Copyright © 2001 Ohio University Press.
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 0-8214-1381-3
Chapter One
Guerrilla Warfare in West Virginia
The Early Stages of the Civil War
When the American Civil War began, most people believed it would be a short, nearly bloodless conflict. As the nation proceeded to move toward confrontation and the Southern states began voting for secession, the two halves of the nation began preparing for war. In the mountains of western Virginia, a relaxed atmosphere still reigned. Men began to join local militia units North and South. Taylor Hogg, a resident of Point Pleasant, Virginia, joined a militia unit of loyal Union men. War was still an act of posturing on both sides. Taylor noted that his unit "drilled in a field with Confederates on one side and Union men on the other side."
After Fort Sumter, real war would soon start in western Virginia. Virginia passed its secession ordinance on April 17, 1861. Following the approval of the ordinance by the constitutional convention at Richmond on May 23, the governor of Virginia ordered forces into western Virginia to encourage enlistments and to guard the Ohio-Pennsylvania frontier. Union authorities immediately recognized the danger of letting the western portion of Virginia fall into the control of the Confederacy. First, most of the inhabitants west of the Allegheny Mountains were loyal to the Union. Their rights would have to be protected by Federal authorities. In fact, the secessionists underestimated the strength of the opposition which the people of northwestern Virginia would offer to the attempt to join them to the Confederacy. Politically, Unionists eventually moved to separate thirty-four northwestern counties (later thirty-nine) from the rest of the state and lay the foundations for the founding of the state of West Virginia at the First Wheeling Convention on May 13, 1861. West Virginia would eventually become a state on June 20, 1863.
Second, western Virginia was important for protection and control of the vital lines of communication reaching westward to the Ohio Valley. These were, from south to north: (1) the James River and Kanawha Turnpike, (2) the Parkersburg and Staunton Turnpike, (3) the route of present-day U.S. 50 from Winchester through Romney and Grafton, and Clarksburg to Parkersburg, and (4) the extremely important Baltimore and Ohio Railroad from Baltimore through western Maryland and northwestern Virginia to Wheeling.
At the same time that control of western Virginia protected vital Union lines of communication, control of this area was a threat to communications that connected the eastern portion of the Confederacy with lines to the west, especially the vital Virginia and Tennessee Railroad.
Military operations in western Virginia were some of the first campaigns of the Civil War. The success of Gen. George McClellan in these operations led to his prominence as a Northern military leader. McClellan was put in charge of the Department of the Ohio, and in response to Confederate threats on the Baltimore and Ohio Railway and the Kanawha Valley he eventually ordered Union forces into action to secure the territory. Units from Ohio and Indiana, as well as loyal Virginia units, moved into Virginia from the Ohio Valley at Wheeling and Parkersburg. Union forces under McClellan and Col. Benjamin F. Kelley routed Confederate forces at Philippi, which left the strategic Baltimore and Ohio Railroad in Union hands.
Confederate forces under Robert Garnett and Col. John Pegram then attempted to hold positions in forts at Rich Mountain and Laurel Hill. McClellan moved to attack both positions at once. After a sharp fight, Union forces won a clear victory; the Confederate forces were destroyed. Garnett abandoned his Laurel Hill position without a fight. Garnett's retreating force was pressed strongly by the Federals, forcing him to fight an engagement at Corrick's Ford, on the Cheat River in Ford County. Garnett was killed in the Confederate defeat which followed, and the Confederate army once again fled, abandoning wagons, guns, and their sick to Union forces. Before he left the Laurel Hill position, Garnett informed Gen. Robert E. Lee that "the lack of enlistments and aid to the Confederate cause indicated he was in a foreign country."
Robert E. Lee Takes Command
Confederate commanders had not been cooperating well with each other and around August 1, 1861, General Lee arrived in western Virginia and assumed de facto control over Confederate forces. Under Lee's leadership, Confederate forces attempted to go on the offensive. They routed a Union regiment at Cross Lanes, near the Gauley River, on August 26, 1861. Gen. John Floyd, commanding other Confederate forces, then established a strong position in front of Carnifex Ferry on the Gauley. Gen. William S. Rosecrans, who had succeeded McClellan as commander of the Department of the Ohio and the Army of Occupation of Western Virginia, advanced on the Confederate position. Initially checked by the Confederates, Floyd was eventually pushed out of his position and forced to recross the Gauley River.
Union forces continued to prosecute their efforts against the Confederates, repulsing Confederate attacks at Cheat Mountain and attacking Southern forces at the Greenbrier River. Confederate forces would continue to contest the Union hold on western Virginia through 1863 and threaten the vital communications links through the area. However, McClellan's operations and the efforts of other Union commanders such as Rosecrans did much to secure the region and the eventual state for the Union.
By the fall of 1861, the trans-Allegheny region of western Virginia was firmly in Union control and the Southern government never made a serious attempt to recover or hold this area, despite the belief of some Southern politicians and generals that the majority of the population was sympathetic to their cause. In fact, these Southerners should have heeded the words of Gen. Henry Wise, who left the region for the eastern theater after the fall of 1861: "The Kanawha Valley is wholly disaffected and traitorous.... you cannot persuade these people that Virginia can or will ever reconquer the northwest, and they are submitting, subdued, and debased."
The Confederates were forced to resort to raids which could not strategically change the situation in the Kanawha, but could at least gain supplies for the Confederates and recruits, as some Southern politicians still hoped. In August 1862, Gen. Albert Jenkins conducted a raid through the state and crossed into Ohio near Ripley, Virginia, becoming the first Confederate commander to enter that state. He recrossed into West Virginia below Point Pleasant, in Mason County, and proceeded to Guyandotte (now Huntington) and Raleigh Courthouse. The raid demonstrated Union vulnerabilities in the Kanawha Valley, which had been weakened by the dispatch of five thousand troops to bolster Gen. John Pope's command in Virginia. This led the Confederate high command to send Gen. William W. Loring in September to retake the valley.
Gen. Joseph A. J. Lightburn commanded Union forces in the valley, although he also had troops that had been transferred to Virginia. There were forts at Fayetteville and other points and a large supply depot at Gauley Bridge. General Lee directed Loring, the Confederate commander at Pearlsburg, to again invade the area to capture the Kanawha Valley and restore the trans-Allegheny area to the Confederacy.
Loring left on September 1, 1862, with four thousand troops and marched to Fayetteville. The battle that took place there on September 11 led to an unexpected Union rout. General Lightburn ordered a general retreat and opened up the entire Kanawha Valley to the Confederates. His troops retreated in two columns, eventually linking up at Charleston for the defense of that city. In the early morning of September 13, Loring's advance units arrived in Charleston in the vicinity of the present university campus. After an all-day battle, Lightburn retreated toward the Ohio River, cutting the cables over the Elk River at Charleston. Loring did not pursue him and the Confederate occupation was short-lived. Concentrations of Federal troops at Clarksburg and Point Pleasant forced Loring to abandon the valley and retreat toward Lewisburg on October 8. Loring was replaced on October 16 by Gen. John Echols of Monroe County, who moved back into Charleston for a short time, but on October 29 he was also forced to retreat and the Kanawha Valley was permanently in Union hands.
Confederate gains for the campaign included moving salt out of the valley to eastern Virginia and the corrosive effect Lightburn's Retreat, as it came to be called, had on Union morale. Desertions ran very high in the regiments involved, but commanders—recognizing the reasons for the wholesale desertions —often did not severely punish the men for their absences.
Although Confederate fortunes were at a high point overall in early 1863, Union forces had consolidated their positions in western Virginia. The situation led to a series of Union raids to cut the strategically important Virginia and Tennessee Railroad. Confederate forces, on the other hand, had to content themselves with a series of raids to obtain supplies, keep Union forces off guard, and disrupt communications and transportation, particularly the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad.
The great Jones-Imboden Raid in late April 1863 was one of the most ambitious undertakings in this period. The raid resulted from a strategy outlined by General Lee for war in western Virginia and communicated to Gen. John D. Imboden. One of the Confederacy's goals was to harass the Reorganized Government of Virginia, an illegitimate creature in Confederate eyes. Besides raids, orders such as this undoubtedly contributed to the guerrilla warfare which was to rage in the state until the end of the war.
Imboden's plan was to destroy the B&O from Oakland, Maryland, to Grafton, West Virginia; defeat the Union forces at Beverly, Philippi, and Buckhannon; recruit for the Confederacy; and control the northwest section of the state so the residents could take part in the Virginia state elections in May. However, except for the partial destruction of the railroad, the burning of thousands of barrels of oil, and the capture of thousands of horses and cattle, the raid was of little use to the Confederacy. The destruction from this raid as well as others by both sides helped impoverish the state and led to the wholesale exodus of refugees.
The Origin of the Partisan Rangers
Another expedient the Confederates used to carry the war to the Union was the formation of partisan rangers. Home guard units had sprung up early in the war and bushwhacking and other forms of guerrilla warfare probably occurred from the beginning of the war as Federal forces attempted to secure the state for the Union. On April 26, 1861, an article in the Kanawha Valley Star boasted:
The mountains of Transalleghany [sic] Virginia are filled with able-bodied men—accustomed from their youth to bear arms, every one of whom has one or more rifles in his cabin, and all of them are first rate marksmen.
Should the abolitionists of Ohio send an invading army into Western Virginia, not a soldier of them will ever return alive. The mountain boys would shoot them down as dogs.
However, a major impetus for guerrilla war was the Confederate passage of the Partisan Ranger Law, authored by John Scott on March 27, 1862. This law authorized the recruiting of ten to twenty companies of partisan rangers, composed exclusively of men whose homes were in western Virginia, which was held by Federal authorities. Each company was to consist of seventy-five men, with a captain in command, a first lieutenant, and a second lieutenant. For the most part these companies would act independently, although they were to cooperate with regular forces when they operated in the same area.
The partisan rangers had a checkered reputation with Northerners and Southerners alike. Although meant to be protection against an invading Northern army, their actions often brought great hardship to those with Southern sympathies as well. No less an authority than Robert E. Lee offered his objection to these organizations: "Experience has convinced me that it is almost impossible ... to have discipline in these bands of partisan rangers, or to prevent them from becoming an injury instead of benefit to the service, and even where this is accomplished the system gives license to many deserters and marauders, who assume to belong to these authorized companies and commit depredations on friend and foe alike." Lee urged the disbandment of such groups with the exception of John Singleton Mosby's command in northern Virginia, which at least the Confederate high command considered in a different category.
The depredations of some of these bands were notorious. Under a veneer of military organization, these men often used the opportunity to settle old scores, indulge in simple thievery, and, perhaps most important, engage in semilegitimate stealing to obtain horses for "military operations." The horse thievery was practiced by rangers, militiamen, and regular horse thieves. Horses were often stolen by men who wanted to join the Confederate cavalry and knew they must furnish their own mounts. Although the Confederates were undoubtedly the greatest culprits, the U.S. government also contributed to the problem both officially and unofficially. Due to the war, demand for horses skyrocketed, which probably led to thefts to obtain horses for the government. Union units were authorized to take horses from "disloyal citizens," and officers and probably others engaged in flimflammery to obtain money for captured horses.
Of much more tragic consequence was the creation of thousands of destitute refugees who had to flee their homes because their loyalties were with the opposite side. In 1862 refugees packed Parkersburg from Wirt, Roane, and Jackson Counties: "the Ohio border is lined with refugees from western Virginia ... their property of every kind is being taken by the guerrillas—their persons are unsafe." Sometimes the refugees were uprooted by major military operations as when in September 1862, in response to Lightburn's Retreat, the orderly sergeant of Company A, 91st Ohio Volunteer Infantry, noted "the Kanawha jammed with refugees black and white." But often, people became refugees simply because they were in an area occupied by "home guard," wearing the wrong uniform, or whatever passed as a uniform.
Telling friend from foe was often not easy in an area where loyalties were not only divided, but also elastic, depending on which side was in control of the area. One observer described the various "classes" of people who inhabited the mountain regions:
When you see a man here, dressed in the "homespun" of our ancestors, wearing deer skin moccasins and a black, lop-rimmed, felt hat, with a piece of red flannel tucked under the band, you may swear he is a "Grey-back," or as denominated by himself, a "Home Guard."
My opinion of this sect is this; when Federal troops occupy the country, they are good, sound, Union loving citizen[s], but when Floyd or Wise is here, they are as good secessionists, and, in the elegant vernacular of the Western Virginia secesh, believe in "hanging every d-----d Yankee and abolitionist this side of h-ll."
A little girl of the Kanawha Valley put it honestly and simply when asked if she was a good little Union girl. "O, we'se Union when the Union soldier is here, but we'se Secesh when the Secesh soldiers came."
The bushwhacker was particularly feared by both soldier and citizen and was described as coming "mostly of the poorer classes. The richer people disdaining to fight much after the fashion of savages, joined the regulars." He was probably a member of a partisan ranger group—but often as not just somebody out to settle a score. Bushwhackers were the scourge of the roads in the mountains. Capt. Charles Leib commented on the appearance and habits of the West Virginia bushwhacker:
The bushwhackers are composed of a class of men who are noted for their ignorance, indolence, duplicity, and dishonesty; whose vices and passions peculiarly fit them for the warfare in which they are engaged, and upon which the civilized world looks with horror. Imagine a stolid, vicious-looking countenance, an ungainly figure, and an awkward, if not ungraceful spinal curve in the dorsal region, acquired by laziness and indifference to maintaining an erect posture; a garb of the coarsest texture of homespun linen, or "Linsey-woolsey," tattered and torn, and so covered with dirt as not to enable one to guess its original color; a dilapidated, rimless hat, or cap of some wild animal's skin, covering his head, the hair on which had not been combed for months; his feet covered with moccasins, and a rifle by his side, a powder-horn and shot-pouch slung around his neck, and you have the beau ideal of the West Virginia bushwhacker.
Thus equipped he sallies forth with the stealth of the panther, and lies in wait for a straggling soldier, courier, or loyal citizen, to whom the only warning given of his presence is the sharp click of his deadly rifle. He kills for the sake of killing and plunders for the sake of gain. Parties of these ferocious beasts, under the cover of darkness, frequently steal into a neighborhood, burn the residences of loyal citizens, rob stores, and farmhouses of everything they can put to use.
Leib describes one of the leaders of such a group, whom he does not regard in any greater esteem than their followers: "A notorious bushwhacker is Bill Parsons, or `Devil Bill,' as he is called. Bill is filthy in appearance, and, like the rest of his class, has low instincts, and is as ferocious as a hyena. It is said he has eleven wives, and it is a fact well known that one of them is his own daughter. He resides in Roane County, where he has been guilty of many gross outrages."
Even organizers of such guerrilla groups became disgusted with their marauding and thieving. The founders of the Moccasin Rangers, for example, deserted the group because of its lawless ways.
Another group that was notorious in the eyes of Northern soldiers, and probably many civilian inhabitants as well, were the two companies known as Thurmond's Partisan Rangers, named after the units' leaders, William D. and Philip J. Thurmond (sometimes spelled Thurman). One of George Crook's Federal cavalry characterized the Rangers as a
celebrated gang of mountain guerrillas, an independent organization, famous throughout West Virginia for keeping whatever they captured for private purposes. They were knights of ravines and caves ... a terror to the country. Noted for deeds of daring from behind rocks, lying behind logs like other venomous reptiles, only more certain death when they drew a bead on a man. Besides blocking the roads in every possible way, annoying the advance guard and pioneers, they would lurk along the rear of a column and shoot worn out, footsore, sick, exhausted, and helpless soldiers, who fell an easy prey to these fiendish, barbarous bushwhackers.
Despite their fierce reputation among Union men, the case has been made that the Thurmonds' companies were probably more disciplined and better behaved than most of the partisan ranger units. They certainly were at least above the level of groups such as the Moccasin Rangers. Brig. Gen. Henry Heth objected to other partisan groups in western Virginia but did not mention the Thurmonds by name. In the departments of western Virginia and Tennessee, the Thurmonds' companies were viewed favorably and were never ordered broken up. Besides harassment of Federal units, probably the most important military contribution of such units was reconnaissance, which was usually reliable and always appreciated by the departmental commanders.
Coping with the Partisan Rangers
The response to the guerrilla threat was often ad hoc scouting parties, retribution in the form of hostage taking, or other retaliation against those thought to be supporting the guerrillas. It is a story that existed in previous wars and would touch Americans in places such as Vietnam and Bosnia. But the situation in western Virginia in the Civil War was as ugly as could be imagined, although the guerrilla warfare there probably did not reach the level of ferocity evident in theaters such as Arkansas.
The most successful military stratagem against the guerrillas was constant scouting and maintaining discipline in the units to keep straggling down as much as possible. Commanders were urged to keep men in the woods at all times. Most scouting parties were small, and both cavalry and infantry units took part in these actions. The duty was treacherous and one for which little recognition was obtained, unlike the soldier's participation in such heroic struggles as Antietam or Gettysburg. In these battles, the men who participated realized almost immediately that they had been a part of history.
Lt. James Abraham of the Pennsylvania Dragoons, a company of the 1st West Virginia Cavalry, describes how his unit was engaged in constant scouting in the area below Charleston, West Virginia, where "the rebels seemed to strike our lines more frequently than any other. The conformation of the country in that immediate neighborhood is peculiarly adapted to predatory bands —the mountains coming close to the mouth of the river and furnishing excellent protection and hiding places for small bands, whose highest aims seemed to be in despoiling some luckless Jew of his goods, capturing a wagon or two loaded with commissary stores, or plundering an unguarded steamboat and then fleeing to the mountains where they could lay up in comparative security."
Abraham notes that these raids were usually followed by a "profitless scout, as the spoils men were always secure in the mountains before we could reach the scene of their depredations." However, persistence in following raiders, particularly if the pursuit was continued at night, often led to the entrapment of guerrilla bands in houses and other hiding places they considered secure. Abraham goes on to describe such a successful endeavor. He notes that about the first of November, with detachments of fifteen men from each company of the regiment, they were ordered to Coal's Mouth, south of Charleston, to pursue just such a band of raiders. They moved off in "no very amiable mood," and found that the raiders had indeed departed. However, they were determined to follow them. "The night was intensely dark, and the road over which we must pass, only a bridle path, obstructed with rocks and fallen timber." With torches made from pine knots, they followed the Rebels and captured ten at the house of "a noted bushwhacker named May." Proceeding with these prisoners, they then continued on to capture another dozen at the house of a man named Bragg.
Even on so hazardous a mission, the U.S. cavalryman could find something amusing to write, particularly a couple of years later. Abraham narrates that he and his men had been following a creek in pursuit of a rebel:
(Continues...)
Excerpted from Headquarters in the Brush by Darl L. Stephenson. Copyright © 2001 by Ohio University Press. Excerpted by permission. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.