The Battle of Port Republic, fought on June 9, 1862, was the last in a series of six small engagements that comprised Confederate general Thomas J. “Stonewall” Jackson‘s Shenandoah Valley Campaign of 1862 during the American Civil War (1861–1865). At Port Republic, a day after a Confederate victory at the Battle of Cross Keys, Jackson’s Army of the Valley took advantage of Union general James Shields’s dispersed forces and executed a surprise attack that resulted in a Union retreat. Having marched up and down the Shenandoah Valley since February in an attempt to draw Union reinforcements away from the Army of the Potomac, which was closing in on the Confederate capital at Richmond, Jackson was now in control of the upper (southern) and middle portions of the Valley. Driving Union forces from the Valley gave Jackson’s army the chance to join Robert E. Lee‘s Army of Northern Virginia, which was holding off Union general George B. McClellan.
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