577 (43 killed, 534 wounded or captured/missing)
ENTRY
SUMMARY
The Battle of New Market, fought on May 15, 1864, was part of Union general Franz Sigel‘s attempt to sweep the Shenandoah Valley of Confederate troops in conjunction with General Ulysses S. Grant‘s Overland Campaign during the American Civil War (1861–1865). While Grant battled Confederate general Robert E. Lee at the Wilderness and then at Spotsylvania Court House, he sent Sigel into the Valley to prevent the Confederates there from reinforcing Lee. Confederate general John C. Breckinridge quickly cobbled together two brigades of infantry, some cavalry, even a couple of hundred cadets from the Virginia Military Institute in Lexington, and confronted Union forces at the village of New Market. There, he attacked Sigel and was beaten back, but Sigel’s counteradvance wavered. At about three o’clock in the afternoon, in a driving rainstorm, Breckinridge called for the cadets ”May God forgive me,” he reportedl