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163rd Anniversary of Stonewall Jackson’s Victory in the Battle of Front Royal

This is reprinted from Jim Bovard’s blog and expands on a post originally from 2023.

Today is the 163th anniversary of the battle of Front Royal, Virginia (the town near where I was raised). On May 23, 1862, almost all the Yankee soldiers in Front Royal were captured, killed or wounded during a surprise attack by Jackson’s “foot calvary.” Both sides fought valiantly, but the northerners were greatly outnumbered. Their commander, Col. John Reese Kenly, was my great-great-uncle and the source of the first name that my father hated. According to the Civil War historical marker by the courthouse in Front Royal, Col. Kenly was mortally wounded in the battle. In reality, he was badly wounded and captured. After he was exchanged for a Confederate POW, he rose to the rank of Major General.

John Reese Kenly

Jackson’s victory may have saved Richmond, since it spooked Lincoln into canceling plans to send 40,000 reinforcements to the Army of the Potomac, which had penetrated to the outskirts of the Confederate capital.

The best thumbnail summary of the battle I found was on Wikipedia. (Most other accounts were tangled or semi-obscure).

Early on May 23, Turner Ashby and a detachment of cavalry forded the South Fork of the Shenandoah River and rode northwest to capture a Union depot and railroad trestle at Buckton Station. Two companies of Union infantry defended the structures briefly, but the Confederates prevailed and burned the building, tore up railroad track, and cut the telegraph wires, isolating Front Royal from Banks at Strasburg. Meanwhile, Jackson led his infantry on a detour over a path named Gooney Manor Road to skirt the reach of Federal guns on his approach to Front Royal. From a ridge south of town, Jackson observed that the Federals were camped near the confluence of the South and North Forks and that they would have to cross two bridges in order to escape from his pending attack.

A detachment of 250 Confederate cavalry under Col. Thomas S. Flournoy of the 6th Virginia Cavalry arrived at that moment and Jackson set them off in pursuit of Kenly. The retreating Union troops were forced to halt and make a stand at Cedarville. Although the cavalrymen were outnumbered three to one, they charged the Union line, which broke but reformed. A second charge routed the Union detachment. The results of the battle were lopsided. Union casualties were 773, of which 691 were captured. Confederate losses were 36 killed and wounded. Jackson’s men captured about $300,000 of Federal supplies; Banks soon became known as “Commissary Banks” to the Confederates because of the many provisions they won from him during the campaign. Banks initially resisted the advice of his staff to withdraw, assuming the events at Front Royal were merely a diversion. As he came to realize that his position had been turned, at about 3 a.m. he ordered his sick and wounded to be sent from Strasburg to Winchester and his infantry began to march midmorning on May 24.

The most significant after effect of Banks’s minor loss at Front Royal was a decision by Abraham Lincoln to redirect 20,000 men from the corps of Maj. Gen. Irvin McDowell to the Valley from their intended mission to reinforce George B. McClellan on the Peninsula. At 4 p.m. on May 24, he telegraphed to McClellan, “In consequence of General Banks’s critical position I have been compelled to suspend General McDowell’s movements to you. The enemy are making a desperate push upon Harper’s Ferry, and we are trying to throw Frémont’s force and part of McDowell’s in their rear.”

Here are a couple maps illustrating the day’s fighting:

The National Park Service did a nice analysis comparing the 1862 battlefield to the modern layout of the town and area.

The New York Times, in an excellent recent online article entitled “Stonewall in the Valley,” captured the dynamics preceding Jackson’s surprise attack at Front Royal:

Jackson’s small army faced immediate challenges to the north and west: Banks’s main force of 19,000 men was to the north at Harrisonburg, while Frémont had 20,000 men only 35 miles to the west of Banks’s encampment. But the Union generals lacked Jackson’s tactical genius,
still celebrated today, which rested on two maxims: “Always mystify, mislead, and surprise the enemy” and “never fight against heavy odds” if you can “hurl your own force on” the “weakest part of your enemy and crush it.”

Jackson put both strategies to use in the valley. Confederate reconnaissance made sure he always knew where his opponents were, but his whereabouts very often proved a mystery to them. On April 28, for instance, Banks assured his superiors that “Our force is entirely secure here. The enemy is in no condition for offensive movements. … I think we are now just in condition to do all you can desire of us in the valley — clear the enemy out permanently.” Two days later Banks wrote again, saying he had more or less scared Stonewall away: “Jackson is bound for Richmond. This is the fact, I have no doubt.”

Jackson and his troops were indeed in motion, but not toward Richmond. On April 30, Jackson set his men marching south from their position in the Elk Run Valley. Spring rains had created a quagmire, trapping his troops in an exhausting, muddy hell. It took them two days to travel 16 miles to Port Republic.

Thinking quickly, Jackson resorted to the sort of maneuver that confounded his enemies and just as often surprised his own troops. “Heaven only knows where he is bound for now,” recorded one Confederate infantryman in his diary. “I know that ninety-nine out a hundred of his men have no more idea of where they will turn up than the buttons in their coats.” Jackson turned his troops to the east and marched through Brown’s Gap to Mechum’s River Station on the Virginia Central Railroad. Once there he loaded his weary and disheartened troops, who thought they were abandoning the valley to the Union forces, onto trains and moved them west to Staunton, the strategically positioned southern anchor of the Shenandoah Valley. “We are retiring and advancing at the same time,” wrote another of Jackson’s men, “a condition an army never undertook before.” A few days later, Jackson won his unexpected victory at McDowell.

The Confederate force’s weeklong slog from the Elk Run Valley to Staunton, while uncharacteristically slow, was a testament to the endurance of Jackson’s “foot cavalry,” who had quickly gained a reputation for showing up where least expected, thereby gaining a psychological edge that often offset the superior numbers enjoyed by the Union army. Jackson’s troops marched 177 miles during a single 17-day period in mid-May, for example, and in the third week of May alone covered up to 30 miles a day in their successful effort to deceive Banks’s forces at Front Royal, toward the northern end of the Shenandoah Valley.

This map illustrates the campaign discussed above:

The war became uglier as the years passed. In 1864, Gen. Sheridan’s troops sought to starve the civilian population into submission by burning all the crops, barns, and many of the houses in Warren County and elsewhere in the Shenandoah Valley. Such policies helped explain why Warren County’s population fell by 20% in the 1860s.   Gen. John Reese Kenly was one of the Union commanders guarding a massive wagon train of supplies to Sheridan’s Union Army in Winchester in August 1864. After John S. Mosby’s Confederate Rangers launched a surprise attack and captured most of the wagons, Kenly was transferred to the Maryland eastern shore for the rest of the war.

French artist Charles Edouard Armand-Dumaresq., 1868

Here is Col. John S. Mosby’s summary of that wagon train raid from his memoirs:

        Sheridan was obviously greatly solicitous about preserving his communications, for he knew that they were weak and a vital necessity for his army He evidently had some information which increased his anxiety about his rear. One night, when his headquarters were at Berryville, I sent my best scout, John Russell, with two or three men, to reconnoitre, intending to deliver a blow at Sheridan’s rear and thus cripple him by cutting off his supplies. John reported long trains passing down along the valley pike. I started for the vicinity with some 250 men and two howitzers, one of which became an encumbrance by breaking down. Through Snicker’s Gap we crossed the Blue Ridge Mountains after sundown and passed over the Shenandoah River not far from Berryville. I halted at a barn for a good rest and sent Russell to see what was going on upon the pike. I was asleep when he returned with the news that a very large train was just passing along. The men sprang to their saddles. With Russell and some others I went on in advance to choose the best place for attack, directing Captain William Chapman to bring on the command. About sunrise we were on a knoll from

which we could get a good view of a great train of wagons moving along the road and a large drove of cattle with the train. The train was within a hundred yards of us, strongly guarded, but with flankers out. We were obscured by the mist, and, if noticed at all, were doubtless thought to be friends. I sent Russell to hurry up Chapman, who soon arrived. The howitzer was made ready. Richards, with his squadron, was sent to attack the front; William Chapman and Glasscock were to attack them in the rear, while Sam Chapman was kept near me and the howitzer.

My scheme was nearly ruined by a ludicrous incident, the fun of which is more apparent now than it was then. The howitzer was unlimbered over a yellow-jacket’s nest. When one of the men had rescued the howitzer, a shell was sent screaming among the wagons, beheading a mule. The shot was like thunder from a clear sky, and the mist added to the enemy’s perplexity. This shot was our signal to charge, and we met little resistance. Panic reigned along their line, and I only lost two men killed and three wounded. Before the fighting ended, as I knew that the guard would soon recover from the panic, I had men unhitching mules, burning wagons, and hurrying prisoners and spoils to the rear. There were 325 wagons, guarded by Kenly’s brigade and a large force of cavalry. They had not stopped to find out our numbers. We set a paymaster’s wagon on fire, which contained – this we did not know at the time – $125,000. I deployed skirmishers as a mask, until my command, the prisoners, and booty were well across the Shenandoah River. We took between 500 and 600 horses, 200 beeves, and many useful stores; destroyed seventy-five loaded wagons, and carried off 200 prisoners, including seven officers.

If anybody has good sources or good links on the 1862 battle, please add them to the Comment Section.

Photo of the marker for Kenly’s Last Stand

Future Fish Apartments R Us

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Aircraft carriers are the crossbow and chariot of the 21st century. Very expensive 20th century modalities not fit for purpose in 21st century peer naval combat.

Carriers like the USS Ford can barely function but the sentence above applies to even best of class in carrier naval aviation.

USS Gerald Ford

Formal start of construction: 11 Aug 2005

Delivered to the Navy: 31 May 2017

Departed Norfolk for first deployment: 02 May 2023

12 years of construction, 6 years of tests & sea trials; 18 years before being combat ready.

And it is still unproven and not combat ready.

 

The DoD Rights a Wrong

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Hell freezes over occasionally.

On May 7, 2025, the Department of Defense published a memo in which it admitted in writing that the implementation of its covid shot mandate was unlawful. This echoes similar remarks made by Secretary Pete Hegseth in a video released on April 23, 2025. The May 7 memo offered updated guidance on DoD’s ongoing plan to offer records correction for those impacted by the mandate.

Fix it and prosecute the uniformed malefactors immediately.

https://media.defense.gov/2025/Apr/23/2003696408/-1/-1/1/PROVIDING-SUPPLEMENTAL-REMEDIES-FOR-SERVICE-MEMBERS-AND-VETERANS-NEGATIVELY-IMPACTED-BY-THE-DEPARTMENT-OF-DEFENSE-DEFUNCT-CORONAVIRUS-DISEASE-2019-VACCINATION.PDF

Military Corruption Probe Gets a Four-Star Scalp

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This picture shows him masked up for another robbery. He threw it all away for a $355k contract.

This is the tip of the iceberg.

A jury convicted former Vice Chief of Naval Operations ADM Robert Burke of four counts related to what prosecutors call a bribery scheme to get Navy contracts in exchange for a post-retirement job.

Most likely, this turd had a retirement pension exceeding 150k per year from the US government.

But in summer 2021, Messenger and Kim met with Burke in Washington, D.C., to reestablish their company’s business relationship with the Navy. While at the meeting, the two “agreed that Burke would use his position as a Navy Admiral to steer a contract” to their firm — as well as influence other Navy officers to award another contract to the company — in exchange for his future employment there, according to the Justice Department.

Burke in December 2021 then ordered his staff to award a $355,000 contract to Next Jump to train personnel under Burke’s command in Italy and Spain, which the company performed in January 2022.

Burke was accused of making several false and misleading statements to the Navy to conceal the scheme, such as implying that his discussions to join Next Jump began months after the contract was awarded.

In October 2022, Burke began working at Next Jump with an annual salary of $500,000 and a grant of $100,000 in stock options.

Burke’s convictions of bribery and conspiracy to commit bribery are punishable by up to 20 years in prison, while the other charges are punishable by up to 30 years.

https://thehill.com/regulation/court-battles/5308392-navy-admiral-burke-guilty-bribery/

 

SadoMailerism and the kink of arrogance

SadoMailerism and the kink of arrogance

In his appearances on shows like Dick Cavett’s, Norman Mailer often showed himself to be an immense ego. Especially while seated across from his ever contrasting, literary sparring partner, Gore Vidal. Mailer as curmudgeon and as one audience member yells, “chauvinistic,” was there to declare himself as his generations Hemingway, the ‘literary champion’ of the world. The master of American letters. Mailer was a great writer, he knew that and demanded the world know it as well. From an era when the writer was held in regard, many then read, television shows often had authors on to debate and discuss. Intellect aroused the audience, the written word satiated a sapiosexual majority.

Mailer was a violent man, in such a regard lazily described to be a man of his time. A cover if there ever was one for universally understood vileness. In his youth the charismatic emotional declarations of greatness steeled from his works that the reading public craved, was charming. His established wealth as a writer was enough to grant him a cultural pass, even after he nearly stabbed his wife to death. In an egotistical intoxicated rage expressed by a man who must be heard, whose opinion and own mind was all that mattered, he could lash out. Even against his own wife. To be prone to violent outbursts made him macho, was part of his character. His disdain for liberalism, women’s liberation especially and his thoughts on sex were of a singular perspective, his own. In his writing their was empathy for a man who would murder his wife, and in his book Prisoner of Sex, a self obsessed thesis into his thoughts on sexuality, sex and relationships. He was more than that as a writer, but it was very much part of him and his appeal. Mailer saw himself as a prizefighter, each word he wrote, a punch landed, his prose a fight. Belligerent and competitive. Often prone to fist fights beyond the page.

In today’s age of self-promotion the diatribe script from curmudgeon Mailer, would serve many modern ‘influencers’ and social media creatures well. Lesser intellects who invest in imagery and falsified bravado. On them it’s appealing to the audience seeking unabsorbable content. In Mailer’s time it was obnoxious and detracted from his otherwise appreciated talents. Today it’s grift worthy. Those looking for ideological or philosophical agreement or disagreement may find plenty in the pages of Mailer, rather than the false minds of content ‘creators’.

The young man, with talent and wealth whether material or otherwise, obscene arrogance is now embraced. ‘He knows his worth.’ It can be passed on as attractive. Part of the package, appealing. In fiction such a character may be written by implied deed, the deed of their own words. The swagger is understood to be alluring. An expression of a man in control, strong in will. Better than others.

In Justine Ettler’s The River Ophelia, her books Justine loves Sade. When we first meet Sade, named for Marquis de Sade of sadomasochism fame, he is described as handsome, physically attractive to Justine. He writes for Playboy magazine, but hates it. He is above such a magazine. He is cocky.

The only people who think writing for Playboy constitutes an interesting occupation are people I meet at parties. People like you.

Sade can afford to slap Justine with his words, She is already attracted to him and impressed by his status. He has told her how overqualified he is for his role as a writer, for such a magazine. Perhaps a generation or so earlier and Justine could have met Mailer at a party, smiling in lust as he described himself in such a manner. His youth, wit and self-determined greatness just as attractive. Sade has more tomorrow’s ahead, than yesterday’s behind him. Unlike the Mailer when he lost the crowd on Cavett’s show.

The fictional Sade did not try to murder Justine with a penknife at a party. He did however do just about everything else to her in the following tenure of their relationship. Sade is narcissistic, a sadist. Ettler writes a sexual and kinky world that does not pull any punches or spare detail. A prison for the books Justine to live in, abuse at the hands of a lover. A dysfunctional relationship that seems to suit him, just not her. An arrangement of power imbalances that youth, talent, perhaps wealth, can buy a man who wants to control and sexually harm his woman.

In 1995, when The River Ophelia was released it was met with condemnation. Downplayed by some as low brow “yuppy” smut. It took time for the gatekeepers of society and literature to digest the books meaning. It was not a celebration of S&M or abusive relationships, rather a warning. A vulgar perspective for the reader to gleam into. A generation later and E L James would produce her own version of a dominated relationship, thanks to Stephanie Meyers and her Twilight series the world got Fifty Shades of Grey. There a rich, young, handsome man could seduce a woman into obedience through contract. Absent of looking like Harvey Weinstein, in James’s fiction we get Christian Grey, or the fictionalized adaption of a real life Andrew Tate, only better looking. In that case maybe more like Tristan. Grey can afford confidence, to demand, to own and inflict pain and degrade. He is young, handsome and above all else, rich. The trifecta of HOT.

With such a trio of traits, the character is not an antagonist, he is to be desired. The soft core porn is an insert for the reader. It sold well. Spawned films and a culture for commercialised BDSM. A plasticised kink for the unimaginative, cosplay for bored lovers to make believe that they are ‘wild’. Sade is a grim reality in fictional form, the Mailer with his arrogance is the intellectual ego, and Andrew Tate exemplifies the uberinfluencer with his villainy but is the public example of a real Christian Grey. A closer to Tate version we can see in the film series, 365 Days. A trafficker, drug dealer with daddy issues, has generic tattoos on muscles, he kidnaps a woman and demands that she falls in love with him. She has a year to do so, hence the title. It doesn’t take her long. His arrogance is sold for charming, sexy. Above all it’s his wealth that romances the viewer. Sex at grandiose locations, numerous shopping montages and champagne parties each validates her love. A mega yacht, always a yacht. It’s ‘hot’. The message to young men, be rich, be arrogant, be the villain. To women, seek these qualities out in men.

Thirty years ago, when Ettler gave us her Sade it was not a celebration of such men. It was a warning. Over time, the subtext and nuance found in such literature became lost. After all, one must read to better understand perspectives. The world has moved beyond Twilight and Fifty Shades, piles of their discarded DVDs and books thrown away like soiled tissue paper now buried in thrift shop bins. Both however inspired in part the uptick in paranormal romantic fictions and in part the influencer bro cult online. Wealth at all costs, gamers, shitcoin grifters, podcast bros, and all of the above who cultivated the imagery of success and arrogance. A gross symbiosis of youth, wealth, cockiness and ‘rizz’ to be abused via disdain and inauthentic content creation. The modern reverence for and celebration of arrogance for its own sake.

To tell the world that you are great, you are better is part of the gimmickry. It lacks the authentic hubris of Mailer, none of his raw emotionalism is present. Instead they are entitled to it. In time, they too will age. They will disappear beneath plumes of powder, or enjoy the trappings of their wealth. A Pewdiepie ever after, only most lack his dignity. To be replaced by AI agents, the filters and insincerity only better. And more. But unlike Mailer, who despite his victims and crude hatreds, appeal to violence, he has a legacy. He was real, truly himself and inside the pages he wrote, we may read his mind, however flawed, there was talent. Pick your sadomasochists wisely, they tend to age worse than milk, maybe you will see them for who they really are. Do remember it was you, you alone who let them dominate your feed, mind, body. Let them inside of you.

To the young men, if youth is your singular asset remember it’s a poor investment. It degrades fast and if talent is the bedrock of your personality, weeds of such arrogance will isolate over time. Self-perceived greatness does not justify abuse and reckless behaviour. Violence and cruelty are never validated, even if they are egotistical tantrums from the self determined important. Wealth can buy a lot of things, not dignity. There was a time when that mattered to some. For the young ladies, what may be sexy now, hot, will fade. It may be exciting, that too fades just like the bruises and tears. In reality, Anastasia is more like Justine. Both prisoners of love and desire, not because of good men, just bad ones.

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