Civil War History

THE BUSHWHACKERS' WAR: Insurgency and Counter-Insurgency in West Virginia Edited by Richard O. Curry and F. Gerald Ham The first major Union offensive of the Civil War began late in May, 1861, in die rugged mountain terrain of nortiiwestern Virginia. On June 4, Union troops commanded by Colonel Frederick W. Lander, McClellan 's aide-de-camp, surprised Confederate forces at Philippi. After the "Philippi Races," the Rebels retired in haste and took up defensive positions at Laurel Hill and Rich Mountain, which commanded two important access routes connecting the Shenandoah Valley and the nortiiwest . A mondi later, witii McClellan himself in command, Union forces decisively defeated the Confederates at the battle of Rich Mountain. The general was bitterly disappointed by his failure to capture die entire Rebel army, commanded by Brigadier General Robert S. Garnett, which escaped almost certain annihilation by retreating across die Alleghenies into the Shenandoah Valley. Neverdieless, McClellan's victory was total. Garnett's defeat not only cleared northwestern Virginia of Confederate regulars but forced ex-Governor Henry A. Wise and his "Legion" to abandon the Kanawha Valley widiout a struggle. Six weeks later, in early September, 1861, Brigadier General Robert E. Lee attempted to drive the Union forces from die northwest; but at Cheat Mountain, rain, mud, sickness, and bungling on the part of subordinates conspired to make Lee's debut as a field general disappointing . Witii the exception of the brief occupation of die Kanawha Valley in 1862 by Major General William W. Loring and a few daring cavalry raids—especially the spectacular Jones-Imboden raid in 1863— no Confederate army would again set foot in nortiiwestern Virginia.1 1 Detailed analyses of military and political developments in West Virginia are to be found in Allan Nevins, The War for the Union: The Improvised War, 18611862 (New York, 1959); Festus P. Summers, The Baltimore and Ohio in the Civil War (New York, 1939); Douglas Southall Freeman, R. E. Lee: A Biography (New York, 1934-1935), I, 545-578; Frank L. Klement, "General John B. Floyd and the Western Virginia Campaigns of 1861," West Virginia History, VIII ( 1947), 416 Following his easy victories over an outnumbered Confederate force McClellan jubilantìy reported that secession was dead in western Virginia . "The effect of our operations against the larger forces," he wired, 'has been to cause die small guerrilla bands to disappear, and I tiiink," he concluded, "we shall have no great difficulty in securing the entire pacification of this region."2 McClellan was dead wrong. True enough, the loyalist forces had occupied the strategic mountain passes and the lines of communication; but in actuality they had conquered little of the territory south of the line of the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad and east of the Ohio River counties. Even as "Little Mac" was dispatching his overly optimistic reports, guerrilla bands were fashioning an indigenous resistance movement that would prevent effective Union control of the vast interior of the state and would pose a serious threat to the growing unionist movement in the northwest for separation from the Old Dominion. Far from being at an end, the war in western Virginia changed into a bitter internecine struggle in which guerrilla tactics were ingeniously devised and brilliantly executed. Analyzing this changing pattern of warfare, a correspondent of the Cincinnati Times wired from Parkersburg on September 18, 1861: "SECESSIONISTS . . . HAVE DEGENERATED INTO ASSASSINS"3 Eds. Times—Twice has the war in Western Virginia been declared by newspaper correspondents in the confidence of headquarters as virtually at an end. Wise's first hasty retreat, it was declared, had ended it.4 Floyd's precipitate flight, the other day, was most surely the end,5 especially as upon the receipt of the intelligence, on the other side of the mountains, [that] Lee, who had unsuccessfully tried Reynold's right, left, and centre, suddenly disappeared from the vicinity of Cheat Mountain.6 But though no rebel army may again appear this side of the mountains— 319-333; Richard Orr Curry, A House Divided; a Study of Statehood Politics and the Copperhead Movement in West Virginia (Pittsburgh, 1964); F. Gerald Ham (ed.), "The Mind of a Copperhead: Letters of John J. Davis on...