Beyond the strategic importance of engagements at Kernstown,
McDowell, Front Royal, Winchester, Cross Keys, and Port Republic
the campaign boosted Confederacy morale at a time when it had
suffered a springtime of defeats. Employing audacity and rapid,
unpredictable movements on interior lines, Jackson’s 17,000 men
marched 646 miles in 48 days as they successfully engaged three
Union armies (52,000 men). Jackson suffered a defeat (his sole
defeat of the war) at the First Battle of Kernstown (March 23,
1862) against Col. Nathan Kimball (part of Union Maj. Gen.
Nathaniel P. Banks’s army), but it proved to be a strategic
Confederate victory because President Abraham Lincoln reinforced
his Valley forces with troops that had originally been
designated for the Peninsula Campaign against Richmond. On May
8, after more than a month of skirmishing with Banks, who later
would campaign in Louisiana, Jackson moved to the west of the
Valley and drove back elements of Maj. Gen. John C. Frémont’s
army in the Battle of McDowe