Battle of Jonesville

Battle of Jonesville. "We were unexpected guests". , On the bitterly cold morning of January 3, 1864, Confederate cavalry stormed into Jonesville, surprising and capturing a Union force encamped here., In late December 1863, Confederate Gen. William E. “Grumble” Jones was ordered to seize the vital Cumberland Gap. En route, he learned that Union Maj. Charles Beeres had occupied Jonesville with 400 members of the 16th Illinois Cavalry on January 1, 1864, driving out Confederate Col. Auburn Pridemore’s 64th Virginia Mounted Infantry. Concerned that Beeres threatened his flank, Jones moved his 2,000-man-strong cavalry force towards Jonesville. His “poorly clad and shod” men braved subzero temperatures and brutal conditions; one man froze to death, and many suffered frostbite., At daylight on January 3, Jones attacked from the west. The Federals were caught off guard, “we were unexpected guests,” Jones remembered, but they “flew to their arms and fought manfully,” pulling back to the Milbourn farm and taking positions in around the farmhouse (which still stands across the road from you) and its outbuildings., Toward sundown, Col. Pridemore’s infantry arrived from the east, hemming the Union troops between the two Confederate forces. The Federals retreated north to high ground near the Harlan Road, but Pridemore’s men intercepted them, and Jones ordered a general assault. Surrounded, outnumbered, and low on ammunition, the Union force surrendered., His own ammunition exhausted, Jones had to wait two days for his supply wagons to arrive. During that time, he learned that the Federals in the Cumberland Gap had been heavily reinforced, and gave up his plans to assail the position., Directly across the roadstands the Dickinson-Milbourn House, which served as a Union hospital during and after the battle., [Caption:] , Union Sgt. Lewis Ellington Ijams, 16th IllinoisCavalry,was seriously wounded during the battle, but later escaped from the hospital wherehe was recuperating and made his way back to Union lines. (This photograph shows Ijams when he was a lieutenant with the 68th Illinois Infantry earlier in the war.) , Allen Cebula Collection