Military Reminiscences of the Civil War: Autobiographical Account by a General of the Union Army. Jacob D. Cox
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 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.
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 of cavalry and a six-gun battery: to expedite the equipment 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
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.
Governor Dennison seconded our wishes with his usual earnestness, and ordered the battery of artillery and company 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 somewhat 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 Kentucky regiments had been organized in Cincinnati, and were made up chiefly of steamboat crews and "longshoremen" thrown out of employment by the stoppage of commerce on the river. There were in them some companies 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 difficulty 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 the 7th with the Eleventh Ohio (seven companies) and reached Gallipolis in the evening of the 9th. The three Ohio regiments were united on the 10th and carried by steamers to Point Pleasant, and we entered the theatre of war. 2
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 enlarged 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. 3 The directions to restrict myself to a defensive occupation of the Lower Kanawha valley were changed to instructions to march on Charleston and Gauley 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 Parkersburg to Charleston, and advised "to beat up Barbonsville, 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 Gurandotte River. As to General Wise, McClellan wrote: "Drive Wise out and catch him if you can. If you do catch him, send him to Colombus penitentiary." A regiment at Parkersburg and another at Roane Court House on the northern border of my district were ordered to report to 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 leading one to land at Guyandotte and suppress any insurgents in that neighborhood. 4 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 without caissons or any proper equipment, and were manned by volunteers from the infantry. 5 My total force, when assembled, would be a little over 3000 men, the regiments having the same average strength as those with McClellan.