The Battle of New Market
Big Red Car here on the anniversary of the Battle of New Market on 15 May 1864. It is a touchstone of the Virginia Military Institute whose cadets stormed Yankee artillery batteries with bayonets across a muddy field which came to be known as the Field of Lost Shoes.
A vignette from a painting which stands in Jackson Memorial Hall at VMI depicting the successful bayonet charge of the Virginia Military Institute Corps of Cadets on 15 May 1864 in New Market, Virginia whereat they captured Union artillery batteries thereby driving the Union forces from the Shenandoah Valley.
The cadets lost 10 KIA and 47 WIA, but drove Yankee general Franz Siegel out of the Valley of Virginia. The Shenandoah Valley was the “breadbasket of the Confederacy” and its loss would have doomed the South.