Jubal Anderson Early, Ruth Hairston Early, Lieutenant General Jubal A. Early , C. S. A.

[455] and, about the 29th, surprised and captured the fortified post at New Creek, on the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad. At this place, two regiments of cavalry with their arms and colors were captured and eight pieces of artillery and a very large amount of ordnance, quartermaster and commissary stores fell into our hands. The prisoners, numbering 800, four pieces of artillery, and some wagons and horses, were brought off, the other guns, which were heavy siege pieces, being spiked, and their carriages and a greater part of the stores destroyed. Rosser also brought off several hundred cattle and a large number of sheep from Hampshire and Hardy counties.

This expedition closed the material operations of the campaign of 1864 in the Shenandoah Valley, and, at that time, the enemy held precisely the same portion of that valley which he held before the opening of the campaign in the spring, and no more, and the headquarters of his troops were at the same place, to wit: Winchester. There was this difference, however: at the beginning of the campaign, he held it with comparatively a small force, and, at the close, he was compelled to employ three corps of infantry, and one of cavalry, for that purpose, and to guard the approaches to Washington, Maryland and Pennsylvania. When I was detached from General Lee's army, Hunter was advancing on Lynchburg, 170 miles south of Winchester, with a very considerable force, and threatening all of General Lee's communications with a very serious danger.

By a rapid movement, my force had been thrown to Lynchburg, just in time to arrest Hunter's march into that place, and he had been driven back and forced to escape into the mountains of Western Virginia, with a loss of ten pieces of artillery and subsequent terrible suffering to his troops. Maryland and Pennsylvania had been invaded, Washington threatened and thrown into a state of frantic alarm, and Grant had been compelled to detach two corps of infantry and two divisions of cavalry from his army. Five or six thousand prisoners had been