My previous article described how the Army of Northern Virginia’s sharpshooter battalions provided Death Valley with a way to level the playing field between the Union and Confederate forces that fought the Shenandoah battles of 1864. A second late-war tactical innovation offered us yet another solution to the problem of mismatched armies: “Open Order” formation, described by Fred Ray in his Shock Troops of the Confederacy.
Almost at the start of Death Valley‘s design work we realized the difficulty of approaching its 1864 battles using only the chrome featured in previous games in the GBACW series. By 1864 southern leaders faced a growing manpower crisis, while the north supplied an increasing number of its units with repeating rifles and carbines. The Union cavalry, in particular, benefited from the firepower upgrade, training to fight dismounted so as to maximize its effect. The combination of superior northern numbers and firepower threatened to turn our 1864 battles into massacres.
Last week’s installment included a synopsis of the Battle of Cross Keys, along with a brief description of the way in which the Death Valley scenario seeks to simulate the caution that characterized John C. Fremont’s generalship that day. It concluded with the first part of my playtest AAR, describing the scenario’s 1200 turn. Here we pick up where we left off.
The aftermath of Nathaniel Banks’ defeat at Winchester on May 25th, 1862, roused the Lincoln administration to action. With Stonewall Jackson rampaging through the lower Shenandoah Valley to within a few miles of the Potomac at Harper’s Ferry, half of Irwin McDowell’s corps marched west from Fredericksburg, threading its way through the Manassas Gap in the Blue Ridge mountains. Meanwhile, John C. Fremont’s “Mountain Department” troops advanced eastward across the Alleghenies from Moorefield (West Virginia). The two forces formed the jaws of a pincer designed to meet at Strasburg on the Valley Pike, cutting off Jackson’s Valley Army from its line of communications. But a combination of poor mountain roads, poor intelligence, and Confederate resistance delayed the Yankees and enabled Jackson’s hard marching troops to escape south before the jaws could close. Fremont gave chase via the Valley Pike, while James Shields’ division of McDowell’s corps moved up the less negotiable Luray Valley east of the Massanutten.
Spring, 1862, brought the southern Confederacy a succession of defeats in the west and retreats in the east. Richmond’s only glimmer of hope came from the Shenandoah Valley, where at great cost Stonewall Jackson drove back elements of John C. Fremont’s Army of West Virginia at the Battle of McDowell in early May. As dubious as that “victory” was, however, it sowed the seeds of a dramatic reversal of fortunes.
