Annual Cedar Creek Battle Reenactment Marks Major Turning Point of the Civil War

It's late summer, 1864. The War has been dragging on for years, and people on both sides of the Mason-Dixon Line are growing weary of the never-ending toll of death and destruction. President Abraham Lincoln is up for reelection, facing one of his former Army commanders, George B. McClellan. A McClellan win could mean a negotiated truce with the Confederacy.

U.S. Calvary Gen. Philip H. Sheridan is called upon to rout the Confederate Army from the Shenandoah Valley, the "breadbasket of the Confederacy" whose farms, mills and rugged inhabitants helped sustain the troops - and whose geographical proximity to Washington, D.C. provided a Rebel staging area that threatened the U.S. Capital itself.

September, 1864. After forcing Rebels out of the Valley, Sheridan's army turns and begins a northern sweep through the pastoral countryside in Augusta and Rockingham Counties, while Gen. Jubal A. Early and his troops are regrouping up in the Blue Ridge Mountains. Sheridan's soldiers are burning hundreds of farms and mills, as well as destroying or seizing a huge number of crops and livestock. "The Burning" continues through Page and Shenandoah Counties until the Union Army pauses for a rest at Strasburg, Va. By October 9, Sheridan's goal of taking out the Valley as a strategic military target is a Union success.

In the meantime, hot on Sheridan's heels comes "Old Jube." His calvarymen are thirsting for revenge after the Yankees laid waste to the Shenandoah Valley countryside, where people now face a Winter of desperate survival.

During the pre-dawn hours of October 19, Early's men, who are now hungry, exhausted, under-equipped, and overwhelmingly outnumbered, stealthily approach the slumbering Union encampments just outside of Strasburg.