Charles R. Knight - Valley Thunder: The Battle of New Market

It seems a bit strange to be writing a Foreword to a book that in effect supersedes ones own, but that nevertheless is the case here, and it is a pleasure. In 1975, I published The Battle of New Market , my second book. For the ensuing thirty-six years it was generally regarded as the definitive work on the battle. The Virginia Military Institute even printed its own edition and issued copies of it to its cadets in the 1970s. The research was great fun tracking down descendants of most of the officers on both sides, and spending many days in the archives at the Institute and elsewhere. Indeed, the research extended as far as Alaska and even a Hungary still behind the old Iron Curtain.

No one finds everything, of course, and it is an axiom of history that new sources start coming to light almost as soon as a book is in print and it becomes too late to use them. Over the years I kept an eye on new findings relating to New Market, but never really thought about the accumulating weight of them. Fortunately someone else did. Charles Knight, who spent several years working at the New Market Battlefield Park in Virginia, devoted years of study to the same sources I found, and uncovered a host of new ones. The result is that his marvelous new book Valley Thunder does not rewrite the entire story of the battle and the men who fought it, but it does rewrite significant portions of it and closes many a gap that I was unable to fill.

Valley Thunder is simply the last word we are ever likely to have or need on this crucial small action in 1864. Even handed and non-partisan, Knight gives credit where credit is due, and in the process brings to the fore the actions of some units hitherto slighted, especially on the Confederate side. No one understands the topography of the battlefield better, and Knights maps reveal a grasp of the nuances of the ground thatwhen integrated with the movements of the combatantsshow better than ever before how this action played out. I am happy to see that he accords General John C. Breckinridge full marks for the ability he displayed in winning the battle against heavy odds, and also lesser commanders like Gabriel Wharton and John Echols. If the Union commander Franz Sigel does not rise much in general estimation, still the ability of his subordinates like Henry Du Pont, Joseph Thoburn, and others reveal why a defeat did not turn into an utter disaster.

Valley Thunder surely takes its place now among the dozen finest and most complete accounts of any Civil War action, and it would be hard to name any account of a secondary fight of this size that has been better treated. Valley Thunder is a contribution not just to Virginia or Confederate literature, but a book that will serve the entire Civil War community for generations to come, and probably much longer than my thirty-six years. The only way we will get a better account is if Breckinridge and the others come to life and give it to us from their own lips.

William C. Davis