Reprint of the 1975 Doubleday original. On May 15, 1864, at a little crossroads hamlet in Virginia, the fate of the Shenandoah Valley may have been decided and, with it, the ability of the Confederacy to survive in Virginia for another season. The Battle of New Market is the story of one of those seemingly incredible hair’s-breadth miracles that now and then dot the Civil War landscape. A scratch force of hastily assembled Confederates, outnumbered up to the last minute, meets and decisively overcomes a superior Yankee army. A former vice president and onetime candidate for the presidency commands the Rebel forces. The Corps of Cadets of the Virginia Military Institute-some of them boys no older than fourteen-march to battle with the veterans, commencing a tradition and a legend that persist to this day. All these and more make up the dramatic story of New Market, and are told here in the most thoroughly researched and clearly presented book ever written on this legendary battle. Courage and heroism, youth and manhood, North and South all meet compellingly in these pages, just as they met in the pelting rain on the battlefield that may have saved Virginia.