July 24, 1864---The Private War of "Ole Man" Presley Jones

JULY 24, 1864:         

The Second Battle of Kernstown. After skirmishing with Union forces the day before near Kernstown, Jubal Early’s suddenly no-longer exhausted troops, surprisingly fresh from their retreat from Washington, fall in force upon Union troops in the Shenandoah Valley, routing them. As before, the Federals in the Valley retreat all the way northward across the Potomac, leaving the road open to Maryland. Soon enough, Early again moves north, cutting the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad and burning Chambersburg, Pennsylvania.  

The usually phlegmatic President Lincoln is enraged at David Hunter, whom he orders to be immediately relieved of command. General George Crook becomes temporary commander of Union forces in the Shenandoah Valley this day.

 

“Ole Man” Presley Jones, the Avenger on Muleback, singlehandedly defends Covington, Georgia with a squirrel rifle when hundreds of Federal troops come to destroy the rail lines through the town. He kills two Yankees and wounds several more before he is captured and executed. They are the only men lost in the Covington Raid, which destroys the rail lines, the depot, the warehouses, and the new, as-yet unoccupied military hospital which the Confederates had built presuming troops from Atlanta would make use of it.  The cutting of the Covington spur isolates Atlanta from the southwest Confederacy.