Years after the guns of the Civil War were silenced, a former private in the Stonewall Brigade remembered Kernstown as one of the hardest little battles of the war. Most of the boys were in more or less of the great battles fought subsequently, wrote a former Indiana soldier in 1889, but I’ll warrant that none of them was ever under a hotter fire than when in front of the stone wall at Kernstown. Fought on rolling terrain near a Valley turnpike hamlet three miles south of Winchester, the Battle of Kernstown is the first in a series of clashes that comprised Major General Thomas J. Stonewall Jackson’s legendary Shenandoah Valley Campaign. The Battle of Kernstown has been the least understood encounter of that famous spring in 1862—until now. Gary Ecelbarger’s book brings to light the strategy, tactics, and personalities associated with March 23, 1862, by using hundreds of rare first-hand accounts from Kernstown soldiers. We Are In For It! demonstrates why one Civil War veteran considered the infantry fire at Kernstown to be as heavy as it was at Antietam, Gettysburg, or the Wilderness.

About: Gary L. Ecelbarger

Email / Recommend to a friend