The Third Battle of Winchester

Prominent Virginian John Smith was charged with guarding prisoners of war held in Winchester during the Revolutionary War. He purportedly had this stately home (in front of you) built by Hessian and British prisoners around 1777. <br><br>During the fighting at the Third Battle of Winchester, Gordon's Confederate troops formed around the Hackwood House and its outbuildings. At 3 p.m. the Union Eighth, Sixth, and Nineteenth Corps attacked. Col. Thoburn of the Eighth Corps described what happened next: <i>"A succession of stone walls gave excellent cover to the enemy, and from behind them we received a very severe musketry fire...but we steadily advanced and beat back the enemy."</i><br><br>When it was over, recalled James Franklin Fitts of the 12th Connecticut, <i>"the Rebel dead lay thickly in the fields beyond, and were piled upon each other in the yard of a large stone mansion...A ghastly row of gray-clad corpses lay along a wall, behind which some Rebel brigade had evidently found shelter; and the fields and hillsides as far as Winchester were dotted with the fallen."</i>