supply train, and almost a third of the original force, mostly to Confederate capture.
WThe Wytheville Raid or Toland's Raid was an attack by an undersized Union brigade on a Confederate town during the American Civil War. Union Colonel John Toland led a brigade of over 800 men against a Confederate force of about 130 soldiers and 120 civilians. The location of Wytheville, the county seat of Wythe County in southwestern Virginia, had strategic importance because of a nearby lead mine and the railroad that served it. This mine supplied lead for about one third of the Confederate Army's munitions, while the Virginia & Tennessee Railroad transported Confederate troops and supplies; plus telegraph wires along the railroad line were vital for communications. In addition to logistics of moving the lead to bullet manufacturing facilities, this rail line also connected an important salt works of an adjacent county with the wider Confederacy.
WThe Battle of Yorktown or Siege of Yorktown was fought from April 5 to May 4, 1862, as part of the Peninsula Campaign of the American Civil War. Marching from Fort Monroe, Union Maj. Gen. George B. McClellan's Army of the Potomac encountered Maj. Gen. John B. Magruder's small Confederate force at Yorktown behind the Warwick Line. McClellan suspended his march up the Peninsula toward Richmond and settled in for siege operations.