Bolivar Heights Battlefield
The Bolivar Heights Battlefield in Jefferson County, West Virginia, partly in the town of Bolivar, is an American Civil War battlefield which, – because of its strategic position overlooking Harpers Ferry, where the U.S. had an armory, and its placement at the head of the Shenandoah Valley – was the site of five separate engagements between Union and Confederate forces: in October 1861, May and September 1862, June 1863, and July 1864.
The battlefield lies partly on the 669-foot (204 m) Bolivar Heights plateau, but also includes School House Ridge to the west, and the slopes of both, which meet at Bakerton Road.
The battlefield is now part of the Harpers Ferry National Historical Park, and features informational signs, cannons and a preserved defensive trench.
[1][2] The largest part of the preserved battlefield, which includes the Union skirmish line during the Battle of Harpers Ferry, lies to the east of the town of Bolivar, to the west (School House Ridge) and east (Lower Bolivar Heights) of Bakerton Road in Jefferson County.
Jackson – who had been urged by General Robert E. Lee to threaten the line of the Potomac River – sent in the Stonewall Brigade while the bulk of his forces camped near Charles Town.
[6] Harpers Ferry was at the time the last remaining sizable Union force south of the Potomac River,[7] numbering about 10.400 men,[8] which would later be reinforced by several thousand Federals who left Martinsburg when Jackson approached on his way to battle.
The Union troops were all paroled, promising not to return to fighting until they were officially exchanged for Southern prisoners held by the North, and the officers were allowed to keep their swords.
The 12,419 Federal soldiers captured by the Confederate Army in the Battle of Harpers Ferry was the largest number of United States troops to surrender until the fall of Bataan in the Philippines during World War II.
[11][1][12][13] In the final week of June 1863, as part of Lee's advance towards Gettysburg, Pennsylvania for his second invasion of the North, he sent forces to attempt to maneuver Union troops out of Harpers Ferry.
Once again, as in the previous year, the Union offers little resistance, instead retreating to the protection of the siege cannons on Maryland Heights, which bombarded and pulverized the Confederates, again creating extensive damage to the town.
[1] During Union Major General Phillip H. Sheridan's Shanendoah Valley Campaign of 1864, Bolivar Heights served as the largest corral and wagon yard in the valley, temporarily hosting thousands of mules and hundreds of quartermaster wagon, which would be used to carry munitions and other supplies south.
