Cedar Creek • Tour the Battlefield • Battle Maps • The Armies
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Kershaw and Gordon Overwhelm the 8th Corps
Dense fog formed in the pre-dawn gloom as John Gordon led his own division and those of Ramseur and Pegram in single file along what one man called “a pig’s path” at the foot of Massanutton Mountain. They met with Payne’s cavalry brigade at the Shenandoah fords. The cavalry drove off Union pickets while the infantry continued its march a mile north from the fords, faced left, and formed line of battle.
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At the same time the division of Joseph Kershaw moved out of Strasburg to Bowman’s Mill Ford on Cedar Creek below the 8th Corps trenches. Kershaw would start the attack at dawn, and Gordon would then add his three divisions, taking the Union 8th Corps from both flanks and the rear.
Meanwhile Wharton’s small division would advance along the Valley Pike to threaten the crossing covered by the 19th Corps, keeping them from aiding the 9th Corps and covering Confederate artillery on the high ground.
The plan worked perfectly, aided by fog that cut visibilty to twenty yards. Kershaw’s men stormed up from Cedar Creek, overrunning the 8th Corps trenches and camp before most men were out of their tents. Gordon’s divisions came out of the east at the same time, and the 8th Corps stampeded for the rear, half-dressed, shoeless and often weaponless.
The three batteries of Eighth Corps artillery under Captain Henry Dupont were on high ground behind the camps and had a little time to prepare. But the eight Parrott rifles of Battery D, 1st Pennsylvania Artillery had nothing to shoot at in the fog until suddenly rebel attackers mixed with retreating Union infantry loomed up at point blank range. Although defended by the gunners with handspikes and sponge staffs, the guns were captured wthout firing a shot.
Dupont’s two other batteries fared better. Battery B, 5th United States Artillery fired canister blindly into the fog until the last moment, then lost one gun as it escaped. Battery L of the 1st Ohio Light Artillery managed to extricate its four Napoleons successfully. Dupont moved the two batteries up the Valley Pike toward Middletown, the only organized survivors of the Eighth Corps.