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Shenandoah Valley Battlefields National Historic District
Home
Visit
Visiting the Valley
Battlefields
Museums and Historic Sites
Audio and Driving Tours
Shenandoah Valley Civil War Museum
Winchester Battlefields Visitor Center
New Market Visitor Center and Museum
Learn
2025 Conference: Shenandoah Summer
History
Battles and Campaigns
People
Timeline
Articles
Shenandoah At War Magazine
Library Database
Research Fellowships
Preservation
Preservation
Current Projects
Preservation Successes
Preservation Challenges
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Ways to Give
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Volunteer
Donate
About
About Us
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Shenandoah Valley Civil War Museum
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2025 Conference: Shenandoah Summer
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Battles and Campaigns
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Timeline
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Shop Valley Thunder
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Valley Thunder

$25.95

An “exciting and informative” account of the Civil War battle that opened the 1864 Shenandoah Valley Campaign, with illustrations included (Lone Star Book Review).

Charles Knight’s Valley Thunder is the first full-length account in decades to examine the combat at New Market on May 15, 1864 that opened the pivotal Shenandoah Valley Campaign.

Lt. Gen. Ulysses S. Grant, who set in motion the wide-ranging operation to subjugate the South in 1864, intended to attack on multiple fronts so the Confederacy could no longer “take advantage of interior lines.” A key to success in the Eastern Theater was control of the Shenandoah Valley, an agriculturally abundant region that helped feed Gen. Robert E. Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia. Grant tasked Maj. Gen. Franz Sigel, a German immigrant with a mixed fighting record, and a motley collection of units numbering some 10,000 men to clear the Valley and threaten Lee’s left flank. Opposing Sigel was Maj. Gen. (and former US Vice President) John C. Breckinridge, who assembled a scratch command to repulse the Federals. Included in his 4,500-man army were Virginia Military Institute cadets under the direction of Lt. Col. Scott Ship, who’d marched eighty miles in four days to fight Sigel.

When the armies faced off at New Market, Breckinridge told the cadets, “Gentlemen, I trust I will not need your services today; but if I do, I know you will do your duty.” The sharp fighting seesawed back and forth during a drenching rainstorm, and wasn’t concluded until the cadets were inserted into the battle line to repulse a Federal attack and launch one of their own.

The Union forces were driven from the Valley, but would return, reinforced and under new leadership, within a month. Before being repulsed, they would march over the field at New Market and capture Staunton, burn VMI in Lexington (partly in retaliation for the cadets’ participation at New Market), and very nearly capture Lynchburg. Operations in the Valley on a much larger scale that summer would permanently sweep the Confederates from the “Bread Basket of the Confederacy.”

Valley Thunder is based on years of primary research and a firsthand appreciation of the battlefield terrain. Knight’s objective approach includes a detailed examination of the complex prelude leading up to the battle, and his entertaining prose introduces soldiers, civilians, and politicians who found themselves swept up in one of the war’s most gripping engagements.

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An “exciting and informative” account of the Civil War battle that opened the 1864 Shenandoah Valley Campaign, with illustrations included (Lone Star Book Review).

Charles Knight’s Valley Thunder is the first full-length account in decades to examine the combat at New Market on May 15, 1864 that opened the pivotal Shenandoah Valley Campaign.

Lt. Gen. Ulysses S. Grant, who set in motion the wide-ranging operation to subjugate the South in 1864, intended to attack on multiple fronts so the Confederacy could no longer “take advantage of interior lines.” A key to success in the Eastern Theater was control of the Shenandoah Valley, an agriculturally abundant region that helped feed Gen. Robert E. Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia. Grant tasked Maj. Gen. Franz Sigel, a German immigrant with a mixed fighting record, and a motley collection of units numbering some 10,000 men to clear the Valley and threaten Lee’s left flank. Opposing Sigel was Maj. Gen. (and former US Vice President) John C. Breckinridge, who assembled a scratch command to repulse the Federals. Included in his 4,500-man army were Virginia Military Institute cadets under the direction of Lt. Col. Scott Ship, who’d marched eighty miles in four days to fight Sigel.

When the armies faced off at New Market, Breckinridge told the cadets, “Gentlemen, I trust I will not need your services today; but if I do, I know you will do your duty.” The sharp fighting seesawed back and forth during a drenching rainstorm, and wasn’t concluded until the cadets were inserted into the battle line to repulse a Federal attack and launch one of their own.

The Union forces were driven from the Valley, but would return, reinforced and under new leadership, within a month. Before being repulsed, they would march over the field at New Market and capture Staunton, burn VMI in Lexington (partly in retaliation for the cadets’ participation at New Market), and very nearly capture Lynchburg. Operations in the Valley on a much larger scale that summer would permanently sweep the Confederates from the “Bread Basket of the Confederacy.”

Valley Thunder is based on years of primary research and a firsthand appreciation of the battlefield terrain. Knight’s objective approach includes a detailed examination of the complex prelude leading up to the battle, and his entertaining prose introduces soldiers, civilians, and politicians who found themselves swept up in one of the war’s most gripping engagements.

An “exciting and informative” account of the Civil War battle that opened the 1864 Shenandoah Valley Campaign, with illustrations included (Lone Star Book Review).

Charles Knight’s Valley Thunder is the first full-length account in decades to examine the combat at New Market on May 15, 1864 that opened the pivotal Shenandoah Valley Campaign.

Lt. Gen. Ulysses S. Grant, who set in motion the wide-ranging operation to subjugate the South in 1864, intended to attack on multiple fronts so the Confederacy could no longer “take advantage of interior lines.” A key to success in the Eastern Theater was control of the Shenandoah Valley, an agriculturally abundant region that helped feed Gen. Robert E. Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia. Grant tasked Maj. Gen. Franz Sigel, a German immigrant with a mixed fighting record, and a motley collection of units numbering some 10,000 men to clear the Valley and threaten Lee’s left flank. Opposing Sigel was Maj. Gen. (and former US Vice President) John C. Breckinridge, who assembled a scratch command to repulse the Federals. Included in his 4,500-man army were Virginia Military Institute cadets under the direction of Lt. Col. Scott Ship, who’d marched eighty miles in four days to fight Sigel.

When the armies faced off at New Market, Breckinridge told the cadets, “Gentlemen, I trust I will not need your services today; but if I do, I know you will do your duty.” The sharp fighting seesawed back and forth during a drenching rainstorm, and wasn’t concluded until the cadets were inserted into the battle line to repulse a Federal attack and launch one of their own.

The Union forces were driven from the Valley, but would return, reinforced and under new leadership, within a month. Before being repulsed, they would march over the field at New Market and capture Staunton, burn VMI in Lexington (partly in retaliation for the cadets’ participation at New Market), and very nearly capture Lynchburg. Operations in the Valley on a much larger scale that summer would permanently sweep the Confederates from the “Bread Basket of the Confederacy.”

Valley Thunder is based on years of primary research and a firsthand appreciation of the battlefield terrain. Knight’s objective approach includes a detailed examination of the complex prelude leading up to the battle, and his entertaining prose introduces soldiers, civilians, and politicians who found themselves swept up in one of the war’s most gripping engagements.

Shenandoah Valley Battlefields Foundation
PO Box 897. 9386 S. Congress St. New Market, VA 22844 | Phone: 540-740-4545 | Fax: 540-534-1358 | info@svbf.net

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