Turner Ashby, killed in action just east of Harrisonburg, Virginia, on June 6, 1862, ranks among the Confederacy‘s earliest, most honored battlefield dead. Even years after the war, Maj. Henry Kyd Douglas, the youngest member of Stonewall Jackson’s staff, still revered Ashby. “The Valley loved him and loves him yet. During the war he had never left her a single day. He had watched over her without ceasing.”
Killed just as Jackson’s Valley Campaign came to a triumphant double climax with Confederate victories at Cross Keys on June 8 and then at Port Republic the next day, Ashby’s death spurred an unusual accolade from Jackson himself: “…the close relations which General Ashby bore to my command, for most of the previous twelve months, will justify me in saying that as a partisan officer I never knew his superior. His daring was proverbial, his tone of character heroic, his power of endurance almost incredible, and his sagacity almost intuitive in divining the purposes and movements of the enemy.”
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