The Blood-Tinted Waters of the Shenandoah: The 1864 Valley Campaign’s Battle of Cool Spring, July 17-18, 1864 ( Jonathan A. Noyalas-CWC)

by Jonathan A. Noyalas Decades after the Civil War’s end, Confederate veteran John Alexander Stikeleather reflected on his experiences as a soldier in the 4th North Carolina Infantry. Among all of the engagements in which Stikeleather had been involved during his four years of service, there was one he believed should “never be forgotten”: Cool Spring. While largely overlooked or treated as a footnote to Gen. Jubal A. Early’s raid on Washington in the summer of 1864, the fight at Cool Spring—characterized by one soldier as “a sharp and obstinate affair”—proved critical to Washington’s immediate safety. It became a transformative moment for those who fought along the banks of the Shenandoah River in what ultimately became the war’s largest and bloodiest engagement in Clarke County, Virginia. The Blood-Tinted Waters of the Shenandoah examines Gen. Horatio Wright’s pursuit of Early into the Shenandoah and the clash on July 17-18, 1864. It analyzes the decisions of leaders on both sides, e