Military Reminiscences of the Civil War (Vol.1&2). Jacob D. Cox

Military Reminiscences of the Civil War (Vol.1&2) - Jacob D. Cox


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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--Insubordination--The Newspaper Correspondent--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.

      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 Adjutant-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 publication, 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 (Official Records, vol. li. pt. i.) in which it should have appeared. The originals are no doubt in the files of the Archives office, and for the benefit 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.

      The Great Kanawha River was navigable for small steamboats about seventy miles, to a point ten or twelve miles above Charleston, the only important town of the region, which was at


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