Military Reminiscences of the Civil War (Vol.1&2). Jacob D. Cox
confluence of the Kanawha and Elk rivers. Steamboats were plenty, owing to the interruption of trade, and wagons were wholly lacking; so that my column was accompanied and partly carried by a fleet of stern-wheel steamers.
On Thursday the 11th 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 two 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 arrangement 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 national 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 distance, the main body in the road, with skirmishers exploring 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 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 experience 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 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 13th 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 laughingly told him it couldn'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 16th, when we encamped at the mouth of the Pocotaligo, a large creek which enters the Kanawha from the north. 7 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 supporting 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 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. 8
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 progress 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 Confederates which was organizing there. It was a very creditable little action, in which officers and men conducted themselves 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 neighborhood, 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 principal 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 Mountain, a bold spur which reaches