After Confederate Brigadier General Albert Gallatin Jenkins was mortally wounded during the Union Army victory at the Battle of Cloyd's Mountain on May 9, 1864, McCausland took command of the Confederate forces in western Virginia (including the new state of West Virginia). McCausland was promoted to brigadier general on May 18, 1864; Soon citizens credited him with saving Lynchburg from a raid by Union Army Major General David Hunter, who had invaded the Shenandoah Valley and burned the Virginia Military Institute as well as the house of former Virginia Governor turned Confederate General John Letcher. McCausland sent units to harass the Union supply trains, as well as burned bridges and fired upon the crews sent to rebuild them, buying time for Generals Grumble Jones and John Imboden to join forces at Staunton (although Jones would die at the Battle of Piedmont on June 5) and then reinforce Lynchburg, where a train ruse about other reinforcements led Hunter to turn back.