Military Reminiscences of the Civil War (Vol.1&2). Jacob D. Cox
should not be detailed for fatigue duty who had been on picket the preceding night. On August 28th, a detail had been called for from the Second Kentucky, which lay above the hedge behind my headquarters, and they had reported without arms under a sergeant named Joyce. A supply of intrenching tools was stacked by the gate leading into the yard where my staff tents were pitched, and my aide, Lieutenant Conine, directed the sergeant to have his men take the tools and report to Mr. Wagner, the engineer, on the line. The men began to demur in a half-mutinous way, saying they had been on picket the night before. Conine, who was a soldierly man, informed them that that should be immediately looked into, and if so, they would be soon relieved, but that they could not argue the matter there, as their company commander was responsible for the detail. He therefore repeated his order. The sergeant then became excited and said his men should not obey. Lieutenant Gibbs, the district commissary, was standing by, and drawing his pistol, said to Joyce, "That's mutiny; order your men to take the tools or I'll shoot you." The man retorted with a curse, "Shoot!" Gibbs fired, and Joyce fell dead. When the sergeant first refused to obey, Conine coolly called out, "Corporal of the guard, turn out the guard!" intending very properly to put the man in arrest, but the shot followed too quick for the guard to arrive. I was sitting within the house at my camp desk, busy, when the first thing which attracted my attention was the call for the guard and the shot. I ran out, not stopping for arms, and saw some of the men running off shouting, "Go for your guns, kill him, kill him!" I stopped part of the men, ordered them to take the sergeant quickly to the hospital, thinking he might not be dead. I then ordered Gibbs in arrest till an investigation should be made, and ran at speed to a gap in the hedge which opened into the regimental camp. It was not a moment too soon. The men with their muskets were already clustering in the path, threatening vengeance on Mr. Gibbs. I ordered them to halt and return to their quarters. Carried away by excitement, they levelled their muskets at me and bade me get out of their way or they would shoot me. I managed to keep cool, said the affair would be investigated, that Gibbs was already under arrest, but they must go back to their quarters. The parley lasted long enough to bring some of their officers near. I ordered them to come to my side, and then to take command of the men and march them away. The real danger was over as soon as the first impulse was checked. 26 The men then began to feel some of their natural respect for their commander, and yielded probably the more readily because they noticed that I was unarmed. I thought it wise to be content with quelling the disturbance, and did not seek out for punishment the men who had met me at the gap. Their excitement had been natural under the circumstances, which were reported with exaggeration as a wilful murder. If I had been in command of a larger force, it would have been easy to turn out another regiment to enforce order and arrest any mutineers; but the Second Kentucky was itself the only regiment on the spot. The First Kentucky was a mile below, and the Eleventh Ohio was the advance-guard up New River. Surrounded as we were by so superior a force of the enemy with which we were constantly skirmishing, I could not do otherwise than meet the difficulty instantly without regard to personal risk.
The sequel of the affair was not reached till some weeks later when General Rosecrans assembled a court-martial at my request. Lieutenant Gibbs was tried and acquitted on the plain evidence that the man killed was in the act of mutiny at the time. The court was a notable one, as its judge advocate was Major R. B. Hayes of the Twenty-third Ohio, afterwards President of the United States, and one of its members was Lieutenant-Colonel Stanley Matthews of the same regiment, afterwards one of the Justices of the Supreme Court. 27
The constant skirmishing with the enemy on all sides continued till the 10th of September, when General Rosecrans with his column reached Cross Lanes and had the action at Carnifex Ferry which I shall describe in the next chapter. I had sent forward half a regiment from my little command to open communication with him as soon as possible. On September 9th a party from this detachment had reached Cross Lanes and learned that Floyd was keeping close within his lines on the cliffs of Gauley above Carnifex Ferry. They, however, heard nothing of Rosecrans, and the principal body of their troops heard no sound of the engagement on the 10th, though within a very few miles. 28 On the 12th communication was opened, and I learned of Floyd's retreat across the Gauley. I immediately moved forward the Eleventh and Twenty-sixth Ohio to attack Wise, who retreated from Hawk's Nest to the mouth of the Sunday Road, and upon my closer approach retired to Sewell Mountain. 29 At the Sunday Road I was stopped by orders from Rosecrans, who thought it unwise to advance further till he had made a ferry at the Gauley and succeeded in getting his command over; for Floyd had again sunk the flatboats within reach, and these had to be a second time raised and repaired. At his request I visited the General at Carnifex Ferry, and then got permission to move my column forward a few miles to Alderson's, or Camp Lookout as we dubbed it, where a commanding position controlled the country to the base of Sewell Mountain. 30 I was now able to concentrate the Seventh Ohio at Gauley Bridge, and ordered forward the Second Kentucky to join me in the new camp.
The period of my separate responsibility and of struggle against great odds was not to close without a private grief which was the more poignant because the condition of the campaign forbade my leaving the post of duty. On the day I visited General Rosecrans at Carnifex Ferry I got news of the critical illness of my youngest child, a babe of eight months old, whom I had seen but a single day after his birth, for I had been ordered into camp from the legislature without time to make another visit to my family. The warning dispatch was quickly followed by another announcing the end, and I had to swallow my sorrows as well as I could and face the public enemy before us, leaving my wife uncomforted in her bereavement and all the more burdened with care because she knew we were resuming active operations in the field.
1 My report to Rosecrans, Official Records, vol. li. pt. i. p. 40. Wise to Lee, Id., vol. ii. p. 1012; vol. v. p. 769.
2 In some documents which fell into our hands we found a series of resolutions 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: 1. 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."]
3 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 actually in march to crush our forces in West Virginia, and directing that Huttonsville and Gauley Bridge be strongly fortified. Official Records, vol. v. p. 555; Id., vol. ii. pt.. 445, 446.
4 On the 14th of August Wise reported to General Lee that he had 2000 men ready to move, and could have 2500 ready in five days; that 550 of his cavalry were with Floyd, besides a detachment of 50 artillerists. This makes his total force 3100. At that time he gives Floyd's force at 1200 with two strong regiments coming up, besides 2000 militia under General Chapman. The aggregate force operating on the Kanawha line he gives as 7800. (Official Records vol. v. p. 787.)