Windham County VT Archives Military Records.....Hill, Herbert E. December 9, 1863
Civilwar see below
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File contributed for use in USGenWeb Archives by:
Jan Jordan jnrose@webtv.net April 4, 2006, 11:26 am

See Below
From The Newport [VT] Daily Express, Friday, August 26, 2005, pages 1 and 10: 

CIVIL WAR BATTLE SITE TO BE PROTECTED 

Where Vermonters turned the tide of the war 

MONTPELIER, Vt. (AP) - A monument marking one of the bloodiest and most famous
moments in Vermont's Civil War history will be protected. 

The stone marking the Battle of Cedar Creek now sits on private land on a Virginia
hilltop, which could be developed. 
But a $2 million provision in the federal highway bill, which Sen. James Jeffords,
I-Vt., helped to secure, will allow the National Park Service to buy and protect the
property. 

The monument was erected where a group of Vermont soldiers suffered enormous
casualties and helped turn a potential Union defeat into victory. 
In the summer and fall of 1862, Northern troops were cutting through Virginia's
fertile Shenandoah Valley, burning mills and fields and reducing an important source
of supplies for the Southerners. 
By Oct. 19, the Union troops, convinced they had broken the might of the
Confederates in the valley, were camped along the shores of Cedar Creek, about 80
miles west of Washington, D.C. ill-prepared for the predawn attack of the reinforced
Confederate troops. 

That was when a handful of Vermonters were sent in against the Confederates in an
attempt to slow their attack. The small band took their stand on top of a bare hill
and endured some of the most fierce fighting of the war as they gave the soldiers
behind them time to prepare for the assault. 

"I knew it was sending you into the jaws to death, and I never expected to see you
again," the commander who gave the order later told a survivor of the fight. 
when the monument was erected 21 years after the battle, one of the veterans of the
engagement described the armies fighting 'with a fury seldom equaled, and never
surpassed.' 
Herbert Hill, a Vermonter who fought in the engagement and donated the monument of
Vermont marble, called it 'one of the most savage and bloody fights of the great
Civil War." 

The Vermonters were also involved in crucial fighting later on a nearby ridgeline
that is now a cemetery and therefore protected from development. 
Close to 70 percent of the Vermont troops were wounded, killed or captured. It was
one of the highest casualty rates among the Union troops during the Civil War, said
Howard Coffin, a historian and author of the book, "Full Duty: Vermonters in the
Civil War."
 
But the Vermonters and other Union soldiers succeeded in turning the tide of the
battle. "It's a great moment for Vermont in the Civil War." Coffin said. 



Additional Comments:
Herbert Hill was from Marlboro, Windham County, VT.  For details on this Union
Soldiers military engagements, etc. check out
http://www.vermontcivilwar.org

File at: http://files.usgwarchives.net/vt/windham/military/civilwar/other/hill442gmt.txt

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