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Ewell routs Frémont at Cross Keys; Stahel's brigade broken, Union pursuit collapses

McClellan's expected Shenandoah reinforcements stall as Jackson's Valley army holds both Union columns at bay.

By June 1862, the Union's grand strategy for ending the war rested on two columns converging on Richmond — George McClellan's Army of the Potomac pressing up the Virginia Peninsula, and reinforcements he expected from the Shenandoah Valley. Stonewall Jackson had other ideas. On June 8, 1862, Jackson's division commander Richard Ewell held off John Frémont's Union army at Cross Keys, Virginia, routing Julius Stahel's brigade so completely that Frémont never mounted a coordinated follow-up. The next day at Port Republic, Jackson broke James Shields's command as well. Both Union columns retreated, and Jackson's 17,000 men were free to ride east and join Lee before Richmond — the reinforcements McClellan had counted on never came…

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More from June 8
1789

Madison rises in the House with a list of amendments; rivals are still calling for a second convention

Drawing on more than two hundred proposals from state ratifying conventions, he moves to revise the Constitution before its opponents can dismantle it.
1906

Roosevelt signs the Antiquities Act; no proclamation needed from Congress to seal off federal land

For decades, pot hunters have stripped pottery and bones from Chaco Canyon and across the Southwest. The president can now designate national monuments alone, by proclamation.
1861

Tennessee votes to leave the Union; the eleventh state is also the last

Middle Tennessee swings from 51 percent against secession in February to 88 percent in favor today, providing the decisive margin, though East Tennessee refuses to accept the result.
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A local farmer leads the 2,000-man column off the road as British reinforcements land behind them, cutting off any retreat north.
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More from Civil War & Reconstruction
1863

Out of ammunition, Chamberlain orders the bayonet; the 20th Maine sweeps Little Round Top

The Union left had no plan to hold the hill; Oates's 15th Alabama breaks when the Maine men charge downhill, and a portion of the regiment is taken.
1863

Lee turns south; 12,500 men sent across an open mile are thrown back, and the Army of Northern Virginia retreats

The assault on Cemetery Ridge collapsed under Union artillery and rifle fire before it reached the line; survivors streamed back across the same field.
1863

Gardner surrenders Port Hudson; the Union holds the Mississippi from source to sea

After 48 days on the bluff, half his men sick and the food gone, the Confederate general yields the last rebel stronghold on the river.
1868

Seward proclaims it law: the Fourteenth Amendment is part of the Constitution

The amendment settles in the document what Dred Scott left open, granting citizenship and equal protection to anyone born on American soil.
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