MILITARY

REMINISCENCES OF

THE CIVIL WAR

OTHER BOOKS BY

GENERAL JACOB D. COX

The Battle of Franklin. With maps. 8vo $2.00

Atlanta. With maps. [Campaigns of the Civil War\. izmo . . $1.00

The March to the Sea. Franklin and Nashville. With maps. [Campaigns of the Civil War\. I2mo . . $1.00

Gen. Jacob D. Cox has given proof of his ability as a military historian. His work is a valuable contri bution to our military history and the narrative is told in a style that combines the knowledge of the warrior with the skill of the literary artist. — The Dial.

CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS, Publishers *S3-*S7 FIFTH AVENUE, NEW YORK CITY

JACOB D.COX. MAJ, GEN AET 34

MILITARY

REMINISCENCES OF

THE CIVIL WAR

BY

JACOB DOLSON COX, A.M., LL.D.

Formerly M.ajoi -General commanding Twenty-Third Army Corps

L 1 86 1— NOVEMBER 1863

NEW YORK CHA&LES SCRIBNF*

rqoo

MILITARY

REMINISCENCES OF

THE CIVIL WAR

BY

JACOB DOLSON COX, A.M., LL.D,

\\

Formerly Major-General commanding Twenty-Third Army Corps

VOLUME I. APRIL 1 86 1— NOVEMBER 1863

NEW YORK CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS

1900

E470

v>

Copyright, 1900, BY CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS.

UNIVERSITY PRESS • JOHN WILSON AND SON • CAMBRIDGE, U.S.A.

PREFACE

MY aim in this book has been to reproduce my own experience in our Civil War in such a way as to help the reader understand just how the duties and the problems of that great conflict presented themselves suc cessively to one man who had an active part in it from the beginning to the end. In my military service I was so conscious of the benefit it was to me to get the personal view of men who had served in our own or other wars, as distinguished from the general or formal history, that I formed the purpose, soon after peace was restored, to write such a narrative of my own army life. My relations to many prominent officers and civilians were such as to give opportunities for intimate knowledge of their personal qualities as well as their public conduct. It has seemed to me that it might be useful to share with others what I thus learned, and to throw what light I could upon the events and the men of that time.

As I have written historical accounts of some campaigns separately, it may be proper to say that I have in this book avoided repetition, and have tried to make the personal narrative supplement and lend new interest to the more formal story. Some of the earlier chapters appeared in an

R404U59

VI

PREFACE

abridged form in " Battles and Leaders of the Civil War," and the closing chapter was read before the Ohio Com- mandery of the Loyal Legion. By arrangements courte ously made by the Century Company and the Commandery, these chapters, partly re-written, are here found in their proper connection.

Though my private memoranda are full enough to give me reasonable confidence in the accuracy of these reminiscences, I have made it a duty to test my memory by constant reference to the original contemporaneous material so abundantly preserved in the government pub lication of the Official Records of the Union and Confed erate Armies. Where the series of these records is not given, my references are to the First Series, with the abbreviation O. R., and I have preferred to adhere to the official designation of the volumes in parts, as each volume then includes the documents of a single campaign.

J. D. C.

NOTE. — The manuscript of this work had been completed by General "Cox, and placed in the hands of the publishers several weeks before his untimely death at Magnolia, Mass., August 4, 1900. He himself had read and revised some four hundred pages of the press-work. The work of reading and revising the remaining proofs and of preparing a general index for the work was undertaken by the undersigned from a deep sense of obligation to and loving regard for the author, which could not find a more fitting expression at this time. No material changes have been made in text or notes. Citations have been looked up and references verified with care, yet errors may have crept in, which his well-known accuracy would have excluded. For all such and for the imperfections of the index, the under signed must accept responsibility, and beg the indulgence of the reader, who •will find in the text itself enough of interest and profit to excuse many

shortcomings.

WILLIAM C. COCHRAN. CINCINNATI, October i, 1900.

CONTENTS

CHAPTER I

PAGE THE OUTBREAK OF THE WAR i

Ohio Senate, April 12 — Sumter bombarded — "Glory to God!" — The surrender — Effect on public sentiment — Call for troops — Politicians changing front — David Tod— Stephen A. Douglas

— The insurrection must be crushed — Garfield on personal duty

— Troops organized by the States — The militia — Unprepared- ness — McClellan at Columbus — Meets Governor Dennison — Put in command — Our stock of munitions — Making estimates — McClellan's plan — Camp Jackson — Camp Dennison — Gather ing of the volunteers — Garibaldi uniforms — Officering the troops

— Off for Washington— Scenes in the State Capitol — Governor Dennison's labors — Young regulars — Scott's policy — Alex. McCook — Orlando Poe — Not allowed to take state commis-

CHAPTER II CAMP DENNISON 21

Laying out the camp — Rosecrans as engineer — A comfortless night

— Waking to new duties — Floors or no floors for the huts — Hardee's Tactics — The water-supply — Colonel Tom Worthington

— Joshua Sill — Brigades organized — Bates's brigade — Schleich's

— My own — McClellan's purpose — Division organization — Garfield disappointed — Camp routine — Instruction and drill — Camp cookery — Measles — Hospital barn — Sisters of Charity

— Ferment over re-enlistment — Musters by Gordon Granger — " Food for powder " — Brigade staff — De Villiers — "A Captain of Calvary" — The "Bloody Tinth" — Almost a row — Sum moned to the field.

viil CONTENTS

CHAPTER III

PAGE McCLELLAN IN WEST VIRGINIA 40

Political attitude of West Virginia — Rebels take the initiative — McClellan ordered to act — Ohio militia cross the river — The Philippi affair — Significant dates — The vote on secession — Virginia in the Confederacy — Lee in command — Topography — The mountain passes — Garnett's army — Rich Mountain position

— McClellan in the field — His forces — Advances against Garnett

— Rosecrans's proposal — His fight on the mountain — McClel- lan's inaction — Garnett's retreat — Affair at Carrick's Ford — Garnett killed — Hill's efforts to intercept — Pegram in the wil derness — He surrenders — Indirect results important — McClel- lan's military and personal traits.

CHAPTER IV THE KANAWHA VALLEY . . . ... 59

Orders for the Kanawha expedition — The troops and their quality — Lack of artillery and cavalry — Assembling at Gallipolis — District of the Kanawha — Numbers of the opposing forces — Method of advance — Use of steamboats — Advance guards on river banks

— Camp at Thirteen-mile Creek — Night alarm — The river chutes

— Sunken obstructions — Pocotaligo — Affair at Barboursville — Affair at Scary Creek — Wise's position at Tyler Mountain — His precipitate retreat — Occupation of Charleston — Rosecrans succeeds McClellan — Advance toward Gauley Bridge — Insub ordination — The Newspaper Correspondent — Occupation of Gauley Bridge.

CHAPTER V GAULEY BRIDGE 80

The gate of the Kanawha valley — The wilderness beyond — West Virginia defences — A romantic post — Chaplain Brown — An ad venturous mission — Chaplain Dubois — "The river path" — Gauley Mount — Colonel Tompkins's home — Bowie-knives — Truculent resolutions — The Engineers — Whittlesey, Benham, Wagner — Fortifications — Distant reconnoissances — Compari son of forces — Dangers to steamboat communications — Allot ment of duties — The Summersville post — Seventh Ohio at Cross Lanes — Scares and rumors — Robert E. Lee at Valley Mountain

— Floyd and Wise advance — Rosecrans's orders — The Cross Lanes affair — Major Casement's creditable retreat — Colonel Tyler's reports — Lieutenant-Colonel Creighton — Quarrels of Wise and Floyd — Ambushing rebel cavalry — Affair at Boone

CONTENTS IX

PAGE

Court House — New attack at Gaul ey Bridge — An incipient mutiny — Sad result — A notable court-martial — Rosecrans marching toward us — Communications renewed — Advance toward Lewisburg — Camp Lookout — A private sorrow.

CHAPTER VI CARNIFEX FERRY — To SEWELL MOUNTAIN AND BACK . . 105

Rosecrans's march to join me — Reaches Cross Lanes — Advance against Floyd — Engagement at Carnifex Ferry — My advance to Sunday Road — Conference with Rosecrans — McCook's brigade joins me — Advance to Camp Lookout — Brigade com manders — Rosecrans's personal characteristics — Hartsuff — Floyd and Wise again — " Battle of Bontecou " — Sewell Moun tain — The equinoctial — General Schenck arrives — Rough lodgings — Withdrawal from the mountain — Rear-guard duties

— Major Slemmer of Fort Pickens fame — New positions cover ing Gauley Bridge — Floyd at Cotton Mountain — Rosecrans's methods with private soldiers — Progress in discipline.

CHAPTER VII COTTON MOUNTAIN 129

Floyd cannonades Gauley Bridge — Effect on Rosecrans — Topog raphy of Gauley Mount — De Villiers runs the gantlet — Move ments of our forces — Explaining orders — A hard climb on the mountain — In the post at Gauley Bridge — Moving magazine and telegraph — A balky mule-team — Ammunition train under fire — Captain Fitch a model quartermaster — Plans to entrap Floyd — Moving supply trains at night — Method of working the ferry — Of making flatboats — The Cotton Mountain affair

— Rosecrans dissatisfied with Benham — Vain plans to reach East Tennessee.

CHAPTER VIII WINTER- QUARTERS 146

An impracticable country — Movements suspended — Experienced troops ordered away — My orders from Washington — Rosecrans objects — A disappointment — Winter organization of the De partment — Sifting our material — Courts-martial — Regimental schools — Drill and picket duty — A military execution — Effect upon the army — Political sentiments of the people — Rules of conduct toward them — Case of Mr. Parks — Mr. Summers — Mr. Patrick — Mr. Lewis Ruffner — Mr. Doddridge — Mr. B. F. Smith — A house divided against itself — Major Smith's journal

— The contrabands — A fugitive-slave case — Embarrassments as to military jurisdiction.

CONTENTS

CHAPTER IX

PACK VOLUNTEERS AND REGULARS 165

High quality of first volunteers — Discipline milder than that of the regulars — Reasons for the difference — Practical efficiency of the men — Necessity for sifting the officers — Analysis of their defects — What is military aptitude ? — Diminution of number in ascending scale — Effect of age — Of former life and occupation — Embarrassments of a new business — Quick prog ress of the right class of young men — Political appointments

— Professional men — Political leaders naturally prominent in a civil war — " Cutting and trying " — Dishonest methods — An excellent army at the end of a year — The regulars in 1861 — Entrance examinations for West Point — The curriculum there

— Drill and experience — Its limitations — Problems peculiar to the vast increase of the army — Ultra-conservatism — Attitude toward the Lincoln administration — " Point de zele " — Lack of initiative — Civil work of army engineers — What is military art ? — Opinions of experts — Military history — European armies in the Crimean War — True generalship — Anomaly of a double army organization.

CHAPTER X THE MOUNTAIN DEPARTMENT — SPRING CAMPAIGN . . . 192

Rosecrans's plan of campaign — Approved by McClellan with modifications — Wagons or pack-mules — Final form of plan — Changes in commands — McClellan limited to Army of the Potomac — Halleck's Department of the Mississippi — Fremont's Mountain Department — Rosecrans superseded — Preparations in the Kanawha District — Batteaux to supplement steamboats

— Light wagons for mountain work — Fremont's plan — East Tennessee as an objective — The supply question — Banks in the Shenandoah valley — Milroy's advance — Combat at McDowell

— Banks defeated — Fremont's plans deranged — Operations in the Kanawha valley — Organization of brigades — Brigade com manders — Advance to Narrows of New River — The field tele graph — Concentration of the enemy — Affair at Princeton — Position at Flat-top Mountain.

CHAPTER XI POPE IN COMMAND — TRANSFER TO WASHINGTON . . . . 217

A key position — Crook's engagement at Lewisburg — Watching and scouting — Mountain work — Pope in command — Consoli dation of Departments — Suggestions of our transfer to the East

CONTENTS XI

PAGB

— Pope's Order No. 1 1 and Address to the Army — Orders to march across the mountains — Discussion of them — Changed to route by water and rail — Ninety-mile march — Logistics — Arriving in Washington — Two regiments reach Pope — Two sent to Manassas — Jackson captures Manassas — Railway broken — McClellan at Alexandria — Engagement at Bull Run Bridge — Ordered to Upton's Hill — Covering Washington — Listening to the Bull Run battle — 111 news travels fast.

CHAPTER XII

RETREAT WITHIN THE LINES — REORGANIZATION — HALLECK

AND HIS SUBORDINATES 240

McClellan's visits to my position — Riding the lines — Discussing the past campaign — The withdrawal from the James — Proph ecy — McClellan and the soldiers — He is in command of the defences — Intricacy of official relations — Reorganization begun

— Pope's army marches through our works — Meeting of McClellan and Pope — Pope's characteristics — Undue depre ciation of him — The situation when Halleck was made General- in-Chief — Pope's part in it — Reasons for dislike on the part of the Potomac Army — McClellan's secret service — Deceptive information of the enemy's force — Information from prisoners and citizens — Effects of McClellan's illusion as to Lee's strength

— Halleck's previous career — Did he intend to take command in the field? — His abdication of the field command — The necessity for a union of forces in Virginia — McClellan's inac tion was Lee's opportunity — Slow transfer of the Army of the Potomac — Halleck burdened with subordinate's work — Burn- side twice declines the command — It is given to McClellan — Pope relieved — Other changes in organization — Consolidation — New campaign begun.

CHAPTER XIII SOUTH MOUNTAIN 263

March through Washington — Reporting to Burnside — The Ninth Corps — Burnside's personal qualities — To Leesboro — Strag gling — Lee's army at Frederick — Our deliberate advance — Reno at New Market — The march past — Reno and Hayes — Camp gossip — Occupation of Frederick — Affair with Hamp ton's cavalry — Crossing Catoctin Mountain — The valley and South Mountain — Lee's order found — Division of his army — Jackson at Harper's Ferry — Supporting Pleasonton's recon- noissance — Meeting Colonel Moor — An involuntary warning — Kanawha Division's advance — Opening of the battle — Carrying

Xll CONTENTS

PAGE

the mountain crest — The morning fight — Lull at noon — Arrival of supports — Battle renewed — Final success — Death of Reno — Hooker's battle on the right — His report — Burn- side's comments — Franklin's engagement at Crampton's Gap.

CHAPTER XIV ANTIETAM : PRELIMINARY MOVEMENTS 295

Lee's plan of invasion — Changed by McClellan's advance — The position at Sharpsburg — Our routes of march — At the An- tietam — McClellan reconnoitring — Lee striving to concentrate

— Our delays — Tuesday's quiet — Hooker's evening march — The Ninth Corps command — Changing our positions — McClel lan's plan of battle — Hooker's evening skirmish — Mansfield goes to support Hooker — Confederate positions — Jackson arrives — McLaws and Walker reach the field — Their places.

CHAPTER XV ANTIETAM : THE FIGHT ON THE RIGHT 312

Hooker astir early — The field near the Dunker Church — Artillery combat — Positions of Hooker's divisions — Rocky ledges in the woods — Advance of Doubleday through Miller's orchard and garden — Enemy's fire from West Wood — They rush for Gibbon's battery — Repulse — Advance of Patrick's brigade — Fierce fighting along the turnpike — Ricketts's division in the East Wood — Fresh effort of Meade's division in the centre — A lull in the battle — Mansfield's corps reaches the field — Con flicting opinions as to the hour — Mansfield killed — Command devolves on Williams — Advance through East Wood — Hooker wounded — Meade in command of the corps — It with draws — Greene's division reaches the Dunker Church — Craw ford's in the East Wood — Terrible effects on the Confederates

— Sumner's corps coming up — Its formation — It moves on the Dunker Church from the east — Divergence of the divisions — Sedgwick's passes to right of Greene — Attacked in flank and broken — Rallying at the Poffenberger hill — Twelfth Corps hanging on near the church — Advance of French's division — Richardson follows later — Bloody Lane reached — The Piper house — Franklin's corps arrives — Charge of Irwin's brigade.

CHAPTER XVI ANTIETAM : THE FIGHT ON THE LEFT 332

Ninth Corps positions near Antietam Creek — Rodman's division at lower ford — Sturgis's at the bridge — Burnside's headquar ters on the field — View from his place of the battle on the right

CONTENTS xill

PAGE

— French's fight — An exploding caisson — Our orders to attack

— The hour — Crisis of the battle — Discussion of the sequence of events — The Burnside bridge — Exposed approach — Enfi laded by enemy's artillery — Disposition of enemy's troops — His position very strong — Importance of Rodman's movement by the ford — The fight at the bridge — Repulse — Fresh efforts — Tactics of the assault — Success — Formation on further bank

— Bringing up ammunition — Willcox relieves Sturgis — The latter now in support — Advance against Sharpsburg — Fierce combat — Edge of the town reached — Rodman's advance on the left — A. P. Hill's Confederate division arrives from Harper's Ferry — Attacks Rodman's flank — A raw regiment breaks — The line retires — Sturgis comes into the gap — Defensive posi tion taken and held — Enemy's assaults repulsed — Troops sleeping on their arms — McClellan's reserve — Other troops not used — McClellan's idea of Lee's force and plans — Lee's retreat — The terrible casualty lists.

CHAPTER XVII

McCLELLAN AND POLITICS HlS REMOVAL AND ITS CAUSE 354

Meeting Colonel Key — His changes of opinion — His relations to McClellan — Governor Dennison's influence — McClellan's attitude toward Lincoln — Burnside's position — The Harrison Landing letter — Compared with Lincoln's views — Probable intent of the letter — Incident at McClellan's headquarters — John W. Garrett — Emancipation Proclamation — An after- dinner discussion of it — Contrary influences — Frank advice — Burnside and John Cochrane — General Order 163 — Lincoln's visit to camp — Riding the field — A review — Lincoln's desire for continuing the campaign — McClellan's hesitation — His tactics of discussion — His exaggeration of difficulties — Effect on his army — Disillusion a slow process — Lee's army not better than Johnston's — Work done by our Western army — Differ ence in morale — An army rarely bolder than its leader — Correspondence between Halleck and McClellan — Lincoln's remarkable letter on the campaign — The army moves on November 2 — Lee regains the line covering Richmond — McClellan relieved — Burnside in command.

CHAPTER XVIII PERSONAL RELATIONS OF MCCLELLAN, BURNSIDE, AND PORTER 376

Intimacy of McClellan and Burnside — Private letters in the official files — Burnside's mediation — His self-forgetful devotion — The movement to join Pope — Burnside forwards Porter's dis-

XIV CONTENTS

PAGB

patches — His double refusal of the command — McClellan suspends the organization of wings — His relations to Porter — Lincoln's letter on the subject — Fault-finding with Burnside — Whose work ? — Burnside's appearance and bearing in the field.

CHAPTER XIX RETURN TO WEST VIRGINIA 391

Ordered to the Kanawha valley again — An unwelcome surprise — Reasons for the order — Reporting to Halleck at Washington

— Affairs in the Kanawha in September — Lightburn's positions

— Enemy under Loring advances — Affair at Fayette C. H. — Lightburn retreats — Gauley Bridge abandoned — Charleston evacuated — Disorderly flight to the Ohio — Enemy's cavalry raid under Jenkins — General retreat in Tennessee and Ken tucky — West Virginia not in any Department — Now annexed to that of Ohio — Morgan's retreat from Cumberland Gap — Ordered to join the Kanawha forces — Milroy'.s brigade also — My interviews with Halleck and Stanton — Promotion — My task — My division sent with me — District of West Virginia — Colonel Crook promoted — Journey westward — Governor Peir- point — Governor Tod — General Wright — Destitution of Morgan's column — Refitting at Portland, Ohio — Night drive to Gallipolis — An amusing accident — Inspection at Point Pleasant — Milroy ordered to Parkersburg — Milroy's qualities

— Interruptions to movement of troops — No wagons — Supplies delayed — Confederate retreat — Loring relieved — Echols in command — Our march up the valley — Echols retreats — We oc cupy Charleston and Gauley Bridge — Further advance stopped

— Our forces reduced — Distribution of remaining troops — Alarms and minor movements — Case of Mr. Summers — His treatment by the Confederates.

CHAPTER XX WINTER QUARTERS, 1862-63 — PROMOTIONS AND POLITICS 420

Central position of Marietta, Ohio — Connection with all parts of West Virginia — Drill and instruction of troops — Guerilla warfare — Partisan Rangers — Confederate laws — Disposal of plunder — Mosby's Rangers as a type — Opinions of Lee, Stuart, and Rosser — Effect on other troops — Rangers finally abolished

— Rival home-guards and militia — Horrors of neighborhood war — Staff and staff duties — Reduction of forces — General Cluseret — Later connection with the Paris Commune — His relations with Milroy — He resigns — Political situation — Congressmen distrust Lincoln — Cutler's diary — Resolutions regarding appointments of general officers — The number au-

CONTENTS XV

PAGE

thorized by law — Stanton's report — Effect of Act of July, 1862

— An excess of nine major-generals — The legal questions involved — Congressional patronage and local distribution — Ready for a " deal " — Bill to increase the number of generals

— A u slate " made up to exhaust the number — Senate and House disagree — Conference — Agreement in last hours of the session — The new list — A few vacancies by resignation, etc. — List of those dropped — My own case — Faults of the method

— Lincoln's humorous comments — Curious case of General Turchin — Congestion in the highest grades — Effects — Con federate grades of general and lieutenant-general — Superiority of our system — Cotemporaneous reports and criticisms — New regiments instead of recruiting old ones — Sherman's trenchant opinion.

CHAPTER XXI

FAREWELL TO WEST VIRGINIA — BURNSIDE IN THE DEPART MENT OF THE OHIO 442

Desire for field service — Changes in the Army of the Potomac — Judgment of McClellan at that time — Our defective knowledge

— Changes in West Virginia — Errors in new organization — Embarrassments resulting — Visit to General Schenck — New orders from Washington — Sent to Ohio to administer the draft _^

— Burnside at head of the department — District of Ohio — Headquarters at Cincinnati — Cordial relations of Governor Tod with the military authorities — System of enrolment and draft — Administration by Colonel Fry — Decay of the veteran regiments

— Bounty-jumping — Effects on political parties — Soldiers vot ing — Burnside's military plans — East Tennessee — Rosecrans aiming at Chattanooga — Burnside's business habits — His frankness — Stories about him — His personal characteristics — Cincinnati as a border city — Rebel sympathizers — Order No. 38

— Challenged by Vallandigham — The order not a new departure

— Lincoln's proclamation — General Wright's circular.

CHAPTER XXII THE VALLANDIGHAM CASE — THE HOLMES COUNTY WAR . 458

Clement L. Vallandigham — His opposition to the war — His theory of reconstruction — His Mount Vernon speech — His arrest — Sent before the military commission — General Potter its president — Counsel for the prisoner — The line of defence — The judgment — Habeas Corpus proceedings — Circuit Court of the United States — Judge Leavitt denies the release — Com mutation by the President — Sent beyond the lines — Conduct of Confederate authorities — Vallandigham in Canada — Candi-

xvi CONTENTS

PAGE

date for Governor — Political results — Martial law — Principles underlying it — Practical application — The intent to aid the public enemy — The intent to defeat the draft — Armed resist ance to arrest of deserters, Noble County — To the enrolment in Holmes County — A real insurrection — Connection of these with Vallandigham's speeches — The Supreme Court refuses to interfere — Action in the Milligan case after the war — Judge Davis's personal views — Knights of the Golden Circle — The Holmes County outbreak — Its suppression — Letter to Judge Welker.

CHAPTER XXIII BURNSIDE AND ROSECRANS THE SUMMER'S DELAYS . . 473

Condition of Kentucky and Tennessee — Halleck's instructions to Burnside — Blockhouses at bridges — Relief of East Tennessee

— Conditions of the problem — Vast wagon-train required — Scheme of a railroad — Surveys begun — Burnside's efforts to arrange co-operation with Rosecrans — Bragg sending troops to Johnston — Halleck urges Rosecrans to activity — Continued inactivity — Burnside ordered to send troops to Grant — Rose- crans's correspondence with Halleck — Lincoln's dispatch — Rosecrans collects his subordinates' opinions — Councils of war

— The situation considered — Sheridan and Thomas — Compu tation of effectives — Garfield's summing up — Review of the situation when Rosecrans succeeded Buell — After Stone's River

— Relative forces — Disastrous detached expeditions — Appeal to ambition — The major-generalship in regular army — Views of the President justified — Burnside's forces — Confederate forces in East Tennessee — Reasons for the double organization of the Union armies.

CHAPTER XXIV THE MORGAN RAID 491

Departure of the staff for the field — An amusingly quick return — Changes in my own duties — Expeditions to occupy the enemy

— Sanders' raid into East Tennessee — His route — His success and return — The Confederate Morgan's raid — His instructions

— His reputation as a soldier — Compared with Forrest — Morgan's start delayed — His appearance at Green River, Ky.

— Foiled by Colonel Moore — Captures Lebanon — Reaches the Ohio at Brandenburg — General Hobson in pursuit — - Morgan crosses into Indiana — Was this his original purpose? — His

route out of Indiana into Ohio — He approaches Cincinnati — Hot chase by Hobson — Gunboats co-operating on the river — Efforts to block his way — He avoids garrisoned posts and cities

— Our troops moved in transports by water — Condition of Morgan's jaded column — Approaching the Ohio at Buffington's

CONTENTS xvn

PAGE

— Gunboats near the ford — Hobson attacks — Part captured, the rest fly northward — Another capture — A long chase — Surrender of Morgan with the remnant — Summary of results

— A burlesque capitulation.

CHAPTER XXV THE LIBERATION OF EAST TENNESSEE 510

News of Grant's victory at Vicksburg — A thrilling scene at the opera — Burnside's Ninth Corps to return — Stanton urges Rosecrans to advance — The Tullahoma manoeuvres — Testy correspondence — Its real meaning — Urgency with Burnside — Ignorance concerning his situation — His disappointment as to Ninth Corps — Rapid concentration of other troops — Burn- side's march into East Tennessee — Occupation of Knoxville — Invests Cumberland Gap — The garrison surrenders — Good news from Rosecrans — Distances between armies — Divergent lines — No railway communication — Burnside concentrates to ward the Virginia line — Joy of the people — Their intense loyalty — Their faith in the future.

CHAPTER XXVI BURNSIDE IN EAST TENNESSEE 530

Organizing and arming the loyalists — Burnside concentrates _ near Greeneville — His general plan — Rumors of Confederate reinforcements — Lack of accurate information — The Ninth Corps in Kentucky — Its depletion by malarial disease — Death of General Welsh' from this cause — Preparing for further work

Situation on i6th September — Dispatch from Halleck — Its

apparent purpose — Necessity to dispose of the enemy near Virginia border — Burnside personally at the front — His great activity — Ignorance of Rosecrans's peril — Impossibility of joining him by the 2Oth — Ruinous effects of abandoning East Tennessee — Efforts to aid Rosecrans without such abandon ment — Enemy duped into burning Watauga bridge themselves Ninth Corps arriving — Willcox's division garrisons Cumber land Gap — Reinforcements sent Rosecrans from all quarters — Chattanooga made safe from attack — The supply question — Meigs's description of the roads — Burnside halted near London

— Halleck's misconception of the geography — The people im ploring the President not to remove the troops — How Long- street got away from Virginia — Burnside's alternate plans — Minor operations in upper Holston valley — Wolford's affair on the lower Holston.

APPENDIX A 547

APPENDIX B 547

MILITARY REMINISCENCES

OF

THE CIVIL WAR

CHAPTER I

THE OUTBREAK OF THE WAR

Ohio Senate April 12 — Sumter bombarded — " Glory to God 1 " — The surrender — Effect on public sentiment — Call for troops — Politicians changing front — David Tod — Stephen A. Douglas — The insurrection must be crushed — Garfield on personal duty — Troops organized by the States — The militia — Unpreparedness — McClellan at Columbus — Meets Governor Dennison — Put in command — Our stock of munitions — Making estimates — McClellan's plan — Camp Jackson — Camp Den nison — Gathering of the volunteers — Garibaldi uniforms — Officering the troops — Off for Washington — Scenes in the State Capitol — Gov ernor Dennison's labors — Young regulars — Scott's policy — Alex. McCook — Orlando Poe — Not allowed to take state commissions.

ON Friday the twelfth day of April, 1861, the Senate of Ohio was in session, trying to go on in the ordinary routine of business, but with a sense of anxiety and strain which was caused by the troubled condition of national affairs. The passage of Ordinances of Secession by one after another of the Southern States, and even the assembling of a provisional Confederate government at Montgomery, had not wholly destroyed the hope that some peaceful way out of our troubles would be found ; yet the gathering of an army on the sands opposite Fort Sumter was really war, and if a hostile gun were fired, we knew it would mean the end of all effort at arrangement. Hoping almost against hope that blood would not be shed, and that the pageant of military array and of a rebel gov ernment would pass by and soon be reckoned among the VOL. i. — i

2 REMINISCENCES OF THE CIVIL WAR

disused scenes and properties of a political drama that never pretended to be more than acting, we tried to give our thoughts to business; but there was no heart in it, and the morning hour lagged, for we could not work in earnest and we were unwilling to adjourn.

Suddenly a senator came in from the lobby in an ex cited way,, and catching the chairman's eye, exclaimed, /\Mf.ijRr&sident, the telegraph announces that the seces- .sioaists are^bombarding Fort Sumter!" There was a .solemn drid'j&inful hush, but it was broken in a moment by a woman's shrill voice from the spectators' seats, cry ing, " Glory to God ! " It startled every one, almost as if the enemy were in the midst. But it was the voice of a radical friend of the slave, who after a lifetime of public agitation believed that only through blood could freedom be won. Abby Kelly Foster had been attending the ses sion of the Assembly, urging the passage of some meas ures enlarging the legal rights of married women, and, sitting beyond the railing when the news came in, shouted a fierce cry of joy that oppression had submitted its cause to the decision of the sword. With most of us, the gloomy thought that civil war had begun in our own land overshadowed everything, and seemed too great a price to pay for any good ; a scourge to be borne only in preference to yielding the very groundwork of our re publicanism, — the right to enforce a fair interpretation of the Constitution through the election of President and Congress.

The next day we learned that Major Anderson had sur rendered, and the telegraphic news from all the Northern States showed plain evidence of a popular outburst of loy alty to the Union, following a brief moment of dismay. Judge Thomas M. Key of Cincinnati, chairman of the Judiciary Committee, was the recognized leader of the Democratic party in the Senate,1 and at an early hour

1 Afterward aide-de-camp and acting judge-advocate on McClellan's staff.

THE OUTBREAK OF THE WAR

moved an adjournment to the following Tuesday, in order, as he said, that the senators might have the opportunity to go home and consult their constituents in the perilous crisis of public affairs. No objection was made to the adjournment, and the representatives took a similar re cess. All were in a state of most anxious suspense, — the Republicans to know what initiative the Administration at Washington would take, and the Democrats to deter mine what course they should follow if the President should call for troops to put down the insurrection.

Before we met again, Mr. Lincoln's proclamation and call for seventy-five thousand militia for three months' service were out, and the great mass of the people of the North, forgetting all party distinctions, answered with an enthusiastic patriotism that swept politicians off their feet. When we met again on Tuesday morning, Judge Key, taking my arm and pacing the floor outside the rail ing in the Senate chamber, broke out impetuously, " Mr. Cox, the people have gone stark mad ! " "I knew they would if a blow was struck against the flag," said I, re minding him of some previous conversations we had had on that subject. He, with most of the politicians of the day, partly by sympathy with the overwhelming current of public opinion, and partly by the reaction of their own hearts against the false theories which had encouraged the secessionists, determined to support the war measures of the government, and to make no factious opposition to such state legislation as might be necessary to sustain the federal administration.

The attitude of Mr. Key is only a type of many others, and marks one of the most striking features of the time. On the 8th of January the usual Democratic convention and celebration of the Battle of New Orleans had taken place, and a series of resolutions had been passed, which were drafted, as was understood, by Judge Thurman. In these, professing to speak in the name of " two hundred

4 REMINISCENCES OF THE CIVIL WAR

thousand Democrats of Ohio," the convention had very significantly intimated that this vast organization of men would be found in the way of any attempt to put down secession until the demands of the South in respect to slavery were complied with. A few days afterward I was returning to Columbus from my home in Trumbull County, and meeting upon the railway train with David Tod, then an active Democratic politician, but afterward one of our loyal "war governors," the conversation turned on the action of the convention which had just adjourned. Mr. Tod and I were personal friends and neighbors, and I freely expressed my surprise that the convention should have committed itself to what must be interpreted as a threat of insurrection in the North if the administration should, in opposing secession by force, follow the example of Andrew Jackson, in whose honor they had assembled. He rather vehemently reasserted the substance of the resolution, saying that we Republi cans would find the two hundred thousand Ohio Demo crats in front of us, if we attempted to cross the Ohio River. My answer was, " We will give up the contest if we cannot carry your two hundred thousand over the heads of you leaders."

The result proved how hollow the party professions had been; or perhaps I should say how superficial was the hold of such party doctrines upon the mass of men in a great political organization. In the excitement of politi cal campaigns they had cheered the extravagant language of party platforms with very little reflection, and the leaders had imagined that the people were really and earnestly indoctrinated into the political creed of Cal- houn; but at the first shot from Beauregard's guns in Charleston harbor their latent patriotism sprang into vig orous life, and they crowded to the recruiting stations to enlist for the defence of the national flag and the national Union. It was a popular torrent which no leaders could

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resist; but many of these should be credited with the same patriotic impulse, and it made them nobly oblivi ous of party consistency. Stephen A. Douglas passed through Columbus on his way to Washington a few days after the surrender of Sumter, and in response to the calls of a spontaneous gathering of people, spoke to them from his bedroom window in the American House. There had been no thought for any of the common sur roundings of a public meeting. There were no torches, no music. A dark crowd of men filled full the dim-lit street, and called for Douglas with an earnestness of tone wholly different from the enthusiasm of common political gatherings. He came half-dressed to his window, and without any light near him, spoke solemnly to the people upon the terrible crisis which had come upon the nation. Men of all parties were there: his own followers to get some light as to their duty; the Breckinridge Democrats ready, most of them, repentantly to follow a Northern leader, now that their recent candidate was in the rebel lion;1 the Republicans eagerly anxious to know whether so potent an influence was to be unreservedly on the side of the country. I remember well the serious solicitude with which I listened to his opening sentences as I leaned against the railing of the State House park, trying in vain to get more than a dim outline of the man as he stood at the unlighted window. His deep sonorous voice rolled down through the darkness from above us, — an earnest, measured voice, the more solemn, the more impressive, because we could not see the speaker, and it came to us literally as "a voice in the night," — the night of our country's unspeakable trial. There was no uncertainty in his tone : the Union must be preserved and the insur rection must be crushed, — he pledged his hearty support to Mr. Lincoln's administration in doing this. Other

1 Breckinridge did not formally join the Confederacy till September, but his accord with the secessionists was well known.

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questions must stand aside till the national authority should be everywhere recognized. I do not think we greatly cheered him, — it was rather a deep Amen that went up from the crowd. We went home breathing freer in the assurance we now felt that, for a time at least, no organized opposition to the federal government and its policy of coercion would be formidable in the North. We did not look for unanimity. Bitter and narrow men there were whose sympathies were with their country's enemies. Others equally narrow were still in the chains of the secession logic they had learned from the Calhoun- ists; but the broader-minded men found themselves happy in being free from disloyal theories, and threw them selves sincerely and earnestly into the popular move ment. There was no more doubt where Douglas or Tod or Key would be found, or any of the great class they represented.

Yet the situation hung upon us like a nightmare. Garfield and I were lodging together at the time, our wives being kept at home by family cares, and when we reached our sitting-room, after an evening session of the Senate, we often found ourselves involuntarily groaning, " Civil war in our land ! " The shame, the outrage, the folly, seemed too great to believe, and we half hoped to wake from it as from a dream. Among the painful re membrances of those days is the ever-present weight at the heart which never left me till I found relief in the active duties of camp life at the close of the month. I went about my duties (and I am sure most of those I associated with did the same) with the half-choking sense of a grief I dared not think of: like one who is dragging himself to the ordinary labors of life from some terrible and recent bereavement.

We talked of our personal duty, and though both Gar- field and myself had young families, we were agreed that our activity in the organization and support of the

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Republican party made the duty of supporting the govern ment by military service come peculiarly home to us. He was, for the moment, somewhat trammelled by his half-clerical position, but he very soon cut the knot. My own path seemed unmistakably clear. He, more careful for his friend than for himself, urged upon me his doubts whether my physical strength was equal to the strain that would be put upon it. "I," said he, "am big and strong, and if my relations to the church and the college can be broken, I shall have no excuse for not enlisting; but you are slender and will break down." It was true that I looked slender for a man six feet high (though it would hardly be suspected now that it was so), yet I had assured confidence in the elasticity of my constitution; and the result justified me, whilst it also showed how liable to mistake one is in such things. Garfield found that he had a tendency to weakness of the alimentary system which broke him down on every campaign in which he served and led to his retiring from the army much earlier than he had intended. My own health, on the other hand, was strengthened by out-door life and exposure, and I served to the end with growing physical vigor.

When Mr. Lincoln issued his first call for troops, the existing laws made it necessary that these should be fully organized and officered by the several States. Then, the treasury was in no condition to bear the burden of war expenditures, and till Congress could assemble, the Presi dent was forced to rely on the States to furnish the means necessary for the equipment and transportation of their own troops. This threw upon the governors and legisla tures of the loyal States responsibilities of a kind wholly unprecedented. A long period of profound peace had made every military organization seem almost farcical. A few independent military companies formed the merest shadow of an army; the state militia proper was only a nominal thing. It happened, however, that I held a com-

8 REMINISCENCES OF THE CIVIL WAR

mission as Brigadier in this state militia, and my inti macy with Governor Dennison led him to call upon me for such assistance as I could render in the first enrol ment and organization of the Ohio quota. Arranging to be called to the Senate chamber when my vote might be needed upon important legislation, I gave my time chiefly to such military matters as the governor ap pointed. Although, as I have said, my military com mission had been a nominal thing, and in fact I had never worn a uniform, I had not wholly neglected theo retic preparation for such work. For some years the possibility of a war of secession had been one of the things which would force itself upon the thoughts of re flecting people, and I had been led to give some careful study to such books of tactics and of strategy as were within easy reach. I had especially been led to read military history with critical care, and had carried away many valuable ideas from this most useful means of mili tary education. I had therefore some notion of the work before us, and could approach its problems with less loss of time, at least, than if I had been wholly ignorant.1

My commission as Brigadier-General in the Ohio quota in national service was dated on the 23d of April, though it had been understood for several days that my tender of service in the field would be accepted. Just about the same time Captain George B. McClellan was requested by Governor Dennison to come to Columbus for consul tation, and by the governor's request I met him at the railway station and took him to the State House. I think Mr. Larz Anderson (brother of Major Robert Anderson) and Mr. L'Hommedieu of Cincinnati were with him. The intimation had been given me that he would prob ably be made major-general and commandant of our Ohio contingent, and this, naturally, made me scan him closely.

1 I have treated this subject somewhat more fully in a paper in the "Atlan tic Monthly " for March, 1892, " Why the Men of '61 fought for the Union."

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He was rather under the medium height, but muscularly formed, with broad shoulders and a well-poised head, active and graceful in motion. His whole appearance was quiet and modest, but when drawn out he showed no lack of confidence in himself. He was dressed in a plain travelling suit, with a narrow- rimmed soft felt hat. In short, he seemed what he was, a railway superintendent in his business clothes. At the time his name was a good deal associated with that of Beauregard ; they were spoken of as young men of similar standing in the Engi neer Corps of the Army, and great things were expected of them both because of their scientific knowledge of their profession, though McClellan had been in civil life for some years. His report on the Crimean War was one of the few important memoirs our old army had produced, and was valuable enough to give a just reputation for comprehensive understanding of military organization, and the promise of ability to conduct the operations of an army.

I was present at the interview which the governor had with him. The destitution of the State of everything like military material and equipment was very plainly put, and the magnitude of the task of building up a small army out of nothing was not blinked. The governor spoke of the embarrassment he felt at every step from the lack of practical military experience in his staff, and of his desire to have some one on whom he could properly throw the details of military work. McClellan showed that he fully understood the difficulties there would be before him, and said that no man could wholly master them at once, although he had confidence that if a few weeks' time for preparation were given, he would be able to put the Ohio division into reasonable form for taking the field. The command was then formally tendered and accepted. All of us who were present felt that the selec tion was one full of promise and hope, and that the

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governor had done the wisest thing practicable at the time.

The next morning McClellan requested me to accom pany him to the State Arsenal, to see what arms and material might be there. We found a few boxes of smooth-bore muskets which had once been issued to militia companies and had been returned rusted and damaged. No belts, cartridge-boxes, or other accoutre ments were with them. There were two or three smooth bore brass fieldpieces, six-pounders, which had been honeycombed by firing salutes, and of which the vents had been worn out, bushed, and worn out again. In a heap in one corner lay a confused pile of mildewed har ness, which had probably been once used for artillery horses, but was now not worth carrying away. There had for many years been no money appropriated to buy military material or even to protect the little the State had. The federal government had occasionally distrib uted some arms which were in the hands of the independ ent uniformed militia, and the arsenal was simply an empty storehouse. It did not take long to complete our inspection. At the door, as we were leaving the build ing, McClellan turned, and looking back into its empti ness, remarked, half humorously and half sadly, " A fine stock of munitions on which to begin a great war!"

We went back to the State House, where a room in the Secretary of State's department was assigned us, and we sat down to work. The first task was to make out de tailed schedules and estimates of what would be needed to equip ten thousand men for the field. This was a unit which could be used by the governor and legislature in estimating the appropriations needed then or subsequently. Intervals in this labor were used in discussing the general situation and plans of campaign. Before the close of the week McClellan drew up a paper embodying his own views, and forwarded it to Lieutenant-General Scott. He

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read it to me, and my recollection of it is that he sug gested two principal lines of movement in the West, — one, to move eastward by the Kanawha valley with a heavy column to co-operate with an army in front of Washing ton; the other, to march directly southward and to open the valley of the Mississippi. Scott's answer was appre ciative and flattering, without distinctly approving his plan ; and I have never doubted that the paper prepared the way for his appointment in the regular army which followed at so early a day.1

During this week McClellan was invited to take the command of the troops to be raised in Pennsylvania, his native State. Some things beside his natural attachment to Pennsylvania made the proposal an attractive one to him. It was already evident that the army which might be organized near Washington would be peculiarly in the public eye, and would give to its leading officers greater opportunities of prompt recognition and promotion than would be likely to occur in the West. The close associa tion with the government would also be a source of power if he were successful, and the way to a chief command would be more open there than elsewhere. McClellan told me frankly that if the offer had come before he had assumed the Ohio command, he would have accepted it; but he promptly decided that he was honorably bound to serve under the commission he had already received and which, like my own, was dated April 23.

My own first assignment to a military command was during the same week, on the completion of our esti mates, when I was for a few days put in charge of Camp

1 I am not aware that McClellan's plan of campaign has been published. Scott's answer to it is given in General Townsend's " Anecdotes of the Civil War," p. 260. It was, with other communications from Governor Dennison, carried to Washington by Hon. A. F. Perry of Cincinnati, an intimate friend of the governor, who volunteered as special messenger, the mail service being unsafe. See a paper by Mr. Perry in " Sketches of War History " (Ohio Loyal Legion), vol. iii. p. 345.

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Jackson, the depot of recruits which Governor Dennison had established in the northern suburb of Columbus and had named in honor of the first squelcher of secessionism. McClellan soon determined, however, that a separate camp of instruction should be formed for the troops mus tered into the United States service, and should be so placed as to be free from the temptations and inconven iences of too close neighborhood to a large city, whilst it should also be reasonably well placed for speedy defence of the southern frontier of the State. Other camps could be under state control and used only for the organization of regiments which could afterward be sent to the camp of instruction or elsewhere. Railway lines and connec tions indicated some point in the Little Miami valley as the proper place for such a camp ; and Mr. Woodward, the chief engineer of the Little Miami Railroad, being taken into consultation, suggested a spot on the line of that railway about thirteen miles from Cincinnati, where a considerable bend of the Little Miami River encloses wide and level fields, backed on the west by gently rising hills. I was invited to accompany the general in mak ing the inspection of the site, and I think we were ac companied by Captain Rosecrans, an officer who had resigned from the regular army to seek a career as civil engineer, and had lately been in charge of some coal mines in the Kanawha valley. Mr. Woodward was also of the party, and furnished a special train to enable us to stop at as many eligible points as it might be thought desirable to examine. There was no doubt that the point suggested was best adapted for our work, and although the owners of the land made rather hard terms, McClellan was authorized to close a contract for the use of the mili tary camp, which, in honor of the governor, he named Camp Dennison.

But in trying to give a connected idea of the first mili tary organization of the State, I have outrun some inci-

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dents of those days which are worth recollection. From the hour the call for troops was published, enlistments began, and recruits were parading the streets continually. At the Capitol the restless impulse to be doing some thing military seized even upon the members of the leg islature, and a large number of them assembled every evening upon the east terrace of the State House to be drilled in marching and facing, by one or two of their own number who had some knowledge of company tactics. Most of the uniformed independent companies in the cities of the State immediately tendered their services, and began to recruit their numbers to the hundred men required for acceptance. There was no time to procure uniform, nor was it desirable; for these independent companies had chosen their own, and would have to change it for that of the United States as soon as this could be furnished. For some days companies could be seen marching and drilling, of which part would be uni formed in some gaudy style, such as is apt to prevail in holiday parades in time of peace, whilst another part would be dressed in the ordinary working garb of citizens of all degrees. The uniformed files would also be armed and accoutred ; the others would be without arms or equip ments, and as awkward a squad as could well be imag ined. The material, however, was magnificent, and soon began to take shape. The fancy uniforms were left at home, and some approximation to a simple and useful costume was made. The recent popular outburst in Italy furnished a useful idea, and the " Garibaldi uniform " of .a red flannel shirt with broad falling collar, with blue trousers held by a leathern waist-belt, and a soft felt hat for the head, was extensively copied, and served an excel lent purpose. It could be made by the wives and sisters at home, and was all the more acceptable for that. The spring was opening, and a heavy coat would not be much needed, so that with some sort of overcoat and a good

14 REMINISCENCES OF THE CIVIL WAR

blanket in an improvised knapsack, the new company was not badly provided. The warm scarlet color, reflected from their enthusiastic faces as they stood in line, made a picture that never failed to impress the mustering offi cers with the splendid character of the men.

The officering of these new troops was a difficult and delicate task, and so far as company officers were con cerned, there seemed no better way at the beginning than to let the enlisted men elect their own, as was in fact done. In most cases where entirely new companies were raised, it had been by the enthusiastic efforts of some energetic volunteers who were naturally made the com missioned officers. But not always. There were numer ous examples of self-denying patriotism which stayed in the ranks after expending much labor and money in re cruiting, modestly refusing the honors, and giving way to some one supposed to have military knowledge or experi ence. The war in Mexico in 1847 was the latest conflict with a civilized people, and to have served in it was a sure passport to confidence. It had often been a service more in name than in fact ; but the young volunteers felt so deeply their own ignorance that they were ready to yield to any pretence of superior knowledge, and gener ously to trust themselves to any one who would offer to lead them. Hosts of charlatans and incompetents were thus put into responsible places at the beginning, but the sifting work went on fast after the troops were once in the field. The election of field officers, however, ought not to have been allowed. Companies were necessarily regimented together, of which each could have but little personal knowledge of the officers of the others; intrigue and demagogy soon came into play, and almost fatal mis takes were made in selection. After a time the evil worked its own cure, but the ill effects of it were long visible.

The immediate need of troops to protect Washington

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caused most of the uniformed companies to be united into the first two regiments, which were quickly de spatched to the East. It was a curious study to watch the indications of character as the officers commanding companies reported to the governor, and were told that the pressing demand from Washington made it necessary to organize a regiment or two and forward them at once, without waiting to arm or equip the recruits. Some promptly recognized the necessity and took the undesir able features as part of the duty they had assumed. Others were querulous, wishing some one else to stand first in the breach, leaving them time for drill, equip ment, and preparation. One figure impressed itself very strongly on my memory. A sturdy form, a head with more than ordinary marks of intelligence, but a bearing with more of swagger than of self -poised courage, yet evi dently a man of some importance in his own community, stood before the seat of the governor, the bright lights of the chandelier over the table lighting strongly both their figures. The officer was wrapped in a heavy blanket or carriage lap-robe, spotted like a leopard skin, which gave him a brigandish air. He was disposed to protest. " If my men were hellions," said he, with strong emphasis on the word (a new one to me), "I wouldn't mind; but to send off the best young fellows of the county in such a way looks like murder." The governor, sitting with pale, delicate features, but resolute air, answered that the way to Washington was not supposed to be danger ous, and the men could be armed and equipped, he was assured, as soon as they reached there. It would be done at Harrisburg, if possible, and certainly if any hostility should be shown in Maryland. The President wanted the regiments at once, and Ohio's volunteers were quite as ready to go as any. He had no choice, therefore, but to order them off. The order was obeyed ; but the obedi ence was with bad grace, and I felt misgivings as to the

1 6 REMINISCENCES OF THE CIVIL WAR

officer's fitness to command, — misgivings which about a year afterward were vividly recalled with the scene I have described.

No sooner were these regiments off than companies began to stream in from all parts of the State. On their first arrival they were quartered wherever shelter could be had, as there were no tents or sheds to make a camp for them. Going to my evening work at the State House, as I crossed the rotunda, I saw a company marching in by the south door, and another disposing itself for the night upon the marble pavement near the east entrance; as I passed on to the north hall, I saw another, that had come a little earlier, holding a prayer-meeting, the stone arches echoing with the excited supplications of some one who was borne out of himself by the terrible pres sure of events around him, whilst, mingling with his pathetic, beseeching tones as he prayed for his country, came the shrill notes of the fife, and the thundering din of the inevitable bass drum from the company marching in on the other side. In the Senate chamber a company was quartered, and the senators were there supplying them with paper and pens, with which the boys were writing their farewells to mothers and sweethearts whom they hardly dared hope they should see again. A similar scene was going on in the Representatives' hall, another in the Supreme Court room. In the executive office sat the governor, the unwonted noises, when the door was opened, breaking in on the quiet business-like air of the room, — he meanwhile dictating despatches, indicating answers to others, receiving committees of citizens, giv ing directions to officers of companies and regiments, accommodating himself to the wilful democracy of our institutions which insists upon seeing the man in chief command and will not take its answer from a subordi nate, until in the small hours of the night the noises were hushed, and after a brief hour of effective, undis-

THE OUTBREAK OF THE WAR 1 7

turbed work upon the matters of chief importance, he could leave the glare of his gas-lighted office, and seek a few hours' rest, only to renew the same wearing labors on the morrow.

On the streets the excitement was of a rougher if not more intense character. A minority of unthinking par tisans could not understand the strength and sweep of the great popular movement, and would sometimes venture to speak out their sympathy with the rebellion or their sneers at some party friend who had enlisted. In the boiling temper of the time the quick answer was a blow; and it was one of the common incidents of the day for those who came into the State House to tell of a knock down that had occurred here or there, when this popular punishment had been administered to some indiscreet "rebel sympathizer."

Various duties brought young army officers of the regu lar service to the state capital, and others sought a brief leave of absence to come and offer their services to the governor of their native State. General Scott, too much bound up in his experience of the Mexican War, and not foreseeing the totally different proportions which this must assume, planted himself firmly on the theory that the regular army must be the principal reliance for severe work, and that the volunteers could only be auxiliaries around this solid nucleus which would show them the way to perform their duty and take the brunt of every encounter. The young regulars who asked leave to accept commissions in state regiments were therefore refused, and were ordered to their own subaltern positions and posts. There can be no doubt that the true policy would have been to encourage the whole of this younger class to enter at once the volunteer service. They would have been the field officers of the new regiments, and would have impressed discipline and system upon the organiza tion from the beginning. The Confederacy really profited

VOL. I. — 2

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by having no regular army. They gave to the officers who left our service, it is true, commissions in their so- called "provisional army," to encourage them in the as surance that they would have permanent military posi tions if the war should end in the independence of the South; but this was only a nominal organization, and their real army was made up (as ours turned out practi cally to be) from the regiments of state volunteers. Less than a year afterward we changed our policy, but it was then too late to induce many of the regular officers to take regimental positions in the volunteer troops. I hesitate to declare that this did not turn out for the best; for although the organization of our army would have been more rapidly perfected, there are other considera tions which have much weight. The army would not have been the popular thing it was, its close identifica tion with the people's movement would have been weak ened, and it perhaps would not so readily have melted again into the mass of the nation at the close of the war.

Among the first of the young regular officers who came to Columbus was Alexander McCook. He was ordered there as inspection and mustering officer, and one of my earliest duties was to accompany him to Camp Jackson to inspect the cooked rations which the contractors were furnishing the new troops. I warmed to his earnest, breezy way, and his business-like activity in performing his duty. As a makeshift, before camp equipage and cooking utensils could be issued to the troops, the con tractors placed long trestle tables under an improvised shed, and the soldiers came to these and ate, as at a country picnic. It was not a bad arrangement to bridge over the interval between home life and regular soldiers' fare, and the outcry about it at the time was senseless, as all of us know who saw real service afterward. McCook bustled along from table to table, sticking a long skewer into a boiled ham, smelling of it to see if the interior of

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the meat was tainted ; breaking open a loaf of bread and smelling of it to see if it was sour; examining the coffee before it was put into the kettles, and after it was made; passing his judgment on each, in prompt, peremptory manner as we went on. The food was, in the main, ex cellent, though, as a way of supporting an army, it was quite too costly to last long.

While mustering in the recruits, McCook was elected colonel of the First Regiment Ohio Volunteers, which had, I believe, already gone to Washington. He was eager to accept, and telegraphed to Washington for per mission. Adjutant-General Thomas replied that it was not the policy of the War Department to permit it. McCook cut the knot in gallant style. He immediately tendered his resignation in the regular army, taking care to say that he did so, not to avoid his country's service or to aid her enemies, but because he believed he could serve her much more effectively by drilling and leading a regiment of Union volunteers. He notified the gov ernor of his acceptance of the colonelcy, and his coup-de- main was a success; for the department did not like to accept a resignation under such circumstances, and he had the exceptional luck to keep his regular commission and gain prestige as well, by his bold energy in the matter.

Orlando Poe came about the same time, for all this was occurring in the last ten days of April. He was a lieu tenant of topographical engineers, and was stationed with General (then Captain) Meade at Detroit, doing duty upon the coast survey of the lakes. He was in person the model for a young athlete, tall, dark, and strong, with frank, open countenance, looking fit to repeat his ancestor Adam Poe's adventurous conflicts with the In dians as told in the frontier traditions of Ohio. He too was eager for service; but the same rule was applied to him, and the argument that the engineers would be especially necessary to the army organization kept him

20 REMINISCENCES OF THE CIVIL WAR

for a time from insisting upon taking volunteer service, as McCook had done. He was indefatigable in his labors, assisting the governor in organizing the regi ments, smoothing the difficulties constantly arising from lack of familiarity with the details of the administrative service of the army, and giving wise advice to the volun teer officers who made his acquaintance. I asked him, one day, in my pursuit of practical ideas from all who I thought could help me, what he would advise as the most useful means of becoming familiar with my duties. Study the Army Regulations, said he, as if it were your Bible! There was a world of wisdom in this : much more than I appreciated at the time, though it set me earnestly to work in a right direction. An officer in a responsible command, who had already a fair knowledge of tactics, might trust his common sense for guidance in an action on the field; but the administrative duties of the army as a machine must be thoroughly learned, if he would hope to make the management of its complicated organization an easy thing to him.

Major Sidney Burbank came to take McCook's place as mustering officer : a grave, earnest man, of more age and more varied experience than the men I have named. Captain John Pope also visited the governor for consulta tion, and possibly others came also, though I saw them only in passing, and did not then get far in making their acquaintance.

CHAPTER II

CAMP DENNISON

Laying out the camp — Rosecrans as engineer — A comfortless night — Waking to new duties — Floors or no floors for the huts — Hardee's Tactics — The water-supply — Colonel Tom. Worthington — Joshua Sill — Brigades organized — Bates's brigade — Schleich's — My own — Mc- Clellan's purpose — Division organization — Garfield disappointed — Camp routine — Instruction and drill — Camp cookery — Measles — Hospital barn — Sisters of Charity — Ferment over re-enlistment — Musters by Gordon Granger — " Food for powder " — Brigade staff — De Villiers — " A Captain of Calvary " — The " Bloody Tinth " — Almost a row — Summoned to the field.

ON the 2Qth of April I was ordered by McClellan to proceed next morning to Camp Dennison, with the Eleventh and half of the Third Ohio regiments. The day was a fair one, and when about noon our railway train reached the camping ground, it seemed an excellent place for our work. The drawback was that very little of the land was in meadow or pasture, part being in wheat and part in Indian corn, which was just coming up. Captain Rosecrans met us, as McClellan' s engineer (later the well-known general), coming from Cincinnati with a train-load of lumber. He had with him his compass and chain, and by the help of a small detail of men soon laid off the ground for the two regimental camps, and the general lines of the whole encampment for a dozen regi ments. It was McClellan's purpose to put in two bri gades on the west side of the railway, and one on the east. My own brigade camp was assigned to the west side, and nearest to Cincinnati. The men of the two regiments shouldered their pine boards and carried them up to the line of the company streets, which were close

22 REMINISCENCES OF THE CIVIL WAR

to the hills skirting the valley, and which opened into the parade and drill ground along the railway.

A general plan was given to the company officers by which the huts should be made uniform in size and shape. The huts of each company faced each other, three or four on each side, making the street between, in which the company assembled before marching to its place on the regimental color line. At the head of each street were the quarters of the company officers, and those of the "field and staff" still further in rear. The Regulations were followed in this plan as closely as the style of bar racks and nature of the ground would permit. Vigorous work housed all the men before night, and it was well that it did so, for the weather changed in the evening, a cold rain came on, and the next morning was a chill and dreary one. My own headquarters were in a little brick schoolhouse of one story, which stood (and I think still stands) on the east side of the track close to the railway. My improvised camp equipage consisted of a common trestle cot and a pair of blankets, and I made my bed in the open space in front of the teacher's desk or pulpit. My only staff officer was an aide-de-camp, Captain Bas- com (afterward of the regular army), who had graduated at an Eastern military school, and proved himself a faith ful and efficient assistant. He slept on the floor in one of the little aisles between the pupils' seats. One lesson learned that night remained permanently fixed in my memory, and I had no need of a repetition of it. I found that, having no mattress on my cot, the cold was much more annoying below than above me, and that if one can't keep the under side warm, it does n't matter how many blankets he may have atop. I procured later an army cot with low legs, the whole of which could be taken apart and packed in a very small parcel, and with this I carried a small quilted mattress of cotton batting. It would have been warmer to have made my bed on the ground with a

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heap of straw or leaves under me; but as my tent had to be used for office work whenever a tent could be pitched, I preferred the neater and more orderly interior which this arrangement permitted. This, however, is antici pating. The comfortless night passed without much re freshing sleep, the strange situation doing perhaps as much as the limbs aching from cold to keep me awake. The storm beat through broken window-panes, and the gale howled about us, but day at last began to break, and with its dawning light came our first reveille in camp. I shall never forget the peculiar plaintive sound of the fifes as they shrilled out on the damp air. The melody was destined to become very familiar, but to this day I can't help wondering how it happened that so melancholy a strain was chosen for the waking tune of the soldiers' camp. The bugle reveille is quite different; it is even cheery and inspiriting; but the regulation music for the drums and fifes is better fitted to waken longings for home and all the sadder emotions than to stir the host from sleep to the active duties of the day. I lay for a while listening to it, finding its notes suggesting many things and becoming a thread to string my reveries upon, as I thought of the past which was separated from me by a great gulf, the present with its serious duties, and the future likely to come to a sudden end in the shock of battle. We roused ourselves; a dash of cold water put an end to dreaming; we ate a breakfast from a box of cooked provisions we had brought with us, and resumed the duty of organizing and instructing the camp. The depression which had weighed upon me since the news of the opening guns at Sumter passed away, never to return. The consciousness of having important work to do, and the absorption in the work itself, proved the best of all mental tonics. The Rubicon was crossed, and from this time out, vigorous bodily action, our wild out door life, and the strenuous use of all the faculties, men-

24 REMINISCENCES OF THE CIVIL WAR

tal and physical, in meeting the daily exigencies, made up an existence which, in spite of all its hardships and all its discouragements, still seems a most exhilarating one as I look back on it across a long vista of years.

The first of May proved, instead, a true April day, of the most fickle and changeable type. Gusts of rain and wind alternated with flashes of bright sunshine. The second battalion of the Third Regiment arrived, and the work of completing the cantonments went on. The huts which were half finished yesterday were now put in good order, and in building the new ones the men profited by the experience of their comrades. We were however suddenly thrown into one of those small tempests which it is so easy to get up in a . .ew camp, and which for the moment always seems to have an importance out of all proportion to its real consequence. Captain Rosecrans, as engineer, was superintending the work of building, and finding that the companies were putting floors and bunks in their huts, he peremptorily ordered that these should be taken out, insisting that the huts were only in tended to take the place of tents and give such shelter as tents could give. The company and regimental officers loudly protested, and the men were swelling with indig nation and wrath. Soon both parties were before me ; Rosecrans hot and impetuous, holding a high tone, and making use of General McClellan's name in demanding, as an officer of his staff, that the floors should be torn out, and the officers of the regiments held responsible for obedience to the order that no more should be made. He fairly bubbled with anger at the presumption of those who questioned his authority. As soon as a little quiet could be got, I asked Rosecrans if he had specific orders from the general that the huts should have no floors. No, he had not, but his staff position as engineer gave him sufficient control of the subject. I said I would ex amine the matter and submit it to General McClellan,

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and meanwhile the floors already built might remain, though no new ones should be made till the question was decided. I reported to the general that, in my judgment, the huts should have floors and bunks, because the ground was wet when they were built, — they could not be struck like tents to dry and air the earth, and they were meant to be permanent quarters for the rendezvous of troops for an indefinite time. The decision of McClellan was in accordance with the report. Rosecrans acquiesced, and indeed seemed rather to like me the better on finding that I was not carried away by the assumption of indefi nite power by a staff officer.

This little flurry over, the quarters were soon got in as comfortable shape as rough lumber could make them, and the work of drill and instruction was systematized. The men were not yet armed, so there was no temptation to begin too soon with the manual of the musket, and they were kept industriously employed in marching in single line, by file, in changing direction, in forming columns of fours from double line, etc., before their guns were put in their hands. Each regiment was treated as a separate camp, with its own chain of sentinels, and the officers of the guard were constantly busy teaching guard and picket duty theoretically to the reliefs off duty, and inspecting the sentinels on post. Schools were established in each regiment for field and staff and for the company officers, and Hardee's Tactics was in the hands of everybody who could procure a copy. It was one of our great inconven iences that the supply of the authorized Tactics was soon exhausted, and it was difficult to get the means of in struction in the company schools. An abridgment was made and published in a very few days by Thomas Wor- thington, a graduate of West Point in one of the earliest classes, — of 1827, I think, — a son of one of the first gov ernors of Ohio. This eccentric officer had served in the regular army and in the Mexican War, and was full of ideas,

26 REMINISCENCES OF THE CIVIL WAR

but was of so irascible and impetuous a temper that he was always in collision with the powers that be, and spoiled his own usefulness. He was employed to furnish water to the camp by contract, and whilst he ruined himself in his efforts to do it well, he was in perpetual conflict with the troops, who capsized his carts, emptied his barrels, and made life a burden to him. The quarrel was based on his taking the water from the river just opposite the camp, though there was a slaughter-house some distance above. Worthington argued that the distance was such that the running water purified itself ; but the men wouldn't listen to his science, vigorously enforced as it was by idiomatic expletives, and there was no safety for his water-carts till he yielded. He then made a reservoir on one of the hills, filled it by a steam-pump, and carried the water by pipes to the regimental camps at an expense beyond his means, and which, as it was claimed that the scheme was unauthorized, was never half paid for. His subsequent career as colonel of a regiment was no more happy, and talents that seemed fit for highest responsi bilities were wasted in chafing against circumstances which made him and fate seem to be perpetually playing at cross purposes.1

A very different character was Joshua W. Sill, who was sent to us as ordnance officer. He too had been a regular army officer, but of the younger class. Rather small and delicate in person, gentle and refined in man ner, he had about him little that answered to the popu lar notion of a soldier. He had resigned from the army some years before, and was a professor in an important educational institution in Brooklyn, N. Y., when at the first act of hostility he offered his services to the gov-

1 He was later colonel of the Forty-sixth Ohio, and became involved in a famous controversy with Halleck and Sherman over his conduct in the Shiloh campaign and the question of fieldworks there. He left the service toward the close of 1862.

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ernor of Ohio, his native State. After our day's work, we walked together along the railway, discussing the politi cal and military situation, and especially the means of making most quickly an army out of the splendid but untutored material that was collecting about us. Under his modest and scholarly exterior I quickly discerned a fine temper in the metal, that made his after career no enigma to me, and his heroic death at the head of his division in the thickest of the strife at Stone's River no surprise.

The two regiments which began the encampment were quickly followed by others, and the arriving regiments sometimes had their first taste of camp life under cir cumstances well calculated to dampen their ardor. The Fourth Ohio, under Colonel Lorin Andrews, President of Kenyon College, came just before a thunderstorm one evening, and the bivouac that night was as rough a one as his men were likely to experience for many a day. They made shelter by placing boards from the fence tops to the ground, but the fields were level and soon became a mire, so that they were a queer-looking lot when they crawled out next morning. The sun was then shining bright, however, and they had better cover for their heads by the next night. The Seventh Ohio, which was re cruited in Cleveland and on the Western Reserve, sent a party in advance to build some of their huts, and though they too came in a rain-storm, they were less uncom fortable than some of the others. Three brigades were organized from the regiments of the Ohio contingent, exclusive of the two which had been hurried to Wash ington. The brigadiers, beside myself, were Generals Joshua H. Bates and Newton Schleich. General Bates, who was the senior, was a graduate of West Point, who had served some years in the regular army, but had re signed and adopted the profession of the law. He lived at Cincinnati, and organized his brigade in that city.

28 REMINISCENCES OF THE CIVIL WAR

They marched to Camp Dennison on the 2Oth of May, when, by virtue of his seniority, General Bates assumed command of the camp in McClellan's absence. His bri gade consisted of the Fifth, Sixth, Ninth, and Tenth regi ments, and encamped on the east side of the railroad in the bend of the river. General Schleich was a Demo cratic senator, who had been in the state militia, and was also one of the drill-masters of the legislative squad which had drilled upon the Capitol terrace. His brigade included the Third, Twelfth, and Thirteenth regiments, and, with mine, occupied the fields on the west side of the railroad close to the slopes of the hills. My own brigade was made up of the Fourth, Seventh, Eighth, and Eleventh regiments, and our position was the southernmost in the general camp. McClellan had intended to make his own headquarters in the camp; but the convenience of attend ing to official business in Cincinnati kept him in the city. His purpose was to make the brigade organizations per manent, and to take them as a division to the field when they were a little prepared for the work. Like many other good plans, it failed to be carried out. I was the only one of the brigadiers who remained in the service after the first enlistment for ninety days, and it was my fate to take the field with new regiments, only one of which had been in my brigade in camp. Schleich did not show adaptation to field work, and though taken into West Virginia with McClellan in June, he was relieved of active service in a few weeks. He afterward sought and obtained the colonelcy of the Sixty-first Ohio; but his service with it did not prove a success, and he re signed in September, 1862, under charges.1 General Bates had some reason to expect an assignment to staff duty with McClellan, and therefore declined a colonelcy in the line at the end of the three months' service. He was disappointed in this expectation after waiting some

1 O. R., vol. xii. pt. ii. pp. 308-310.

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time for it, and returned to civil life with the regrets of his comrades. There were some disappointments, also, in the choice of regimental officers who were elected in the regiments first organized, but were afterward ap pointed by the governor. The companies were organized and assigned to regiments before they came to camp, but the regimental elections were held after the companies were assembled. Garfield was a candidate for the colo nelcy of the Seventh Regiment, but as he was still en gaged in important public duties and was not connected with any company, he was at a disadvantage in the sort of competition which was then rife. He was defeated, — a greater disappointment to me than to him, for I had hoped that our close friendship would be made still closer by comradeship in the field. In a few weeks he was made colonel of the Forty-second Ohio, in the sec ond levy.

Up to the time that General Bates relieved me of the command of the camp, and indeed for two or three days longer, the little schoolhouse was my quarters as well as telegraph and express office. We had cleared out most of the desks and benches, but were still crowded together, day and night, in a way which was anything but comfortable or desirable. Sheds for quartermaster's and subsistence stores were of first necessity, and the building of a hut for myself and staff had to be postponed till these were up. On the arrival of General Bates with two or three staff officers, the necessity for more room could not be longer ignored, and my own hut was built on the slope of the hillside behind my brigade, close under the wooded ridge, and here for the next six weeks was my home. The morning brought its hour of busi ness correspondence relating to the command ; then came the drill, when the parade ground was full of marching companies and squads. Officers' drill followed, with sword exercise and pistol practice. The day closed with

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the inspection of the regiments in turn at dress parade, and the evening was allotted to schools of theoretic tac tics, outpost duty, and the like. Besides their copies of the regulation tactics, officers supplied themselves with such manuals as Mahan's books on Field Fortifications and on Outpost Duty. I adopted at the beginning a rule to have some military work in course of reading, and kept it up even in the field, sending home one volume and getting another by mail. In this way I gradually went through all the leading books I could find both in Eng lish and in French, including the whole of Jomini's works, his histories as well as his "Napoleon" and his " Grandes Operations Militaires. " I know of no intellec tual stimulus so valuable to the soldier as the reading of military history narrated by an acknowledged master in the art of war. To see what others have done in im portant junctures, and to have both their merits and their mistakes analyzed by a competent critic, rouses one's mind to grapple with the problem before it, and begets a generous determination to try to rival in one's own sphere of action the brilliant deeds of soldiers who have made a name in other times. Then the example of the vigorous way in which history will at last deal with those who fail when the pinch comes, tends to keep a man up to his work and to make him avoid the rock on which so many have split, the disposition to take refuge in doing nothing when he finds it difficult to decide what should be done.

The first fortnight in camp was the hardest for the troops. The ploughed fields became deep with mud, which nothing could remove but the good weather which should allow them to pack hard under the continued tramp of thousands of men. The organization of the camp kitchens had to be learned by the hardest also, and the men in each company who had some aptitude for cooking had to be found by a slow process of natural

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selection, during which many an unpalatable meal had to be eaten. A disagreeable bit of information came to us in the proof that more than half the men had never had the contagious diseases of infancy. The measles broke out, and we had to organize a camp hospital at once. A large barn near by was taken for this purpose, and the surgeons had their hands full of cases which, however trivial they might seem at home, were here ag gravated into dangerous illness by the unwonted sur roundings and the impossibility of securing the needed protection from exposure. As soon as the increase of sickness in the camp was known in Cincinnati, the good women of that city took promptly in hand the task of providing nurses for the sick, and proper diet and deli cacies for hospital uses. The Sisters of Charity, under the lead of Sister Anthony, a noble woman, came out in force, and their black and white robes harmonized pictur esquely with the military surroundings, as they flitted about under the rough timber framing of the old barn, carrying comfort and hope from one rude couch to an other. As to supplies, hardly a man in a regiment knew how to make out a requisition for rations or for clothing, and easy as it is to rail at "red tape," the necessity of keeping a check upon embezzlement and wastefulness justified the staff bureaus at Washington in insisting upon regular vouchers to support the quartermaster's and commissary's accounts. But here, too, men were grad ually found who had special talent for the work.

The infallible newspapers had no lack of material for criticism. There were plenty of real blunders to invite it, but the severest blame was quite as likely to be vis ited upon men and things which did not deserve it. The governor was violently attacked for things which he had no responsibility for, or others in which he had done all that forethought and intelligence could do. When every body had to learn a new business, it would have been

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miraculous if grave errors had not frequently occurred. Looking back at it, the wonder is that the blunders and mishaps had not been tenfold more numerous than they were. By the middle of May the confusion had given place to reasonable system, but we were now obliged to meet the embarrassments of reorganization for three years, under the President's second call for troops. We had more than ten thousand men who had begun to know something of their duties, and it was worth a serious effort to transfer them into the permanent service; but no one who did not go through the ordeal can imagine how trying it was. In every company some discontented spirits wanted to go home, shrinking from the perils to which they had committed themselves in a moment of enthusiasm. For a few to go back, however, would be a disgrace; and every dissatisfied man, to avoid the odium of going alone, became a mischief-maker, seeking to pre vent the whole company from re-enlisting. The recruit ing of a majority was naturally made the condition of allowing the company organization to be preserved, and a similar rule applied to the regiment. The growing dis cipline was relaxed or lost in the solicitations, the elec tioneering, the speech-making, and the other common arts of persuasion. After a majority had re-enlisted and an organization was secure, it would have been better to have discharged the remaining three months' men and to have sent them home at once; but authority for this could not be got, for the civil officers could not see, and did not know what a nuisance these men were. Dissatisfied with themselves for not going with their comrades, they be came sulky, disobedient, complaining, trying to make the others as unhappy as themselves by arguing that faith was not kept with them, and doing all the mischief it was possible to do.

In spite of all these discouragements, however; the daily drills and instruction went on with some approach

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to regularity, and our raw volunteers began to look more like soldiers. Captain Gordon Granger of the regular army came to muster the re-enlisted regiments into the three years' service, and as he stood at the right of the Fourth Ohio, looking down the line of a thousand stal wart men, all in their Garibaldi shirts (for we had not yet received our uniforms), he turned to me and ex claimed: "My God! that such men should be food for powder ! " It certainly was a display of manliness and intelligence such as had hardly ever been seen in the ranks of an army. There were in camp at that time three if not four companies, in different regiments, that were wholly made up of undergraduates of colleges who had enlisted together, their officers being their tutors and professors; and where there was not so striking evi dence as this of the enlistment of the best of our youth, every company could still show that it was largely re cruited from the best-nurtured and most promising young men of the community.

Granger had been in the Southwest when the secession movement began, had seen the formation of military com panies everywhere, and the incessant drilling which had been going on all winter, whilst we, in a strange condi tion of political paralysis, had been doing nothing. His information was eagerly sought by us all, and he lost no opportunity of impressing upon us the fact that the South was nearly six months ahead of us in organization and preparation. He did not conceal his belief that we were likely to find the war a much longer and more serious piece of business than was commonly expected, and that unless we pushed hard our drilling and instruction we should find ourselves at a disadvantage in our earlier en counters. What he said had a good effect in making officers and men take more willingly to the laborious routine of the parade ground and the regimental school ; for such opinions as his soon ran through the camp, and VOL. i. — 3

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they were commented upon by the enlisted men quite as earnestly as among the officers. Still, hope kept the upper hand, and if the question had been put to vote, I believe that three-fourths of us still cherished the belief that a single campaign would end the war.

In the organization of my own brigade I had the assist ance of Captain McElroy, a young man who had nearly completed the course at West Point, and who was subse quently made major of the Twentieth Ohio. He was sent to the camp by the governor as a drill officer, and I as signed him to staff duty. For commissary, I detailed Lieutenant Gibbs, who accompanied one of the regiments from Cincinnati, and who had seen a good deal of service as clerk in one of the staff departments of the regular army. I had also for a time the services of one of the picturesque adventurers who turn up in such crises. In the Seventh Ohio was a company recruited in Cleveland, of which the nucleus was an organization of Zouaves, existing for some time before the war. It was made up of young men who had been stimulated by the popularity of Ellsworth's Zouaves in Chicago to form a similar body. They had had as their drill master a Frenchman named De Villiers. His profession was that of a teacher of fencing; but he had been an officer in Ellsworth's company, and was familiar with fancy manoeuvres for street parade, and with a special skirmish drill and bayonet exercise. Small, swarthy, with angular features, and a brusque, military manner, in a showy uniform and jaunty ktpi of scarlet cloth, covered with gold lace, he created quite a sensa tion among us. His assumption of knowledge and expe rience was accepted as true. He claimed to have been a surgeon in the French army in Algiers, though we after ward learned to doubt if his rank had been higher than that of a barber-surgeon of a cavalry troop. From the testimonials he brought with him, I thought I was doing a good thing in making him my brigade-major, as the

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officer was then called whom we afterward knew as in spector-general. He certainly was a most indefatigable fellow, and went at his work with an enthusiasm that made him very useful for a time. It was worth some thing to see a man who worked with a kind of dash, — with a prompt, staccato movement that infused spirit and energy into all around him. He would drill all day, and then spend half the night trying to catch sentinels and officers of the guard at fault in their duty. My first im pression was that I had got hold of a most valuable man, and others were so much of the same mind that in the reorganization of regiments he was successively elected major of the Eighth, and then colonel of the Eleventh. We shall see more of him as we go on; but it turned out that his sharp discipline was not steady or just; his knowledge was only skin-deep, and he had neither the education nor the character for so responsible a situation as he was placed in. He nearly plagued the life out of the officers of his regiment before they got rid of him, and was a most brilliant example of the way we were im posed upon by military charlatans at the beginning. He was, however, good proof also of the speed with which real service weeds out the undesirable material which seemed so splendid in the days of common inexperience and at a distance from danger. We had visits from cleri cal adventurers, too, for the "pay and emoluments of a captain of cavalry" which the law gave to a chaplain induced some to seek the office who were not the best representatives of their profession. One young man who had spent a morning soliciting the appointment in one of the regiments, came to me in a shamefaced sort of way before leaving camp and said, " General, before I decide this matter, I wish you would tell me just what are the pay and emoluments of a Captain of Calvary ! "

Though most of our men were native Ohioans, General Bates' s brigade had in it two regiments made up of quite

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contrasted nationalities. The Ninth Ohio was recruited from the Germans of Cincinnati, and was commanded by Colonel " Bob " McCook. In camp, the drilling of the regiment fell almost completely into the hands of the ad jutant, Lieutenant Willich (afterward a general of divi sion), and McCook, who humorously exaggerated his own lack of military knowledge, used to say that he was only "clerk for a thousand Dutchmen," so completely did the care of equipping and providing for his regiment engross his time and labor. The Tenth was an Irish regiment, and its men used to be proud of calling themselves the " Bloody Tinth. " The brilliant Lytle was its commander, and his control over them, even in the beginning of their service and near the city of their home, showed that they had fallen into competent hands. It happened, of course, that the guard-house pretty frequently contained repre sentatives of the Tenth who, on the short furloughs that were allowed them, took a parting glass too much with their friends in the city, and came to camp boisterously drunk. But the men of the regiment got it into their heads that the Thirteenth, which lay just opposite them across the railroad, took a malicious pleasure in filling the guard-house with the Irishmen. Some threats had been made that they would go over and " clean out " the Thirteenth, and one fine evening these came to a head. I suddenly got orders from General Bates to form my bri gade, and march them at once between the Tenth and Thirteenth to prevent a collision which seemed immi nent. My brigade was selected because it was the one to which neither of the angry regiments belonged, the others being ordered into their quarters. My little Frenchman, De Villiers, covered himself with glory. His horse flew, under the spur, to the regimental head quarters, the long roll was beaten as if the drummers realized the full importance of the first opportunity to sound that warlike signal, and the brigade-major's some-

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what theatrical energy, was so contagious that many of the companies were assembled and ready to file out of the company streets before the order reached them. We marched by the moonlight into the space between the belligerent regiments ; but Lytle had already got his own men under control, and the less mercurial Thirteenth were not disposed to be aggressive, so that we were soon dis missed with a compliment for our promptness. I ordered the colonels to march the regiments back to the camps separately, and with my staff rode through that of the Thirteenth, to see how matters were there. All was quiet, the men being in their quarters; so, turning, I passed along near the railway, in rear of the quartermas ter's sheds. In the shadow of the buildings I had nearly ridden over some one on foot, when he addressed me, and I recognized an officer of high rank in that brigade. He was in great agitation, and exclaimed, " Oh, General, what a horrible thing that brothers should be killing each other!" I assured him the danger of that was all over, and rode on, wondering a little at his presence in that place under the circumstances.

The six weeks of our stay in Camp Dennison seem like months in the retrospect, so full were they crowded with new experiences. The change came in an unexpected way. The initiative taken by the Confederates in West Virginia had to be met by prompt action, and McClellan was forced to drop his own plans to meet the emergency. The organization and equipment of the regiments for the three years' service were still incomplete, and the bri gades were broken up, to take across the Ohio the regi ments best prepared to go. One by one my regiments were ordered away, till finally, when on the 3d of July I received orders to proceed to the Kanawha valley, I had but one of the four regiments to which I had been trying to give something of unity and brigade feeling, and that regiment (the Eleventh Ohio) was still incomplete.

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General Bates fared even worse; for he saw all his regi ments ordered away, whilst he was left to organize new ones from freshly recruited companies that were sent to the camp. This was discouraging to a brigade com mander, for even with veteran troops mutual acquaint ance between the officer and his command is a necessary condition of confidence and a most important element of strength. My own assignment to the Great Kanawha district was one I had every reason to be content with, except that for several months I felt the disadvantage I suffered from assuming command of troops which I had never seen till we met in the field.

The period of organization, brief as it was, had been valuable to the regiments, and it had been of the utmost importance to secure the re-enlistment of those which had received some instruction. It had been, in the condition of the statute law, from necessity and not from choice that the Administration had called out the state militia for ninety days. The new term of enrolment was for "three years or the war," and the forces were now desig nated as United States Volunteers. It would have been well if the period of apprenticeship could have been prolonged ; but events would not wait. All recognized the necessity, and thankful as we should have been for a longer preparation and more thorough instruction, we were eager to be ordered away.

McClellan had been made a major-general in the regu lar army, and a department had been placed under his command which included the States of Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois, to which was added a little later West Virginia north of the Great Kanawha.1 Rosecrans was also ap pointed a brigadier-general in the regulars, and there was much debate at the time whether the Administration had intended this. Many insisted that he was nominated

1 McClellan's Report and Campaigns (New York, 1864), P- 8. McClellan's Own Story, p. 44. O. R., vol. ii. p. 633.

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for the volunteer service, and that the regular appoint ment was a clerical mistake in the bureaus at Washing ton. There was no solid foundation for this gossip. A considerable increase of the regular army was authorized by law, and corresponding appointments were made, from major-general downward. It was at this time that Sher man was made colonel of one of the new regiments of regulars. It would perhaps have been wiser to treat the regular commissions as prizes to be won only by con spicuous and successful service in the field, as was done later; but this policy was not then adopted, and the newly created offices were filled in all grades. They were, of course, given to men from whom great services could reasonably be expected; but when none had been tested in the great operations of war, every appointment was at the risk that the officer might not show the special talent for command which makes a general. It was something of a lottery, at best; but the system would have been im proved if a method of retiring inefficient officers had been adopted at once. The ostensible reason for the different organization of volunteers and regulars was that the former, as a temporary force to meet an exigency, might be wholly disbanded when the war should end, without affecting the permanent army, which was measured in size by the needs of the country in its normal condition.

CHAPTER III

MCCLELLAN IN WEST VIRGINIA

Political attitude of West Virginia — Rebels take the initiative — McClellan ordered to act — Ohio militia cross the river — The Phiiippi affair — Significant dates — The vote on secession — Virginia in the Confederacy — Lee in command — Topography — The mountain passes — Garnett's army — Rich mountain position — McClellan in the field — His forces — Advances against Garnett — Rosecrans's proposal — His fight on the mountain — McClellan's inaction — Garnett's retreat — Affair at Car- rick's Ford — Garnett killed — Hill's efforts to intercept — Pegram in the wilderness — He surrenders — Indirect results important — McClel lan's military and personal traits.

THE reasons which made it important to occupy West Virginia were twofold, political and military. The people were strongly attached to the Union, and had gen erally voted against the Ordinance of Secession which by the action of the Richmond Convention had been submitted to a popular vote on May 23d. Comparatively few slaves were owned by them, and their interests bound them more to Ohio and Pennsylvania than to eastern Virginia. Under the influence of Mr. Lincoln's administration, strongly backed and chiefly represented by Governor Dennison of Ohio, a movement was on foot to organize a loyal Virginia government, repudiating that of Governor Letcher and the state convention as self-destroyed by the act of secession. Governor Dennison, in close correspond ence with the leading loyalists, had been urging Mc Clellan to cross the Ohio to protect and encourage the loyal men, when on the 26th of May news came that the Secessionists had taken the initiative, and that some bridges had been burned on the Baltimore and Ohio Rail road a little west of Grafton, the crossing of the Mononga-

42 REMINISCENCES OF THE CIVIL WAR

hela River where the two western branches of the road unite as they come from Wheeling and Parkersburg. The great line of communication between Washington and the West had thus been cut, and action on our part was necessary.1

Governor Dennison had anticipated the need of more troops than the thirteen regiments which had been organ ized as Ohio's quota under the President's first call, and had enrolled nine other regiments, numbering them con secutively with the others. These last he had put in camps near the Ohio River, where at a moment's notice they could occupy Wheeling, Parkersburg, and the mouth of the Great Kanawha.2 Two Union regiments were also organizing in West Virginia itself, of which the first was commanded by Colonel B. F. Kelley of Wheeling. The left bank of the Ohio was in McClellan's department, and on the 24th General Scott, having heard that two Virginia companies had occupied Grafton, telegraphed the fact to McClellan, directing him to act promptly in counteracting the effect of this movement.3

On the 2/th Colonel Kelley was sent by rail from Wheel ing to drive off the enemy, who withdrew at his approach, and the bridges were quickly rebuilt.4 Several of the Ohio regiments were ordered across the river at the same time, and an Indiana brigade under General Thomas A. Morris of that State was hurried forward from Indianapolis. As the Ohio troops at Camp Dennison which had been mustered into national service were in process of reorganizing for the three years' term, McClellan preferred not to move them till this was completed. He also adhered to his plan of making his own principal movement in the Great Ka nawha valley, and desired to use there the Ohio division at our camp.5 The Ohio regiments first sent into West Vir ginia were not mustered in, and were known as State troops.

1 O. R., vol. ii. p. 44. 2 Id., pp. 46, 47. 8 Id., p. 648.

* Id., pp. 46, 49, 655. 5 Id., pp. 50, 656, 674.

MCCLELLAN IN WEST VIRGINIA 43

General Morris reached Grafton on the ist of June, and was intrusted with the command of all the troops in West Virginia. He found that Colonel Kelley had already planned an expedition against the enemy, who had retired southward to Philippi, about fifteen miles in a straight line, but some twenty-five by the crooked country roads.1 Morris approved the plan, but enlarged it by sending another column, under Colonel E. Dumont of the Seventh Indiana, to co-operate with Kelley. Both columns were directed to make a night march, starting from points on the railroad about twelve miles apart and converging on Philippi, which they were to attack at daybreak on June 3d. Each column consisted of about fifteen hundred men, and Dumont had also two smooth six-pounder cannon. The Confederate force was commanded by Colonel G. A. Porterfield, and was something less than a thousand strong, one-fourth cavalry.2

The night was dark and stormy, and Porterfield's raw troops had not learned picket duty. The concerted move ment against them was more successful than such marches commonly are, and Porterfield's first notice of danger was the opening of the artillery upon his sleeping troops. It had been expected that the two columns would enclose the enemy's camp and capture the whole ; but, though in dis orderly rout, Porterfield succeeded, by personal coolness and courage, in getting them off with but few casualties and the loss of a few arms. The camp equipage and sup plies were, of course, captured. Colonel Kelley was wounded in the breast by a pistol-shot which was at first supposed to be fatal, though it did not turn out so, and this was the only casualty reported on the National side.3

1 O. R., vol. ii. p. 66. 2 Id., pp. 70, 72.

3 Colonel Kelley was a man already of middle age, and a leading citizen of northwestern Virginia. His whole military career was in that region, where his services were very valuable throughout the war. He was promoted to brigadier-general among the first, and was brevet-major-general when mustered out in 1865.

44 REMINISCENCES OF THE CIVIL WAR

No prisoners were taken, nor did any dead or wounded fall into our hands. Porterfield retreated to Beverly, some thirty miles further to the southeast, and the Na tional forces occupied Philippi. The telegraphic reports had put the Confederate force at 2000, and their loss at 15 killed. This implied a considerable list of wounded and prisoners, and the newspapers gave it the air of a consid erable victory. The campaign thus opened with apparent Mat for McClellan (who was personally at Cincinnati), and the " Philippi races," as they were locally called, greatly encouraged the Union men of West Virginia and corre spondingly depressed the Secessionists.1

Nearly a month elapsed, when, having received reports that large forces of the enemy were gathered at Beverly, McClellan determined to proceed in person to that region with his best prepared troops, postponing his Kanawha campaign till northwestern Virginia should be cleared of the enemy.

Military affairs in West Virginia had been complicated by the political situation, and it is necessary to recollect the dates of the swift following steps in Virginia's progress into the Confederacy. Sumter surrendered on Saturday, the 1 3th of April, and on Monday the I5th President Lin coln issued his first call for troops. On Wednesday the 1 7th the Virginia convention passed the Ordinance of Secession in secret session. On Friday the iQth it was known in Washington, and on Saturday Lee and Johnston resigned their commissions in the United States Army, sorrowfully " going with their State." 2 On the following Tuesday (23d) the chairman of the Virginia Convention presented to Lee his commission as Major-General and Commander of the Virginia Forces. On the same day Governor Dennison handed to McClellan his commission

1 O. R., vol. ii. pp. 64-74.

2 Johnston's Narrative, p. 10. Townsend's Anecdotes of the Civil War, p. 31. Long's Memoirs of Lee, pp. 94, 96.

McCLELLAN IN WEST VIRGINIA 45

to command the Ohio forces in the service of the Union. Although the Confederate Congress at Montgomery ad mitted Virginia to the Confederacy early in May, this was not formally accepted in Virginia till after the popular vote on secession (May 23d) and the canvassing of the returns of that election. Governor Letcher issued on June 8th his proclamation announcing the result, and transfer ring the command of the Virginia troops to the Confeder ate Government.1 During the whole of May, therefore, Virginia's position was unsettled. Her governor, by the authority of the convention, regarded her as independent of the United States, but by an inchoate act of secession which would not become final till ratified by the popular vote. The Virginia troops were arrayed near the Potomac to resist the advance of national forces ; but Confederate troops had been welcomed in eastern Virginia as early as the loth of May, and President Davis had authorized Lee, as Commander of the Virginia forces, to assume control of them.2

It was well known that the prevailing sentiment in West Virginia was loyal to the Union, and each party avoided conflict there for fear of prejudicing its cause in the elec tion. Hence it was that as soon as the vote was cast, the aggressive was taken by the Virginia government in the burning of the bridges near Grafton. The fire of war was thus lighted. The crossing of the Ohio was with a full understanding with Colonel Kelley, who recognized Mc- Clellan at once as his military commander.3 The affair at Philippi was, in form, the last appearance of Virginia in the role of an independent nation, for in a very few days Lee announced by a published order that the absorption of the Virginia troops into the Confederate Army was complete.4

1 O. R., vol. ii. p. 911. 2 Id., p. 827.

3 I treated the relations of Lee and Virginia to the Confederacy in a paper in " The Nation," Dec. 23, 1897, entitled " Lee, Johnston, and Davis."

4 O. R., vol. ii. p. 912.

46 REMINISCENCES OF THE CIVIL WAR

It will be well to understand the topography of the Virginia mountains and their western slope, if we would reach the reasons which determined the lines of advance chosen by the Confederates and the counter moves of McClellan. The Alleghany range passing out of Pennsyl vania and running southwest through the whole length of Virginia, consists of several parallel lines of mountains enclosing narrow valleys. The Potomac River breaks through at the common boundary of Virginia and Mary land, and along its valley runs the National Road as well as the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal. The Baltimore and Ohio Railroad also follows this natural highway, which is thus indicated as the most important line of communica tion between Washington and the Ohio valley, though a high mountain summit must be passed, even by this route, before the tributaries of the Ohio can be reached. Half-way across the State to the southward, is a high water shed connecting the mountain ridges and separating the streams tributary to the Potomac on the north from those falling into the James and New rivers on the south. The Staunton and Parkersburg turnpike follows the line of this high " divide " looking down from among the clouds into the long and nearly straight defiles on either hand, which separate the Alleghany Mountains proper from the Blue Ridge on the east and from Cheat Mountain and other ranges on the west. Still further to the southwest the James River and the New River interlace their headwaters among the mountains, and break out on east and west, making the third natural pass through which the James River and Kanawha turnpike and canal find their way. These three routes across the mountains were the only ones on which military operations were at all feasible. The northern one was usually in the hands of the National forces, and the other two were those by which the Confed erates attempted the invasion of West Virginia. Beverly, a hundred miles from Staunton, was near the gate through

McCLELLAN IN WEST VIRGINIA 47

which the Staunton road passes on its way northwestward to Parkersburg and Wheeling, whilst Gauley Bridge was the key-point of the Kanawha route on the westerly slope of the mountains.

General Lee determined to send columns upon both these lines. General Henry A. Wise (formerly Governor of Virginia) took the Kanawha route, and General Robert S. Garnett (lately Lee's own adjutant-general) marched to Beverly.1 Upon Porterfield's retreat to Beverly, Garnett, who had also been an officer in the United States Army, was ordered to assume command there and to stimulate the recruiting and organization of regiments from the secession element of the population. Some Virginia regi ments raised on the eastern slope of the mountains were sent with him, and to these was soon added the First Georgia. On the ist of July he reported his force as 4500 men, but declared that his efforts to recruit had proven a complete failure, only 23 having joined. The West Vir ginians, he says, " are thoroughly imbued with an ignorant and bigoted Union sentiment." 2 Other reinforcements were promised Garnett, but none reached him except the Forty-fourth Virginia Regiment, which arrived at Beverly the very day of his engagement with McClellan's troops, but did not take part in the fighting.3

Tygart's valley, in which Beverly lies, is between Cheat Mountain on the east, and Rich Mountain on the west. The river, of the same name as the valley, flows north ward about fifteen miles, then turns westward, breaking through the ridge, and by junction with the Buckhannon River forms the Monongahela, which passes by Philippi and afterward crosses the railroad at Grafton. The Staun ton and Parkersburg turnpike divides at Beverly, the Parkersburg route passing over a saddle in Rich Moun tain, and the Wheeling route following the river to Philippi. The ridge north of the river at the gap is

1 O. R., vol. ii. pp. 908, 915. 2 /</., p. 239. 3 Id., pp. 240, 274.

48

REMINISCENCES OF THE CIVIL WAR

known as Laurel Mountain, and the road passes over a spur of it. Garnett regarded the two positions at Rich Mountain and Laurel Mountain as the gates to all the region beyond and to the West. A rough mountain road,

A.Garnett's Position.

B.& C.Pegram's >•

D.McClellanls

E.Morris'

F.Kosecrans' Line of March

COMBAT AT

RICH JHOUNTAIN,

SCALE-Ofi MILES

barely passable, connected the Laurel Mountain position with Cheat River on the east, and it was possible to go by this way northward through St. George to the North western turnpike, turning the mountain ranges.

Garnett thought the pass over Rich Mountain much the stronger and more easily held, and he therefore in trenched there about 1300 of his men and four cannon,

McCLELLAN IN WEST VIRGINIA 49

under command of Lieutenant-Colonel Pegram.1 The position chosen was on a spur of the mountain near its western base, and it was rudely fortified with breastworks of logs covered with an abatis of slashed timber along its front. The remainder of his force he placed in a similar fortified position on the road at Laurel Mountain, where he also had four guns, of which one was rifled. Here he commanded in person. His depot of supplies was at Beverly, which was sixteen miles from the Laurel Mountain position and five from that at Rich Mountain. He was pretty accurately informed of McClellan's forces and movements, and his preparations had barely been completed by the Qth of July, when the Union general appeared in his front.2

McClellan entered West Virginia in person on the 2ist of June, and on the 23d issued from Grafton a proclama tion to the inhabitants.3 He had gradually collected his forces along the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad, and these, at the time of the affair at Rich Mountain, consisted of six teen Ohio regiments, nine from Indiana, and two from West Virginia; in all, twenty-seven regiments with four batteries of artillery of six guns each, two troops of cav alry, and an independent company of riflemen. Of his batteries, one was of the regular army, and another, a company of regulars (Company I, Fourth U. S. Artillery), was with him awaiting mountain howitzers, which arrived a little later.4 The regiments varied somewhat in strength, but all were recently organized, and must have averaged at

1 O. R., vol. ii. p. 268. 2 Id., pp. 241, 248. 3 Id., pp. 194, 196.

4 As part of the troops were State troops not mustered into the United States service, no report of them is found in the War Department ; but the following are the numbers of the regiments found named as present in the correspondence and reports, — viz., 3d, 4th, 5th, 6th, 7th, 8th, 9th, loth, I3th, I4th, i sth, i6th, lyth, i8th, I9th, 2Oth, and 22d Ohio ; 6th, 7th, 8th, 9th, loth, nth, I3th, I4th, I5th Indiana, and ist and 2d Virginia; also Howe's United States Battery, Barnett's Ohio Battery, Loomis's Michigan Battery, and Daum's Virginia Battery; the cavalry were Burdsal's Ohio Dragoons and Barker's Illinois Cavalry. VOL. I. —4

50 REMINISCENCES OF THE CIVIL WAR

least 700 men each, making the whole force about 20,000. Of these, about 5000 were guarding the railroad and its bridges for some two hundred miles, under the command of Brigadier-General C. W. Hill, of the Ohio Militia ; a strong brigade under Brigadier-General Morris of Indiana, was at Philippi, and the rest were in three brigades form ing the immediate command of McClellan, the brigadiers being General W. S. Rosecrans, U. S. A., General Newton Schleich of Ohio, and Colonel Robert L. McCook of Ohio. On the date of his proclamation McClellan intended, as he informed General Scott, to move his principal column to Buckhannon on June 25th, and thence at once upon Beverly ; l but delays occurred, and it was not till July 2d that he reached Buckhannon, which is twenty-four miles west of Beverly, on the Parkersburg branch of the turn pike. Before leaving Grafton the rumors he heard had made him estimate Garnett's force at 6000 or 7000 men, of which the larger part were at Laurel Mountain in front of General Morris.2 On the 7th of July he moved McCook with two regiments to Middle Fork bridge, about half-way to Beverly, and on the same day ordered Morris to march with his brigade from Philippi to a position one and a half miles in front of Garnett's principal camp, which was promptly done.3 Three days later, McClellan concen trated the three brigades of his own column at Roaring Creek, about two miles from Colonel Pegram's position at the base of Rich Mountain. The advance on both lines had been made with only a skirmishing resistance, the Confederates being aware of McClellan's great superiority in numbers, and choosing to await his attack in their forti fied positions. The National commander was now con vinced that his opponent was 10,000 strong, of which about 2OOO were before him at Rich Mountain.4 A recon- noissance made on the loth showed that Pegram's position

1 O. R., vol. ii. p. 195. 2 Id., p. 205.

8 Id., p. 200. 4 Id., pp. 203, 204.

McCLELLAN IN WEST VIRGINIA 5 1

would be difficult to assail in front, but preparations were made to attack the next day, while Morris was directed to hold firmly his position before Garnett, watching for the effect of the attack at Rich Mountain. In the evening Rosecrans took to McClellan a young man named Hart, whose father lived on the top of the mountain two miles in rear of Pegram, and who thought he could guide a column of infantry to his father's farm by a circuit around Pegram's left flank south of the turnpike. The paths were so difficult that cannon could not go by them, but Rosecrans offered to lead a column of infantry and seize the road at the Hart farm. After some discussion McClel lan adopted the suggestion, and it was arranged that Rosecrans should march at daybreak of the nth with about 2000 men, including a troop of horse, and that upon the sound of his engagement in the rear of Pe gram McClellan would attack in force in front. By a blunder in one of the regimental camps, the reveille and assembly were sounded at midnight, and Pegram was put on the qui vive. He, however, believed that the attempt to turn his position would be by a path or country road passing round his right, between him and Garnett (of which the latter had warned him), and his attention was diverted from Rosecrans's actual route, which he thought impracticable.1 The alert which had occurred at midnight made Rosecrans think it best to make a longer circuit than he at first intended, and it took ten hours of severe marching and mountain climbing to reach the Hart farm. The turning movement was made, but he found an enemy opposing him. Pegram had detached about 350 men from the 1300 which he had, and had ordered them to guard the road at the mountain summit. He sent with them a single cannon from the four which constituted his only battery, and they threw together a breastwork of

1 O. R., vol. ii. pp. 215, 256, 260. Conduct of the War, vol. vi. (Rose crans), pp. 2, 3.

52 REMINISCENCES OF THE CIVIL WAR

logs. The turnpike at Hart's runs in a depression of the summit, and as Rosecrans, early in the afternoon, came out upon the road, he was warmly received by both mus ketry and cannon. The ground was rough, the men were for the first time under fire, and the skirmishing combat varied through two or three hours, when a charge by part of Rosecrans's line, aided by a few heavy volleys from another portion of his forces which had secured a good position, broke the enemy's line. Reinforcements from Pegram were nearly at hand, with another cannon ; but they did not come into action, and the runaway team of the caisson on the hill-top, dashing into the gun that was coming up, capsized it down the mountain-side where the descending road was scarped diagonally along it. Both guns fell into Rosecrans's hands, and he was in possession of the field. The march and the assault had been made in rain and storm. Nothing was heard from McClellan; and the enemy, rallying on their reinforcements, made such show of resistance on the crest a little further on, that Rosecrans directed his men to rest upon their arms till next morning. When day broke on the I2th, the enemy had disappeared from the mountain-top, and Rose crans, feeling his way down to the rear of Pegram's posi tion, found it also abandoned, the two remaining cannon being spiked, and a few sick and wounded being left in charge of a surgeon. Still nothing was seen of McClellan, and Rosecrans sent word to him, in his camp beyond Roaring Creek, that he was in possession of the enemy's position. Rosecrans's loss had been 12 killed and 49 wounded. The Confederates left 20 wounded on the field, and 63 were surrendered at the lower camp, includ ing the sick. No trustworthy report of their dead was made.1

The noise of the engagement had been heard in McClel- lan's camp, and he formed his troops for attack, but the

1 O. R., vol. ii pp. 215, 260, 265. C. W., vol. vi. (Rosecrans) pp. 3-5.

McCLELLAN IN WEST VIRGINIA 53

long continuance of the cannonade and some signs of exultation in Pegram's camp seem to have made him think Rosecrans had been repulsed. The failure to attack in accordance with the plan has never been explained.1 Rosecrans's messengers had failed to reach McClellan during the nth, but the sound of the battle was sufficient notice that he had gained the summit and was engaged ; and he was, in fact, left to win his own battle or to get out of his embarrassment as he could. Toward evening McClellan began to cut a road for artillery to a neighboring height, from which he hoped his twelve guns would make Pegram's position untenable ; but his lines were withdrawn again beyond Roaring Creek at nightfall, and all further action postponed to the next day.

About half of Pegram's men had succeeded in passing around Rosecrans's right flank during the night and had gained Beverly. These, with the newly arrived Confed erate regiment, fled southward on the Staunton road. Garnett had learned in the evening, by messenger from Beverly, that Rich Mountain summit was carried, and evacuated his camp in front of Morris about midnight. He first marched toward Beverly, and was within five miles of that place when he received information (false at the time) that the National forces already occupied it. He then retraced his steps nearly to his camp, and, leaving the turnpike at Leadsville, he turned off upon a country road over Cheat Mountain into Cheat River valley, following the stream northward toward St. George and West Union, in the forlorn hope of turning the mountains at the north end of the ridges, and regaining his communications by a very long detour. He might have continued southward

i C. W., vol. vi. p. 6. McClellan seems to have expected Rosecrans to reach the rear of Pegram's advanced work before his own attack should be made ; but the reconnoissance of Lieutenant Poe, his engineer, shows that this work could be turned by a much shorter route than the long and difficult one by which Rosecrans went to the mountain ridge. See Poe's Report, O. R., vol. li. pt. i. p. 14.

54 REMINISCENCES OF THE CIVIL WAR

through Beverly almost at leisure, for McClellan did not enter the town till past noon on the I2th.

Morris learned of Garnett's retreat at dawn, and started in pursuit as soon as rations could be issued. He marched first to Leadsville, where he halted to communicate with McClellan at Beverly and get further orders. These reached him in the night, and at daybreak of the I3th he resumed the pursuit. His advance-guard of three regi ments, accompanied by Captain H. W. Benham of the Engineers, overtook the rear of the Confederate column about noon and continued a skirmishing pursuit for some two hours. Garnett himself handled his rear-guard with skill, and at Carrick's Ford a lively encounter was had. A mile or two further, at another ford and when the skir mishing was very slight, he was killed while withdrawing his skirmishers from behind a pile of driftwood which he had used as a barricade. One of his cannon had become stalled in the ford, and with about forty wagons fell into Morris's hands. The direct pursuit was here discontinued, but McClellan had sent a dispatch to General Hill at Graf- ton, to collect the garrisons along the railroad and block the way of the Confederates where they must pass around the northern spurs of the mountains.1

His military telegraph terminated at the Roaring Creek camp, and the dispatch written in the evening of the I2th was not forwarded to Hill till near noon of the I3th. This officer immediately ordered the collection of the greater part of his detachments at Oakland, and called upon the railway officials for special trains to hurry them to the rendezvous. About 1000 men under Colonel James Irvine of the Sixteenth Ohio were at West Union, where the St. George road reaches the Northwestern Turnpike, and Hill's information was that a detachment of these held Red House, a crossing several miles in advance, by which the retreating enemy might go. Irvine was directed to

1 Reports of Morris and Benham, O. R., vol. ii. pp. 220, 222.

McCLELLAN IN WEST VIRGINIA 55

hold his positions at all hazards till he could be reinforced. Hill himself hastened with the first train from Grafton to Oakland with about 500 men and three cannon, reached his destination at nightfall, and hurried his detachment forward by a night march to Irvine, ten or twelve miles over rough roads. It turned out that Irvine did not

o

occupy Red House, and the prevalent belief that the enemy was about 8000 in number, with the uncertainty of the road he would take, made it proper to keep the little force concentrated till reinforcements should come. The first of these reached Irvine about six o'clock on the morning of the 1 4th, raising his command to 1500; but a few moments after their arrival he learned that the enemy had passed Red House soon after daylight. He gave chase, but did not overtake them.

Meanwhile General Hill had spent the night in trying to hasten forward the railway trains, but none were able to reach Oakland till morning, and Garnett's forces had now more than twenty miles the start, and were on fairly good roads, moving southward on the eastern side of the mountains. McClellan still telegraphed that Hill had the one opportunity of a lifetime to capture the fleeing army, and that officer hastened in pursuit, though unprovided with wagons or extra rations. When however the Union commander learned that the enemy had fairly turned the mountains, he ordered the pursuit stopped. Hill had used both intelligence and energy in his attempt to concentrate his troops, but it proved simply impossible for the rail road to carry them to Oakland before the enemy had passed the turning-point, twenty miles to the southward.1

During the I2th Pegram's situation and movements were unknown. He had intended, when he evacuated his camp, to follow the line of retreat taken by the detachment already near the mountain-top, but, in the darkness of the night and in the tangled woods and thickets of the moun-

1 Report of Hill, O. R., vol. ii. p. 224.

56 REMINISCENCES OF THE CIVIL WAR

tain-side, his column got divided, and, with the rear por tion of it, he wandered all day of the I2th, seeking to make his way to Garnett. He halted at evening at the Tygart Valley River, six miles north of Beverly, and learned from some country people of Garnett's retreat. It was still possible to reach the mountains east of the valley, but beyond lay a hundred miles of wilderness and half a dozen mountain ridges on which little, if any, food could be found for his men. He called a council of war, and, by advice of his officers, sent to McClellan, at Beverly, an offer of surrender. This was received on the I3th, and Pegram brought in 30 officers and 525 men.1 McClellan then moved southward himself, following the Staunton road, by which the remnant of Pegram's little force had escaped, and on the I4th occupied Huttonsville. Two regiments of Confederate troops were hastening from Staunton to reinforce Garnett. These were halted at Monterey, east of the principal ridge of the Alleghanies, and upon them the retreating forces rallied. Brigadier- General H. R. Jackson was assigned to command in Gar nett's place, and both Governor Letcher and General Lee made strenuous efforts to increase this army to a force sufficient to resume aggressive operations.2 On McClel- lan's part nothing further was attempted till on the 22d he was summoned to Washington to assume command of the army which had retreated to the capital after the panic of the first Bull Run battle.

The affair at Rich Mountain and the subsequent move ments were among the minor events of a great war, and would not warrant a detailed description, were it not for the momentous effect they had upon the conduct of the war, by being the occasion of McClellan's promotion to the command of the Potomac army. The narrative which has been given contains the " unvarnished tale," as nearly as official records of both sides can give it, and it is

1 Report of Pegram, O. R., vol. ii. pp. 265, 266. 2 Id., pp. 247, 254.

McCLELLAN IN WEST VIRGINIA $?

a curious task to compare it with the picture of the cam paign and its results which was then given to the world in the series of proclamations and dispatches of the young general, beginning with his first occupation of the country and ending with his congratulations to his troops, in which he announced that they had " annihilated two armies, commanded by educated and experienced soldiers, in trenched in mountain fastnesses fortified at their leisure." The country was eager for good news, and took it as literally true. McClellan was the hero of the moment, and when, but a week later, his success was followed by the disaster to McDowell at Bull Run, he seemed pointed out by Providence as the ideal chieftain who could repair the misfortune and lead our armies to certain victory. His personal intercourse with those about him was so kindly, and his bearing so modest, that his dispatches, proclamations, and correspondence are a psychological study, more puzzling to those who knew him well than to strangers. Their turgid rhetoric and exaggerated pre tence did not seem natural to him. In them he seemed to be composing for stage effect something to be spoken in character by a quite different person from the sensible and genial man we knew in daily life and conversation. The career of the great Napoleon had been the study and the absorbing admiration of young American soldiers, and it was perhaps not strange that when real war came they should copy his bulletins and even his personal bear ing. It was, for the moment, the bent of the people to be pleased with McClellan's rendering of the r61e; they dubbed him the young Napoleon, and the photogra phers got him to stand with folded arms, in the historic pose. For two or three weeks his dispatches and letters were all on fire with enthusiastic energy. He appeared to be in a morbid condition of mental exaltation. When he came out of it, he was as genial as ever. The assumed dash and energy of his first campaign made the disap-

58 REMINISCENCES OF THE CIVIL WAR

pointment and the reaction more painful when the exces sive caution of his conduct in command of the Army of the Potomac was seen. But the Rich Mountain affair, when analyzed, shows the same characteristics which became well known later. There was the same over estimate of the enemy, the same tendency to interpret unfavorably the sights and sounds in front, the same hesitancy to throw in his whole force when he knew that his subordinate was engaged. If Garnett had been as strong as McClellan believed him, he had abundant time and means to overwhelm Morris, who lay four days in easy striking distance, while the National commander delayed attacking Pegram ; and had Morris been beaten, Garnett would have been as near Clarksburg as his opponent, and there would have been a race for the railroad. But, happily, Garnett was less strong and less enterprising than he was credited with being. Pegram was dislodged, and the Confederates made a precipitate retreat.

CHAPTER IV

THE KANAWHA VALLEY

Orders for the Kanawha expedition — The troops and their quality — Lack of artillery and cavalry — Assembling at Gallipolis — District of the Kanawha — Numbers of the opposing forces — Method of advance • - Use of steamboats — Advance guards on river banks — Camp at Thir teen-mile Creek — Night alarm — The river chutes — Sunken obstruc tions — Pocotaligo — Affair at Barboursville — Affair at Scary Creek — Wise's position at Tyler Mountain — His precipitate retreat — Occu pation of Charleston — Rosecrans succeeds McClellan — Advance toward Gauley Bridge — Insubordination — The Newspaper Correspond ent — Occupation of Gauley Bridge.

WHEN McClellan reached Buckhannon, on the 2d of July, the rumors he heard of Garnett's strength, and the news of the presence of General Wise with a considerable force in the Great Kanawha valley, made him conclude to order a brigade to that region for the purpose of holding the lower part of the valley defensively till he might try to cut off Wise's army after Garnett should be disposed of. This duty was assigned to me. On the 22d of June I had received my appointment as Brigadier-General, U. S. Volunteers, superseding my state commission. I had seen the regiments of my brigade going one by one, as fast as they were reorganized for the three years' service, and I had hoped to be ordered to follow them to McClellan's own column. The only one left in camp was the Eleventh Ohio, of which only five companies were present, though two more companies were soon added.

McClellan's letter directed me to assume command of the First and Second Kentucky regiments with the Twelfth Ohio, and to call upon the governor for a troop

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of cavalry and a six-gun battery: to expedite the equip ment of the whole and move them to Gallipolis via Hampden and Portland, stations on the Marietta Railroad, from which a march of twenty-five miles by country roads would take us to our destination. At Gallipolis was the Twenty-first Ohio, which I should add to my command and proceed at once with two regiments to Point Pleasant at the mouth of the Kanawha, five miles above. When all were assembled, one regiment was to be left at Point Pleasant, two were to be advanced up the valley to Ten-mile Creek, and the other placed at an intermediate position. " Until further orders," the letter continued, " remain on the defensive and endeavor to induce the rebels to remain at Charleston until I can cut off their retreat by a movement from Beverly." Captain W. J. Kountz, an experienced steamboat captain, was in charge of water-transportation, and would furnish light-draught steamboats for my use.1

1 What purports to be McClellan's letter to me is found in the Records (O. R., vol. ii. pt. i. p. 197), but it seems to be only an abstract of it, made to accompany his dispatch to Washington (Id,, p. 198), and by a clerical error given the form of the complete letter. It does not contain the quotation given above, which was reiterated before the letter was closed, in these words : " Remember that my present plan is to cut them off by a rapid march from Beverly after driving those in front of me across the mountains, and do all you can to favor that by avoiding offensive movements."

After the printing of the earlier volumes of the Records, covering the years 1861-1862, I learned that the books and papers of the Department of the Ohio had not been sent to Washington at the close of the war, but were still in Cincinnati. I brought this fact to the attention of the Ad jutant-General, and at the request of that officer obtained and forwarded them to the Archives office. With them were my letter books and the original files of my correspondence with McClellan and Rosecrans in 1861 and 1862. Colonel Robert N. Scott, who was then in charge of the pub lication, informed me that the whole would be prepared for printing and would appear in the supplemental volumes, after the completion of the rest of the First Series. Owing to changes in the Board of Publication in the course of twenty years, there were errors in the arrangement of the matter for the printer, and a considerable part of the correspondence between the generals named and myself was accidentally omitted from the supplemental volume (O. R., vol. li. pt. i.) in which it should have appeared. The orig inals are no doubt in the files of the Archives office, and for the benefit

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Governor Dennison seconded our wishes with his usual earnestness, and ordered the battery of artillery and com pany of cavalry to meet me at Gallipolis ; but the guns for the battery were not to be had, and a section of two bronze guns (six-pounder smooth-bores rifled) was the only artillery, whilst the cavalry was less than half a troop of raw recruits, useful only as messengers. I succeeded in getting the Eleventh Ohio sent with me, the lacking companies to be recruited and sent later. The Twelfth Ohio was an excellent regiment which had been some what delayed in its reorganization and had not gone with the rest of. its brigade to McClellan. The Twenty-first was one of the regiments enlisted for the State in excess of the first quota, and was now brought into the national service under the President's second call. The two Ken tucky regiments had been organized in Cincinnati, and were made up chiefly of steamboat crews and " longshore men " thrown out of employment by the stoppage of commerce on the river. There were in them some com panies of other material, but these gave the distinctive character to the regiments. The colonels and part of the field officers were Kentuckians, but the organizations were Ohio regiments in nearly everything but the name. The men were mostly of a rough and reckless class, and gave a good deal of trouble by insubordination ; but they did not lack courage, and after they had been under discipline for a while, became good fighting regiments. The diffi culty of getting transportation from the railway company delayed our departure. It was not till the 6th of July that a regiment could be sent, and another followed in two or three days. The two Kentucky regiments were not yet armed and equipped, but after a day or two were ready and were ordered up the river by steamboats. I myself left Camp Dennison on the evening of Sunday

of investigators I give in Appendix A a list of the numbers missing from the printed volume, as shown by comparison with my retained copies.

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the 7th with the Eleventh Ohio (seven companies) and reached Gallipolis in the evening of the Qth. The three Ohio regiments were united on the loth and carried by steamers to Point Pleasant, and we entered the theatre of war.1

My movement had been made upon a telegram from General McClellan, and I found at Gallipolis his letter of instructions of the 2d, and another of the 6th which en larged the scope of my command. A territorial district was assigned to me, including the southwestern part of Virginia below Parkersburg on the Ohio, and north of the Great Kanawha, reaching back into the country as I should occupy it.2 The directions to restrict myself to a defensive occupation of the Lower Kanawha valley were changed to instructions to march on Charleston and Gau- ley Bridge, and, with a view to his resumption of the plan to make this his main line of advance, to " obtain all possible information in regard to the roads leading toward Wytheville and the adjacent region." I was also ordered to place a regiment at Ripley, on the road from Parkers- burg to Charleston, and advised " to beat up Barboursville, Guyandotte, etc., so that the entire course of the Ohio may be secured to us." Communication with Ripley was by Letart's Falls on the Ohio, some thirty miles above Gallipolis, or by Ravenswood, twenty miles further. Guyandotte was a longer distance below Gallipolis, and Barboursville was inland some miles up the Guyandotte River. As to General Wise, McClellan wrote: "Drive Wise out and catch him if you can. If you do catch him, send him to Columbus penitentiary." A regiment at Parkersburg and another at Roane Court House on the northern border of my district were ordered to report to

1 O. R., vol. li. pt. i. p. 416 : my report to McClellan.

2 The territorial boundary of McClellan's Department had been placed at the Great Kanawha and the Ohio rivers, probably with some political idea of avoiding the appearance of aggression upon regions of doubtful loyalty. When warlike operations began, such ideas, of course, were abandoned.

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me, but I was not authorized to move them from the stations assigned them, and they were soon united to McClellan's own column.

At Gallipolis I heard that a steamboat on the Ohio had been boarded by a rebel party near Guyandotte, and the news giving point to McClellan's suggestion to " beat up " that region, I dispatched a small steamboat down the river to meet the Kentucky regiments with orders for the lead ing one to land at Guyandotte and suppress any insurgents in that neighborhood.1 It was hazardous to divide my little army into three columns on a base of a hundred miles, but it was thought wise to show some Union troops at various points on the border, and I purposed to unite my detachments by early convergent movements forward to the Kanawha valley as soon as I should reach Red House, thirty-two miles up the river, with my principal column.

Before I reached Charleston I added to my artillery one iron and one brass cannon, smooth six-pounders, borrowed from the civil authorities at Gallipolis ; but they were with out caissons or any proper equipment, and were manned by volunteers from the infantry.2 My total force, when assembled, would be a little over 3000 men, the regiments having the same average strength as those with McClellan. The opposing force under General Wise was 4000 by the time the campaign was fully opened, though somewhat less at the beginning.3

The Great Kanawha River was navigable for small steam boats about seventy miles, to a point ten or twelve miles above Charleston, the only important town of the region, which was at the confluence of the Kanawha and Elk rivers. Steamboats were plenty, owing to the interruption of trade,

1 O. R., vol. li. pt. i. p. 417. 2 Ibid.

8 Wise reported his force on the lyth of July as 3500 "effective " men and ten cannon, and says he received " perhaps 300 " in reinforcements on the i8th. When he abandoned the valley ten days later, he reported his force 4000 in round numbers. O. R., vol. ii. pp. 290, 292^ ion.

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and wagons were wholly lacking ; so that my column was accompanied and partly carried by a fleet of stern-wheel steamers.

On Thursday the nth of July the movement from Point Pleasant began. An advance-guard was sent out on each side of the river, marching upon the roads which were near its banks. The few horsemen were divided and sent with them to carry messages, and the boats followed, steaming slowly along in rear of the marching men. Most of tv/o regiments were carried on the steamers, to save fatigue to the men, who were as yet unused to their work, and many of whom were footsore from their first long march of twenty-five miles to Gallipolis from Hampden station, where they had been obliged to leave the railway. The arrange ment was also a good one in a military point of view, for if an enemy were met on either bank of the stream, the boats could land in a moment and the troops disembark without delay.

Our first day's sail was thirteen miles up the river, and it was the very romance of campaigning. I took my station on top of the pilot-house of the leading boat, so that I might see over the banks of the stream and across the bottom lands to the high hills which bounded the valley. The afternoon was a lovely one. Summer clouds lazily drifted across the sky, the boats were dressed in their colors and swarmed with the men like bees. The bands played na tional tunes, and as we passed the houses of Union citizens, the inmates would wave their handkerchiefs to us, and were answered by cheers from the troops. The scenery was picturesque, the gently winding river making beautiful reaches that opened new scenes upon us at every turn. On either side the advance-guard could be seen in the dis tance, the main body in the road, with skirmishers explor ing the way in front, and flankers on the sides. Now and then a horseman would bring some message to the bank from the front, and a small boat would be sent to receive

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_^___ 4 —

it, giving us the rumors with which the country was rife, and which gave just enough of excitement and of the spice of possible danger to make this our first day in an enemy's country key everybody to just such a pitch as apparently to double the vividness of every sensation. The landscape seemed more beautiful, the sunshine more bright, and the exhilaration of out-door life more joyous than any we had ever known.

The halt for the night had been assigned at a little village on the right (northern) bank of the stream, which was nestled beneath a ridge which ran down from the hills toward the river, making an excellent position for defence against any force which might come against it from the upper valley. The sun was getting low behind us in the west, as we approached it, and the advance-guard had already halted. Captain Cotter's two bronze guns gleamed bright on the top of the ridge beyond the pretty little town, and before the sun went down, the new white tents had been carried up to the slope and pitched there. The steamers were moored to the shore, and the low slanting rays of the sunset fell upon as charming a picture as was ever painted. An outpost with pickets was set on the southern side of the river, both grand and camp guards were put out also on the side we occupied, and the men soon had their supper and went to rest. Late in the evening a panic-stricken countryman came in with the news that General Wise was moving down upon us with 4000 men. The man was evidently in earnest, and was a loyal one. He believed every word he said, but he had in fact seen only a few of the enemy's horsemen who were scouting toward us, and believed their statement that an army was at their back. It was our initiation into an ex perience of rumors that was to continue as long as the war. We were to get them daily and almost hourly; sometimes with a little foundation of fact, sometimes with none ; rarely purposely deceptive, but always grossly VOL. i. — 5

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exaggerated, making chimeras with which a commanding officer had to wage a more incessant warfare than with the substantial enemy in his front. I reasoned that Wise's troops were, like my own, too raw to venture a night attack with, and contented myself with sending a strong reconnoitring party out beyond my pickets, putting in command of it Major Hines of the Twelfth Ohio, an officer who subsequently became noted for his enterprise and activity in charge of scouting parties. The camp rested quietly, and toward morning Hines returned, reporting that a troop of the enemy's horse had come within a couple of miles of our position in search of information about us and our movement. They had indulged in loud bragging as to what Wise and his army would do with us, but this and nothing more was the basis of our honest friend's fright The morning dawned bright and peaceful, the steamers were sent back for a regiment which was still at Point Pleasant, and the day was used in concentrating the little army and preparing for another advance.

On July 1 3th we moved again, making about ten miles, and finding the navigation becoming difficult by reason of the low water. At several shoals in the stream rough wing-dams had been built from the sides to concentrate the water in the channel, and at Knob Shoals, in one of these " chutes " as they were called, a coal barge had sometime before been sunk. In trying to pass it our leading boat grounded, and, the current being swift, it was for a time doubtful if we should get her off. We finally succeeded, however, and the procession of boats slowly steamed up the rapids. We had hardly got beyond them when we heard a distant cannon-shot from our advance- guard which had opened a long distance between them and us during our delay. We steamed rapidly ahead. Soon we saw a man pulling off from the south bank in a skiff. Nearing the steamer, he stood up and excitedly shouted that a general engagement had begun. We

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laughingly told him it could n't be very general till we got in, and we moved on, keeping a sharp outlook for our parties on either bank. When we came up to them, we learned that a party of horsemen had appeared on the southern side of the river and had opened a skirmishing fire, but had scampered off as if the Old Nick were after them when a shell from the rifled gun was sent over their heads. The shell, like a good many that were made in those days, did not explode, and the simple people of the vicinity who had heard its long-continued scream told our men some days after that they thought it was " going yet."

From this time some show of resistance was made by the enemy, and the skirmishing somewhat retarded the movement. Still, about ten miles was made each day till the evening of the i6th, when we encamped at the mouth of the Pocotaligo, a large creek which enters the Kanawha from the north.1 The evening before, we had had one of those incidents, not unusual with new troops, which prove that nothing but habit can make men cool and confident in their duties. We had, as usual, moored our boats to the northern bank and made our camp there, placing an outpost on the left bank opposite us support ing a chain of sentinels, to prevent a surprise from that direction. A report of some force of the enemy in their front made me order another detachment to their support after nightfall. The detachment had been told off and ferried across in small boats. They were dimly seen marching in the starlight up the river after landing, when suddenly a shot was heard, and then an irregular volley was both seen and heard as the muskets flashed out in the darkness. A supporting force was quickly sent over, and, no further disturbance occurring, a search was made for an enemy, but none was found. A gun had accidentally gone off in the squad, and the rest of the men, surprised and 1 O. R., vol. li. pt. i. p. 418.

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bewildered, had fired, they neither knew why nor at what. Two men were killed, and several others were hurt. This and the chaffing the men got from their comrades was a lesson to the whole command. The soldiers were brave enough, and were thoroughly ashamed of themselves, but they were raw ; that was all that could be said of it.1

We were here overtaken by the Second Kentucky, which had stopped at Guyandotte on its way up the river, and had marched across the country to join us after our prog ress had sufficiently covered that lower region. From Guyandotte a portion of the regiment, under command of Lieutenant-Colonel Neff, had gone to Barboursville and had attacked and dispersed an encampment of Confeder ates which was organizing there. It was a very creditable little action, in which officers and men conducted them selves well, and which made them for the time the envy of the rest of the command.

The situation at " Poca," as it was called in the neighbor hood, was one which made the further advance of the army require some consideration. Information which came to us from loyal men showed that some force of the enemy was in position above the mouth of Scary Creek on the south side of the Kanawha, and about three miles from us. We had for two days had constant light skirmishing with the advance-guard of Wise's forces on the north bank of the river, and supposed that the princi pal part of his command was on our side, and not far in front of us. It turned out in fact that this was so, and that Wise had placed his principal camp at Tyler Moun tain, a bold spur which reaches the river on the northern side (on which is also the turnpike road), about twelve miles above my position, while he occupied the south side with a detachment. The Pocotaligo, which entered the river from the north at our camp, covered us against an attack on that side; but we could not take our steam- 1 O. R., vol. li. pt. i. p. 421.

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boats further unless both banks of the river were cleared. We had scarcely any wagons, for those which had been promised us could not yet be forwarded, and we must either continue to keep the steamboats with us, or organize wagon transportation and cut loose from the boats.1 My urgent dispatches were hurrying the wagons toward us, but meanwhile I hoped the opposition on the south bank of the river would prove trifling, for artillery in position at any point on the narrow river would at once stop naviga tion of our light and unarmed transports. On the morning of the 1 7th a reconnoitring party sent forward on the south side of the river under command of Lieutenant- Colonel White of the Twelfth Ohio, reported the enemy about five hundred strong intrenched on the further side of Scary Creek, which was not fordable at its mouth, but could be crossed a little way up the stream. Colonel Lowe of the Twelfth requested the privilege of driving off this party with his regiment accompanied by our two cannon. He was ordered to do so, whilst the enemy's skirmishers should be pushed back from the front of the main column, and it should be held ready to advance rapidly up the north bank of the river as soon as the hostile force at Scary Creek should be dislodged.

The Twelfth and two companies of the Twenty-first Ohio were ferried over and moved out soon after noon. The first reports from them were encouraging and full of confidence, the enemy were retreating and they had dis mounted one of his guns; but just before evening they returned, bringing the account of their repulse in the effort to cross at the mouth of the creek, and their failure to find the ford a little higher up. Their ammunition had run short, some casualties had occurred, and they had become discouraged and given it up. Their loss was 10 men killed and 35 wounded. If they had held on and asked for assistance, it would have been well enough; but, 1 O. R., vol. li. pt. i. p. 420; dispatch of i7th also.

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as was common with new troops, they passed from confi dence to discouragement as soon as they were checked, and they retreated.

The affair was accompanied by another humiliating in cident which gave me no little chagrin. During the progress of the engagement Colonel Woodruff and Lieu tenant-Colonel Neff of the Second Kentucky, with Colonel De Villiers of the Eleventh Ohio, rode out in front, on the north bank of the river, till they came opposite the enemy's position, the hostile party on our side of the stream having fallen back beyond this point. They were told by a negro that the rebels were in retreat, and they got the black man to ferry them over in a skiff, that they might be the first to congratulate their friends. To their amazement they were welcomed as prisoners by the Confederates, who greatly enjoyed their discomfiture. The negro had told the truth in saying that the enemy had been in retreat ; for the fact was that both sides retreated, but the Confederates, being first informed of this, resumed their position and claimed a victory. The officers who were captured had gone out without permission, and, led on by the hare brained De Villiers, had done what they knew was foolish and unmilitary, resulting for them in a severe experience in Libby Prison at Richmond, and for us in the momen tary appearance of lack of discipline and order which could not fairly be charged upon the command. I re ported the facts without disguise or apology, trusting to the future to remove the bad impression the affair must naturally make upon McClellan.

The report of the strength of the position attacked and our knowledge of the increasing difficulty of the ground before us, led me to conclude that the wisest course would be to await the arrival of the wagons, now daily expected, and then, with supplies for several days in hand, move independent of the steamers, which became only an em barrassment when it was advisable to leave the river road

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for the purpose of turning a fortified position like that we had found before us. We therefore rested quietly in our strong camp for several days, holding both banks of the river and preparing to move the main column by a country road leading away from the stream on the north side, and returning to it at Tyler Mountain, where Wise's camp was reported to be. I ordered up the First Kentucky from Ravenswood and Ripley, but its colonel found obstacles in his way, and did not join us till we reached Charleston the following week.

On the 23d of July I had succeeded in getting wagons and teams enough to supply the most necessary uses, and renewed the advance. We marched rapidly on the 24th by the circuitous route I have mentioned, leaving a regiment to protect the steamboats. The country was very broken and the roads very rough, but the enemy had no knowledge of our movement, and toward evening we again approached the river immediately in rear of their camp at Tyler Mountain. When we drove in their pickets, the force was panic-stricken and ran off, leaving their camp in confusion, and their supper which they were cooking but did not stop to eat. A little below the point where we reached the river, and on the other side, was the steamboat " Maffet" with a party of soldiers gathering the wheat which had been cut in the neighboring fields and was in the sheaf. I was for a moment doubtful whether it might not be one of our own boats which had ventured up the river under protection of the regiment left behind, and directed our skirmishers who were deployed along the edge of the water to hail the other side. "Who are you?" was shouted from both banks simultaneously. " United States troops," our men answered. " Hurrah for Jeff Davis ! " shouted the others, and a rattling fire opened on both sides. A shell was sent from our cannon into the steamer, and the party upon her were immediately seen jumping ashore, having first set fire to her to prevent her

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falling into our hands. The enemy then moved away on that side, under cover of the trees which lined the river bank. Night was now falling, and, sending forward an advance-guard to follow up the force whose camp we had surprised, we bivouacked on the mountain side.

In the morning, as we were moving out at an early hour, we were met by the mayor and two or three prominent citizens of Charleston who came to surrender the town to us, Wise having hurriedly retreated during the night. He had done a very unnecessary piece of mischief before leaving, in partly cutting off the cables of a fine suspen sion bridge which spans the Elk River at Charleston. As this stream enters the Kanawha from the north and below the city, it may have seemed to him that it would delay our progress; but as a large number of empty coal barges were lying at the town, it took our company of mechanics, under Captain Lane of the Eleventh Ohio, but a little while to improvise a good floating bridge, and part of the com mand passed through the town and camped beyond it.1 One day was now given to the establishment of a depot of supplies at Charleston and to the organization of regular communication by water with Gallipolis, and by wagons with such positions as we might occupy further up the river. Deputations of the townspeople were informed that it was not our policy to meddle with private persons who remained quietly at home, nor would we make any inquisition as to the personal opinions of those who attended strictly to their own business; but they were warned that any communication with the enemy would be remorselessly punished.

We were now able to get more accurate information about Wise's forces than we could obtain before, and this accorded pretty well with the strength which he reported officially.2 His infantry was therefore more than equal to the column under my command in the valley, whilst in

1 O. R., vol. li. pt. i. p. 425. 2 Ante, p. 63 note.

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artillery and in cavalry he was greatly superior. Our continued advance in the face of such opposition is suffi cient evidence that the Confederate force was not well handled, for as the valley contracted and the hills crowded in closer to the river, nearly every mile offered positions in which small numbers could hold at bay an army. Our success in reaching Charleston was therefore good ground for being content with our progress, though I had to blame myself for errors in the management of my part of the campaign at Pocataligo. I ought not to have assumed as confidently as I did that the enemy was only five hun dred strong at Scary Creek and that a detachment could dispose of that obstacle whilst the rest of the column pre pared to advance on our principal line. Wise's force at that point was in fact double the number supposed.1 It is true it was very inconvenient to ferry any considerable body of troops back and forth across the river; but I should nevertheless have taken the bulk of my command to the left bank, and by occupying the enemy's attention at the mouth of Scary Creek, covered the movement of a sufficient force upon his flank by means of the fords farther up that stream. This would have resulted in the complete routing of the detachment, and it is nearly cer tain that I could have pushed on to Charleston at once, and could have waited there for the organization of my wagon train with the prestige of victory, instead of doing so at 'Poca' with the appearance of a check.

McClellan recognized the fact that he was asking me to face the enemy with no odds in my favor, and as soon as he heard that Wise was disposed to make a stand he directed me not to risk attacking him in front, but rather to await the result of his own movement toward the Upper Kanawha.2 Rosecrans did the same when he assumed command ; but I knew the hope had been that I would reach Gauley Bridge, and I was vexed that my move- 1 O. R., vol. ii. p. ion. 2 Dispatches of July 16 and 20.

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ment should have the appearance of failing when I was conscious that we had not fairly measured our strength with my opponent. As soon, therefore, as the needful preparations could be made, I decided upon the turning movement which I have already described, and our reso lute advance seems to have thrown Wise into a panic from which he did not recover till he got far beyond Gauley Bridge.

At Charleston I learned of the Bull Run disaster, and that McClellan had been ordered to Washington, leaving Rosecrans in command of our department. The latter sent me orders which implied that to reach Charleston was the most he could expect of me, and directing me to remain on the defensive if I should succeed in getting so far, whilst he should take up anew McClellan's plan of reaching the rear of Wise's army.1 His dispatches, fortunately, did not reach me till I was close to Gauley Bridge and was sure of my ability to take possession of that defile, some forty miles above Charleston. An additional reason for my prompt advance was that the Twenty-first Ohio was not yet re-enlisted for the war, was only a " three months " regiment whose time was about to expire, and Governor Dennison had telegraphed me to send it back to Ohio. I left this regiment as a post- garrison at Charleston till it could be relieved by another, or till my success in reaching Gauley Bridge should enable me to send back a detachment for that post, and, on the 26th July, pushed forward with the rest of my column, which, now that the First Kentucky had joined me, con sisted of four regiments. Our first night's encampment was about eleven miles above Charleston in a lovely nook between spurs of the hills. Here I was treated to a little surprise on the part of three of my subordinates which was an unexpected enlargement of my military experience. The camp had got nicely arranged for the night and

1 Dispatches of July 26 and 29.

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supper was over, when these gentlemen waited upon me at my tent. The one who had shown the least capacity as commander of a regiment was spokesman, and in formed me that after consultation they had concluded that it was foolhardy to follow the Confederates into the gorge we were travelling, and that unless I could show them satisfactory reasons for changing their opinion they would not lead their commands further into it. I dryly asked if he was quite sure he understood the nature of his com munication. There was something probably in the tone of my question which was not altogether expected, and his companions began to look a little uneasy. He then protested that none of them meant any disrespect, but that as their military experience was about as extensive as my own, they thought I ought to make no movements but on consultation with them and by their consent. The others seemed to be better pleased with this way of putting it, and signified assent. My answer was that their conduct very plainly showed their own lack both of military expe rience and elementary military knowledge, and that this ignorance was the only thing which could palliate their action. Whether they meant it or not, their action was mutinous. The responsibility for the movement of the army was with me, and whilst I should be inclined to confer very freely with my principal subordinates and explain my purposes, I should call no councils of war, and submit nothing to vote till I felt incompetent to decide for myself. If they apologized for their conduct and showed earnestness in military obedience to orders, what they had now said would be overlooked, but on any recurrence of cause for complaint I should enforce my power by the arrest of the offender at once. I dismissed them with this, and immediately sent out the formal orders through my adjutant-general to march early next morning. Before they slept one of the three had come to me with earnest apology for his part in the matter, and

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a short time made them all as subordinate as I could wish. The incident could not have occurred in the brigade which had been under my command at Camp Dennison, and was a not unnatural result of the sudden assembling of inexperienced men under a brigade commander of whom they knew nothing except that at the beginning of the war he was a civilian like themselves. These very men afterward became devoted followers, and some of them life-long friends. It was part of their military edu cation as well as mine. If I had been noisy and bluster ing in my intercourse with them at the beginning, and had done what seemed to be regarded as the "regula tion " amount of cursing and swearing, they would prob ably have given me credit for military aptitude at least; but a systematic adherence to a quiet and undemonstra tive manner evidently told against me, at first, in their opinion. Through my army life I met more or less of the same conduct when assigned to a new command; but when men learned that discipline would be inevitably enforced, and that it was as necessary to obey a quiet order as one emphasized by expletives, and especially when they had been a little under fire, there was no more trouble. Indeed, I was impressed with the fact that after this acquaintance was once made, my chief embarrass ment in discipline was that an intimation of dissatisfaction on my part would cause deeper chagrin and more evident pain than I intended or wished.

The same march enabled me to make the acquaintance of another army "institution," -the newspaper corre spondent. We were joined at Charleston by two men representing influential Eastern journals, who wished to know on what terms they could accompany the column. The answer was that the quartermaster would furnish them with a tent and transportation, and that their letters should be submitted to one of the staff, to protect us from the publication of facts which might aid the enemy. This

THE KANAWHA VALLEY

seemed unsatisfactory, and they intimated that they expected to be taken into my mess and to be announced as volunteer aides with military rank. They were told that military position or rank could only be given by au thority much higher than mine, and that they could be more honestly independent if free from personal obligation and from temptation to repay favors with flattery. My only purpose was to put the matter upon the foundation of public right and of mutual self-respect. The day before we reached Gauley Bridge they opened the subject again to Captain McElroy, my adjutant-general, but were in formed that I had decided it upon a principle by which I meant to abide. Their reply was, " Very well ; General Cox thinks he can get along without us, and we will show him. We will write him down."

They left the camp the same evening, and wrote letters to their papers describing the army as demoralized, drunken, and without discipline, in a state of insubordina tion, and the commander as totally incompetent. As to the troops, more baseless slander was never uttered. Their march had been orderly. No wilful injury had been done to private property, and no case of personal violence to any non-combatant, man or woman, had been even charged. Yet the printing of such communications in widely read journals was likely to be as damaging as if it all were true. My nomination as Brigadier-General of U. S. Volunteers was then before the Senate for con firmation, and "the pen" would probably have proved " mightier than the sword " but for McClellan's knowledge of the nature of the task we had accomplished, as he was then in the flood-tide of power at Washington, and ex pressed his satisfaction at the performance of our part of the campaign which he had planned. By good for tune, also, the injurious letters were printed at the same time with the telegraphic news of our occupation of Gauley Bridge and the retreat of the enemy out of the

78 REMINISCENCES OF THE CIVIL WAR

valley. 1 I was, however, deeply convinced that my position was the right one, and never changed my rule of conduct in the matter. The relations of newspaper correspondents to general officers of the army became one of the crying scandals and notorious causes of intrigue and demoraliza tion. It was a subject almost impossible to settle satisfac torily ; but whoever gained or lost by cultivating this means of reputation, it is a satisfaction to have adhered through out the war to the rule I first adopted and announced.

Wise made no resolute effort to oppose my march after I left Charleston, and contented himself with delaying us by his rear-guard, which obstructed the road by felling trees into it and by skirmishing with my head of column. We however advanced at the rate of twelve or fifteen miles a day, reaching Gauley Bridge on the morning of the 29th of July. Here we captured some fifteen hundred stands of arms and a considerable store of munitions which the Confederate general had not been able to carry away or destroy. It is safe to say that in the wild defile which we had threaded for the last twenty miles there were as many positions as there were miles in which he could easily have delayed my advance a day or two, forc ing me to turn his flank by the most difficult mountain climbing, and where indeed, with forces so nearly equal, my progress should have been permanently barred. At Gauley Bridge he burned the structure which gave name to the place, and which had been a series of substantial wooden trusses resting upon heavy stone piers. My or-

1 As one of these correspondents became a writer of history, it is made proper to say that he was Mr. William Swinton, of whom General Grant has occasion to speak in his " Personal Memoirs " (vol. ii. p. 144), and whose facility in changing his point of view in historical writing was shown in his " McClellan's Military Career Reviewed and Exposed," which was pub lished in 1864 by the Union Congressional Committee (first appearing in the " New York Times " of February, March, and April of that year), when compared with his " History of the Army of the Potomac " which appeared two years later. Burnside accused him of repeated instances of malicious libel of his command in June, 1864. O. R., vol. xxxvi. pt. iii. p. 751.

THE KANAWHA VALLEY 79

ders definitively limited me to the point we had now reached in my advance, and I therefore sent forward only a detach ment to follow the enemy and keep up his precipitate retreat. Wise did not stop till he reached Greenbrier and the White Sulphur Springs, and there was abundant evi dence that he regarded his movement as a final abandon ment of this part of West Virginia.1 A few weeks later General Lee came in person with reinforcements over the mountains and began a new campaign ; but until the 2Oth of August we were undisturbed except by a petty guerilla warfare.

McClellan telegraphed from Washington his congratula tions,2 and Rosecrans expressed his satisfaction also in terms which assured me that we had done more than had been expected of us.3 The good effect upon the com mand was also very apparent; for our success not only justified the policy of a determined advance, but the offi cers who had been timid as to results were now glad to get their share of the credit, and to make amends for their insubordination by a hearty change in bearing and con duct. My term of service as a brigadier of the Ohio forces in the three months' enrolment had now ended, and until the Senate should confirm my appointment as a United States officer there was some doubt as to my right to continue in command. My embarrassment in this re gard was very pleasantly removed by a dispatch from General Rosecrans in which he conveyed the request of Lieutenant-General Scott and of himself that I should re main in charge of the Kanawha column. It was only a week, however, before notice of the confirmation was re ceived, and dropping all thoughts of returning home, I prepared my mind for continuous active duty till the war should end.

1 Floyd's Dispatches, O. R., vol. li. pt. ii. pp. 208, 213.

2 Dispatch of August i. 8 Dispatch of July 31.

CHAPTER V

GAULEY BRIDGE

The gate of the Kanawha valley — The wilderness beyond — West Virginia defences — A romantic post — Chaplain Brown — An adventurous mis sion — Chaplain Dubois — " The River Path " — Gauley Mount — Colonel Tompkins's home — Bowie-knives — Truculent resolutions — The Engineers — Whittlesey, Benham, Wagner — Fortifications — Dis tant reconnoissances — Comparison of forces — Dangers to steamboat communications — Allotment of duties — The Summersville post — Seventh Ohio at Cross Lanes — Scares and rumors — Robert E. Lee at Valley Mountain — Floyd and Wise advance — Rosecrans's orders — The Cross Lanes affair — Major Casement's creditable retreat — Colonel Tyler's reports — Lieutenant-Colonel Creighton — Quarrels of Wise and Floyd — Ambushing rebel cavalry — Affair at Boone Court House — New attack at Gauley Bridge — An incipient mutiny — Sad result — A notable court-martial — Rosecrans marching toward us — Communications renewed — Advance toward Lewisburg — Camp Lookout — A private

THE position at Gauley Bridge was an important one from a military point of view. It was where the James River and Kanawha turnpike, after following the highlands along the course of New River as it comes from the east, drops into a defile with cliffs on one side and a swift and unfordable torrent upon the other, and then crosses the Gauley River, which is a stream of very similar character. The two rivers, meeting at a right angle, there unite to form the Great Kanawha, which plunges over a ledge of rocks a mile below and winds its way among the hills, some thirty miles, before it be comes a navigable stream even for the lightest class of steamboats. From Gauley Bridge a road runs up the Gauley River to Cross Lanes and Carnifex Ferry, some thing over twenty miles, and continuing northward reaches Summersville, Sutton, and Weston, making almost the

GAULEY BRIDGE 8 1

only line of communication between the posts then occu pied by our troops in northwestern Virginia and the head of the Kanawha valley. Southwestward the country was extremely wild and broken, with few and small settle ments and no roads worthy the name. The crossing of the Gauley was therefore the gate through which all important movements from eastern into southwestern Virginia must necessarily come, and it formed an impor tant link in any chain of posts designed to cover the Ohio valley from invasion. It was also the most ad vanced single post which could protect the Kanawha valley. Further to the southeast, on Flat-top Mountain, was another very strong position, where the principal road on the left bank of New River crosses a high and broad ridge; but a post could not be safely maintained there without still holding Gauley Bridge in considerable force, or establishing another post on the right bank of New River twenty miles further up. All these streams flow in rocky beds seamed and fissured to so great a degree that they had no practicable fords. You might go forty miles up New River and at least twenty up the Gauley before you could find a place where either could be passed by infantry or wagons. The little ferries which had been made in a few eddies of the rivers were destroyed in the first campaign, and the post at the Gauley became nearly impregnable in front, and could only be turned by long and difficult detours.

An interval of about a hundred miles separated this mountain fastness from the similar passes which guarded eastern Virginia along the line of the Blue Ridge. This debatable ground was sparsely settled and very poor in agricultural resources, so that it could furnish nothing for subsistence of man or beast. The necessity of trans porting forage as well as subsistence and ammunition through this mountainous belt forbade any extended or continuous operations there; for actual computation

VOL. I. — 6

82

REMINISCENCES OF THE CIVIL WAR

showed that the wagon trains could carry no more than the food for the mule teams on the double trip, going and returning, from Gauley Bridge to the narrows of New River where the Virginia and Tennessee Railroad crossed upon an important bridge which was several times made the objective point of an expedition. This alone proved the impracticability of the plan McClellan first conceived,

GAULEY BRIDGE & VICINITY.,

of making the Kanawha valley the line of an important movement into eastern Virginia. It pointed very plainly, also, to the true theory of operations in that country. Gauley Bridge should have been held with a good brigade which could have had outposts several miles forward in three directions, and, assisted by a small body of horse to scour the country fifty miles or more to the front, the garrison could have protected all the country which we ever occupied permanently. A similar post at Huttons- ville with detachments at the Cheat Mountain pass and

GA ULE Y BRIDGE 8 3

Elkwater pass north of Huntersville would have covered the only other practicable routes through the mountains south of the line of the Baltimore and Ohio Railway. These would have been small intrenched camps, defen sive in character, but keeping detachments constantly active in patrolling the front, going as far as could be done without wagons. All that ever was accomplished in that region of any value would thus have been attained at the smallest expense, and the resources that were for three years wasted in those mountains might have been applied to the legitimate lines of great operations from the valley of the Potomac southward.

Nothing could be more romantically beautiful than the situation of the post at Gauley Bridge. The hamlet had, before our arrival there, consisted of a cluster of two or three dwellings, a country store, a little tavern, and a church, irregularly scattered along the base of the moun tain and facing the road which turns from the Gauley valley into that of the Kanawha. The lower slope of the hillside behind the houses was cultivated, and a hedge row separated the lower fields from the upper pasturage. Above this gentler slope the wooded steeps rose more precipitately, the sandstone rock jutting out into crags and walls, the sharp ridge above having scarcely soil enough to nourish the chestnut-trees, here, like Mrs. Browning's woods of Vallombrosa, literally " clinging by their spurs to the precipices." In the angle between the Gauley and New rivers rose Gauley Mount, the base a perpendicular wall of rocks of varying height, with high wooded slopes above. There was barely room for the road between the wall of rocks and the water on the New River side, but after going some distance up the valley, the highway gradually ascended the hillside, reaching some rolling uplands at a distance of a couple of miles. Here was Gauley Mount, the country-house of Colonel C. Q. Tompkins, formerly of the Army of

84 REMINISCENCES OF THE CIVIL WAR

the United States, but now the commandant of a Con federate regiment raised in the Kanavvha valley. Across New River the heavy masses of Cotton Mountain rose rough and almost inaccessible from the very water's edge. The western side of Cotton Mountain was less steep, and buttresses formed a bench about its base, so that in look ing across the Kanawha a mile below the junction of the rivers, one saw some rounded foothills which had been cleared on the top and tilled, and a gap in the mountain ous wall made room on that side for a small creek which descended to the Kanawha, and whose bed served for a rude country road leading to Fayette C. H. At the base of Cotton Mountain the Kanawha equals the united width of the two tributaries, and flows foaming over broken rocks with treacherous channels between, till it dashes over the horseshoe ledge below, known far and wide as the Kanawha Falls. On either bank near the falls a small mill had been built, that on the right bank a saw-mill and the one on the left for grinding grain.

Our encampment necessarily included the saw-mill below the falls, where the First Kentucky Regiment was placed to guard the road coming from Fayette C. H. Two regiments were encamped at the bridge upon the hillside above the hedgerow, having an advanced post of half a regiment on the Lewisburg road beyond the Tompkins farm, and scouting the country to Sewell Mountain. Smaller outposts were stationed some distance up the valley of the Gauley. My headquarters tents were pitched in the door-yard of a dwelling-house facing the Gauley River, and I occupied an unfurnished room in the house for office purposes. A week was spent, without molestation, exploring the country in all direc tions and studying its topography. A ferry guided by a cable stretching along the piers of the burnt bridge com municated with the outposts up the New River, and a smaller ferry below the Kanawha Falls connected with the

GAULEY BRIDGE 8$

Fayette road. Systematic discipline and instruction in outpost duty were enforced, and the regiments rapidly became expert mountaineers and scouts. The popula tion was nearly all loyal below Gauley Bridge, but above they were mostly Secessionists, a small minority of the wealthier slaveholders being the nucleus of all aggressive secession movements. These, by their wealth and social leadership, overawed or controlled a great many who did not at heart sympathize with them, and between parties thus formed a guerilla warfare became chronic. In our scouting expeditions we found little farms in secluded nooks among the mountains, where grown men assured us that they had never before seen the American flag, and whole families had never been further from home than a church and country store a few miles away. From these mountain people several regiments of Union troops were recruited in West Virginia, two of them being organized in rear of my own lines, and becoming part of the garrison of the district in the following season. I had been joined before reaching Gauley Bridge by Chaplain Brown of the Seventh Ohio, who had obtained permission to make an adventurous journey across the country from Sutton to bring me information as to the position and character of the outposts that were stretch ing from the railway southward toward our line of operations. Disguised as a mountaineer in homespun clothing, his fine features shaded by a slouched felt hat, he reported himself to me in anything but a clerical garb. Full of enterprise as a partisan leader of scouts could be, he was yet a man of high attainments in his profession, of noble character and real learning. When he reached me, I had as my guest another chaplain who had accepted a commission at my suggestion, the Rev. Mr. Dubois, son- in-law of Bishop Mcllvaine of Ohio, who had been leader of the good people at Chillicothe in providing a supper for the Eleventh Ohio as we were on our way from Camp

86 REMINISCENCES OF THE CIVIL WAR

Dennison to Gallipolis. He had burned to have some part in the country's struggle, and became a model chap lain till his labors and exposure broke his health and forced him to resign. The presence of two such men gave some hours of refined social life in the intervals of rough work. One evening walk along the Kanawha has ever since remained in my memory associated with Whit- tier's poem " The River Path," as a wilder and more bril liant type of the scene he pictured. We had walked out beyond the camp, leaving its noise and its warlike associa tions behind us, for a turn of the road around a jutting cliff shut it all out as completely as if we had been trans ported to another land, except that the distant figure of a sentinel on post reminded us of the limit of safe sauntering for pleasure. My Presbyterian and Episcopalian friends forgot their differences of dogma, and as the sun dropped behind the mountain tops, making an early twilight in the valley, we talked of home, of patriotism, of the relation of our struggle to the world's progress, and other high themes,

when

" Sudden our pathway turned from night, The hills swung open to the light; Through their green gates the sunshine showed, A long, slant splendor downward flowed. Down glade and glen and bank it rolled ; It bridged the shaded stream with gold; And borne on piers of mist, allied The shadowy with the sunlit side ! "

The surroundings, the things of which we talked, our own sentiments, all combined to make the scene stir deep emo tions for which the poet's succeeding lines seem the only fit expression, and to link the poem indissolubly with the scene as if it had its birth there.

When Wise had retreated from the valley, Colonel Tompkins had been unable to remove his family, and had left a letter commending them to our courteous treatment. Mrs. Tompkins was a lady of refinement, and her position

GAULEY BRIDGE 8 7

within our outposts was far from being a comfortable one. She, however, put a cheerful face upon her situation, showed great tact in avoiding controversy with the soldiers and in conciliating the good-will of the officers, and re mained with her children and servants in her picturesque home on the mountain. So long as there was no fighting in the near vicinity, it was comparatively easy to save her from annoyance ; but when a little later in the autumn Floyd occupied Cotton Mountain, and General Rosecrans was with us with larger forces, such a household became an object of suspicion and ill-will, which made it necessary to send her through the lines to her husband. The men fancied they saw signals conveyed from the house to the enemy, and believed that secret messages were sent, giving information of our numbers and movements. All this was highly improbable, for the lady knew that her safety de pended upon her good faith and prudence ; but such camp rumor becomes a power, and Rosecrans found himself compelled to end it by sending her away. He could no longer be answerable for her complete protection. This, however, was not till November, and in August it was only a pleasant variation, in going the rounds, to call at the pretty house on Gauley Mount, inquire after the welfare of the family, and have a moment's polite chat with the mistress of the mansion.

For ten days after we occupied Gauley Bridge, all our information showed that General Wise was not likely to attempt the reconquest of the Kanawha valley voluntarily. His rapid retrograde march ended at White Sulphur Springs and he went into camp there. His destruction of bridges and abandonment of stores and munitions of war showed that he intended to take final leave of our region.1 The contrast between promise and performance in his case had been ludicrous. When we entered the valley, we heard of

1 My report to Rosecrans, O. R., vol. li. pt. i. p. 40. Wise to Lee, Id., vol. ii. p. 1012 ; vol. v. p. 769.

88 REMINISCENCES OF THE CIVIL WAR

his proclamations and orders, which breathed the spirit of desperate hand-to-hand conflict. His soldiers had been told to despise long-range fire-arms, and to trust to bowie- knives, which our invading hordes would never dare to face. We found some of these knives among the arms we cap tured at the Gauley, — ferocious-looking weapons, made of broad files ground to a double edge, fitted with rough handles, and still bearing the cross-marking of the file on the flat sides. Such arms pointed many a sarcasm among our soldiers, who had found it hard in the latter part of our advance to get within even the longest musket-range of the enemy's column. It was not strange that ignorant men should think they might find use for weapons less serviceable than the ancient Roman short-sword ; but that, in the existing condition of military science, officers could be found to share and to encourage the delusion was amusing enough ! With the muskets we captured, we armed a regiment of loyal Virginians, and turned over the rest to Governor Peirpoint for similar use.1

On the 5th of August Lieutenant Wagner of the En gineers arrived at Gauley Bridge with instructions from General Rosecrans to superintend the construction of such fortifications as might be proper for a post of three regi ments. I had already with me Colonel Whittlesey,

1 In some documents which fell into our hands we found a series of reso lutions passed at a meeting in the spring at which one of the companies now with Wise was organized. It shows the melodramatic truculence which was echoed in the exhortations of the general and of other men who should have had more judgment. The resolutions were these : —

"Resolved: I. That this company was formed for the defence of this Commonwealth against her enemies of the North, and for no other purpose.

Resolved: 2. That the so-called President of the United States by his war policy has deliberately insulted the people of this Commonwealth, and if blood he wants, blood he can have.

Resolved: 3. That we are ready to respond to the call of the Governor of this Commonwealth for resisting Abraham Lincoln and the New York stock-jobbers, and all who sympathize with them.

Resolved: 4. That we have not forgotten Harper's Ferry and John Brown."

GAULEY BRIDGE 89

Governor Dennison's chief engineer, an old West Point graduate, who had for some years been devoting himself to scientific pursuits, especially to geology. In a few days these were joined by Captain Benham, who was authorized to determine definitely the plans of our de fences. I was thus stronger in engineering skill than in any other department of staff assistants, though in truth there was little fortifying to be done beyond what the contour of the ground indicated to the most ordinary comprehension.1

Benham stayed but two or three days, modified Wag ner's plans enough to feel that he had made them his own, and then went back to Rosecrans's headquarters, where he was met with an appointment as brigadier-general, and was relieved of staff duty. He was a stout red-faced man, with a blustering air, dictatorial and assuming, an army engineer of twenty-five years' standing. He was no doubt well skilled in the routine of his profession, but broke down when bur dened with the responsibility of conducting the movement of troops in the field. Wagner was a recent graduate of the Military Academy, a genial, modest, intelligent young man of great promise. He fell at the siege of Yorktown in the next year. Whittlesey was a veteran whose varied experience in and out of the army had all been turned to good account. He was already growing old, but was inde fatigable, pushing about in a rather prim, precise way, advising wisely, criticising dryly but in a kindly spirit, and helping bring every department into better form. I soon lost both him and McElroy, my adjutant-general, for their three months' service was up, and they were made, the one colonel, and the other major of the Twentieth Ohio Regi-

i The cause of this visit of the Engineers is found in a dispatch sent by McClellan to Rosecrans, warning him that Lee and Johnston were both actu ally in march to crush our forces in West Virginia, and directing that Hut- tonsville and Gauley Bridge be strongly fortified. O. R., vol. v. p. 555 ; Id., vol. li. pt. i. pp. 445, 446.

90 REMINISCENCES OF THE CIVIL WAR

ment, of which my friend General Force was the lieutenant- colonel.

We fortified the post by an epaulement or two for can non, high up on the hillside covering the ferry and the road up New River. An infantry trench, with parapet of barrels filled with earth, was run along the margin of Gauley River till it reached a creek coming down from the hills on the left. There a redoubt for a gun or two was made, commanding a stretch of road above, and the infantry trench followed the line of the creek up to a gorge in the hill. On the side of Gauley Mount facing our post, we slashed the timber from the edge of the precipice nearly to the top of the mountain, making an entanglement through which it was impossible that any body of troops should move. Down the Kanawha, below the falls, we strength ened the saw-mill with logs, till it became a block-house loopholed for musketry, commanding the road to Charles ton, the ferry, and the opening of the road to Fayette C. H. A single cannon was here put in position also.

All this took time, for so small a force as ours could not make very heavy details of working parties, especially as our outpost and reconnoitring duty was also very labo rious. This duty was done by infantry, for cavalry I had none, except the squad of mounted messengers, who kept carefully out of harm's way, more to save their horses than themselves, for they had been enlisted under an old law which paid them for the risk of their own horses, which risk they naturally tried to make as small as possible. My recon noitring parties reached Big Sewell Mountain, thirty-five miles up New River, Summersville, twenty miles up the Gau ley, and made excursions into the counties on the left bank of the Kanawha, thirty or forty miles away. These were not exceptional marches, but were kept up with an industry that gave the enemy an exaggerated idea of our strength j&s well as of our activity.

About the loth of August we began to get rumors

GAULEY BRIDGE

from the country that General Robert E. Lee had arrived at Lewisburg to assume direction of the Confederate move ments into West Virginia. We heard also that Floyd with a strong brigade had joined that of Wise, whose " legion " had been reinforced, and that this division, reported to be 10,000 or 12,000 strong, would immediately operate against me at Gauley Bridge. We learned also of a general •stir among the Secessionists in Fayette, Mercer, and Ra leigh counties, and of the militia being ordered out under General Chapman to support the Confederate movement by operating upon my line of communications, whilst Floyd and Wise should attack in front.

The reported aggregate of the enemy's troops was, as usual, exaggerated, but we now know that it amounted to about 8000 men, a force so greatly superior to any thing I could assemble to oppose it, that the situation became at once a very grave one for me.1 To resist this advance, I could keep