Battle of Cross Keys

Battle of Cross Keys. "A Position of Uncommon Strength". , On the morning of June 8, 1862, Confederate skirmishers of the 15th Alabama Infantry delayed Union Gen. John C. Frémont's advance near Union Church a mile north of here. Confederate commander Gen. Richard S. Ewell took the opportunity to establish his defensive line along this ridge behind Mill Creek. Frémont himself said that "The enemy occupied a position of uncommon strength," as the ridge bristled with infantry and artillery. A Union soldier described it as "an amphitheater of hills from which twice Frémont's force could not have dislodged him.", When the Alabama skirmishers pulled back from Union Church in the face of increasing Federal numbers, they made their way here, using the road trace in front of you to ascend the bluff. The Alabamians then marched east to join the next phase of the battle under Gen. Isaac Trimble., Later in the day, Union Gen. Robert Milroy, the most aggressive of the Union commanders, attacked the Confederate positions here. Protected by artillery fire, Milroy advanced in column through a ravine to the heights opposite this ridgeline. Confederate artillery counterfire was stiff. A 25th Ohio Infantry soldier described "the crushing of timber by the dread missiles mingled with the unearthly yells of opposing forces and the dying and the screams of the wounded." Milroy suddenly received orders from Frémont, who was concerned about Confederate pressure on the other side of the battlefield, to withdraw. "I was never so astonished or thunderstruck in my life," Milroy later wrote, but he reluctantly pulled back., (Captions):, Gen. John C. Frémont , Courtesy Library of Congress, Gen. Richard S. Ewell , Courtesy Library of Congress, Gen. Robert H. Milroy , Courtesy Library of Congress, Capt. William C. Oates, 15th Alabama Infantry, from William C. Oates, The War between the Union and the Confederacy (1905)