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Shields, and at Wardensville with Fremont, passed between his converging foes at Strasburg on the 31st, a portion of one of his brigades making in one day a march of 36 miles.
Besides the prisoners and stores brought off, Jackson left about 700 Federal sick and wounded at Winchester, and burned many stores for which he had no transportation.
Two guns and over 9000 muskets were saved.
After passing Strasburg on the 31st, the race was continued up the main Shenandoah Valley, with Jackson leading and Fremont following in his tracks, while Shields advanced up the Luray Valley on the east.
At New Market the road from Luray enters the Valley through Massanutten Gap, but Jackson had sent cavalry ahead who burned the bridges by which Shields might have had access.
At Conrad's store another bridge across the South Fork gave a road to Harrisonburg, and Shields rushed his cavalry ahead to gain possession of it, but again he was too late.
Meanwhile, there had been a severe rain-storm on June 2, and though Shields could hear the guns of Jackson's rear-guard and Fremont's advance on the other side of the Massanutten Mountains, he was powerless to cross.
On Thursday, June 5, Jackson reached Harrisonburg, and here diverged east to cross the South Fork upon the bridge at Port Republic.
On the 6th, in a severe cavalry affair of the rearguard, Gen. Turner Ashby was killed.
Of the civilian soldiers whom the war produced, such as Forrest, Morgan, and others, scarcely one gave such early and marked indication of rare military genius as Ashby.1
1 Col. Henderson writes of Ashby as follows:—
‘The death of Ashby was a terrible blow to the Army of the Valley. From the outbreak of the war he had been employed on the Shenandoah, and from Staunton to the Potomac his was the most familiar figure in the Confederate ranks. His daring rides on his famous white charger were already the theme of song and story, and if the tale of his exploits, as told in camp and farm, sometimes bordered on the marvellous, the bare truth stripped of all exaggeration was sufficient in itself to make him a hero. His reckless courage, his fine horsemanship, his skill in handling his command, and his power of stimulating devotion, were not the only attributes which incited admiration. With such qualities, it is said, were united the utmost generosity and unselfishness, and a delicacy of feeling equal to a woman's.’
1907.
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