Front Royal sits at the mouth of the Luray Valley (also known as the Page Valley), a 55-mile, slim corridor formed by the Blue Ridge Mountains in the east, and the saw-toothed Massanutten Mountain in the west. The latter ridge is the divider of two parallel valleys, separating the Luray Valley from the Shenandoah Valley east of it. (Once the northern point of Massanutten is reached and cleared the Shenandoah Valley widens and is bordered by the Blue Ridge and the Alleghenies.) The Luray Valley could be accessed from several Blue Ridge gaps in 1862, but the only feasible entry point from the west existed at New Market Gap, 30 miles southwest of Front Royal. Except for this gap, the only way for a regiment, brigade, division or army to access the Luray Valley in 1862 was to march through Front Royal at the northern end or through the town of Conrad’s Store (today known as Elkton) at the southern end of the valley.

On April 19, 1862, Maj. Gen. Thomas J. “Stonewall” Jackson entered the southern mouth of the Luray Valley by the road from Harrisonburg. His objective was to shelter his division from the threat of an attack by a much larger Union army commanded by Maj. Gen. Nathaniel P. Banks who had slowly penetrated deeper into the Shenandoah Valley since the victory by one of his divisions at the Battle of Kernstown one month earlier. Kernstown, the first battle of the campaign, represented the nadir of Stonewall Jackson’s fortunes as an independent commander for the first 82 days of 1862. The abysmal and aborted winter campaign in northwestern Virginia in January and February, followed by the rout of his three infantry brigades at Kernstown on the first Sunday of spring, March 23, had stripped Jackson of four cannons and reduced his division to the size of a large brigade, with fewer than 3,000 infantrymen, horse soldiers, and artillerists.1

Jackson’s reputation also suffered in the wake of these miserable three months. Stonewall had earned his nom de guerre and his high rank for his sterling defense on Henry House Hill during the Battle of Manassas the previous July. But after his unimpressive performance in the winter campaign, Jackson had caught the ire of his subordinates in a whispering campaign, and was mocked by his opponents aloud before and after his defeat at Kernstown. He was taunted by victorious Union troops at Kernstown as “Stonewall” Jackson for fleeing from the stone wall that ran through the middle of that battlefield. And even weeks before this, one of Abraham Lincoln’s secretaries was wholly unimpressed by Jackson and his leadership during the winter season of 1862, deriding him as “a queer, thick-skulled, blundering honest dunce.” Three weeks after the Kernstown battle, when Confederate President Jefferson Davis suggested that Jackson and his army be sent on an offensive in the Shenandoah Valley ostensibly as a means to have Union troops recalled from the Yorktown peninsula east of Richmond (or at least to prevent reinforcements from being sent to them), Davis’ top subordinates—including Gens. Robert E. Lee and Joseph E, Johnston—considered the suggestion “impossible” to be carried out by Jackson.2

The cold response to President Davis’ idea had less to do with Jackson’s abilities and more to do with the disparate size of the opposing commands in the Shenandoah Valley. At the passing of the midpoint of April, Jackson’s division had doubled in size compared to the tiny army that fled the Kernstown battlefield three weeks earlier; however, his 6,000 soldiers were only a third of the strength of General Banks’ Department of the Shenandoah. Jackson’s numerical strength improved from the fruits of the 1861 Bounty and Furlough Act and from the 1862 Conscription Act, but he still did not have the numbers to compete with what Banks was throwing against him, so Jackson abandoned his camp at Rude’s Hill just north of New Market, led his army southward through Harrisonburg, followed the southeast bend of the Keezletown Road, which outlined the southern peak of Massanutten Mountain, and passed through McGaheysville (pronounced Mi-GACK-eez-vil), the southernmost settlement of the Luray Valley. From there they continued on their way to Conrad’s Store.3

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