View from Trimble’s Line, Cross Keys Battlefield
This is a view from the position of the 21st Georgia Infantry (to the left) and the 16th Mississippi Infantry. The 15th Alabama Infantry was just to the right of the 16th Ms. Though the position is now in a fenceline, during the battle, the position was in a wood, but as the site suggests today, a split-rail fence was immediately in front of Gen. Isaac Trimble’s line and aided in concealing it.
On the afternoon of June 8. 1862, the 8th New York Infantry, from Gen. Julius Stahel’s Brigade, advanced on this position, but without deploying skirmishers. As skirmishers from the 21st North Carolina Infantry scurried back to tell Trimble of the unsuspecting New Yorkers, the 1,500 Confederates on this line made ready. When the New Yorkers were within 50 yards, the Confederate line erupted in a volley. In a matter of 15 minutes, approximately 250 out of 548 New Yorkers lay dead or wounded on the field. One Confederate wrote that the Federals were “lying in the field as thick as blackbirds.”
Massanutten Mountain can be seen in the background.