On This Day in West Virginia Civil War History

By Michael B Graham

West Virginia is the only state formed by seceding from a Confederate state. And its connections to the Civil War run deep. One day at a time, award-winning historian Michael Graham presents intriguing, event-driven anecdotes and history related to the state. On July 11, 1861, a Union force attacked 1,300 Confederate troops camped at Rich Mountain in a renowned battle. Confederate guerrillas raided Hacker's Creek on June 12, 1864. Find little-known facts about the Battles of Droop Mountain, Carnifex Ferry, Harpers Ferry, Shepherdstown and a whole host of others. Read a story one day or month at a time. Celebrate an entire year of Civil War history in the Mountain State.

• Language: English
• Publisher: The History Press
• Release date: Jul 27, 2015
• ISBN: 9781625855770

Michael B Graham

Michael B. Graham, PhD, is an adjunct professor of history, security and global studies at American Military University, Charles Town, West Virginia. He is senior vice-president for management and chief financial officer at the United States Institute of Peace, Washington, D.C. He has contributed to or written numerous titles on military history. He is a graduate of numerous institutions of higher learning including the Air War College, Naval War College and the Foreign Service Institute.

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INTRODUCTION

Only one state was created as a result of the American Civil War: West Virginia. In fact, quite probably the experience of no other state serves as a better example of the complexity of the war that pitted brother against brother and father against son. In the region that is today the state of West Virginia, then part of the state of Virginia, there was relatively equal support for the Northern and Southern causes. Recent studies estimate the number of Union troops at between twenty-two thousand and twenty-five thousand and the Confederate number at twenty-two thousand. Families split militarily down the middle over their political, social and economic beliefs on the war, and there were thousands of instances of divided loyalties and individuals fighting for both sides.

Basically, the Civil War in West Virginia was a war within the war—a regional conflict that was an expression of the larger Civil War in microcosm. Curiously, the geographical center of the U.S. population in 1860 was Elkins, at the confluence of the Tygart Valley River and Leading Creek, in Randolph County. From the start, the Union and Confederacy struggled to retain western Virginia primarily for two reasons. First, above all, the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad traversed the eastern and northern sections of the future state. Neither side could win the war without controlling or denying the other side’s use of that great east–west artery of the nation. Second was salt. It was the region’s most valuable resource during the war and was crucial to the South’s war effort. Foremost, the Confederacy needed the region’s salt to preserve meat and, as a dietary requirement, ensure the health of its population. Salt was so important that western Virginia’s saltworks were early and constant targets of the Union and cause of Confederate concern throughout the war.

In this work, a variation of chronological history, we learn through a year’s worth of daily entries how the Civil War unfolded in what is now the state of West Virginia. The reader hopefully will find this a useful resource concerning this largely overlooked and underappreciated area of the war awkwardly located between the great Eastern and Western Theaters of operations.

Building such a record is a continuous process that requires information from varied and diverse sources that have often been generally unavailable or inaccessible to the public until the rise of the Internet and other digital technology enabling research today. In some cases, all that is available or identified is that a meeting of foes took place in some degree or that a particular unit was involved in some event of unknown determination (e.g., a skirmish). As source information continues to become available, the gaps in the record will surely continue to be filled in.

For practicality, references to Union army units attributable to the region now known as the state of West Virginia are indicated as (West) Virginia before June 20, 1863, the date of West Virginia statehood. Prior to that date, the region was still officially part of Virginia. After statehood, such units are indicated as West Virginia. In some cases, the description western Virginia is used for convenience.

JANUARY

JANUARY 1, 1864

The Gray Ghost, Confederate cavalry and partisan rangers commander Colonel John S. Mosby, raided the Lower Shenandoah Valley (January 1–10). In several related actions, Mosby’s Rangers and Union major Henry A. Cole’s Maryland cavalry battalion of the Potomac Home Brigade skirmished. The fiercest fights occurred on January 5 and January 10 at Harpers Ferry. The raid concluded when Mosby’s Rangers attacked Cole’s cavalry at night in its camp on Loudoun Heights overlooking the town. The Federals put up a bitter defense and beat off the attack. The Confederates withdrew upon the arrival of Union reinforcements from Harpers Ferry. The fight was one of the first in which Union forces held their own against Mosby’s feared Forty-third Virginia Cavalry Battalion. In the course of the raid, Union losses totaled ten killed, nineteen wounded and forty-one captured and missing. Confederate losses were four killed, four mortally wounded, five wounded and one captured.

JANUARY 2, 1862

Confederate captain Perry D. Conley, the Quantrill of West Virginia as commander of the notorious outlaw wing of the Moccasin Rangers guerrillas, was killed at Welch Glade. Recruited from the Upper West Fork of the Little Kanawha River, the Moccasin Rangers spread fear in western Virginia, robbing and murdering those who sided with the Union. Operating secretly behind the lines, they raided communities, including Ripley and Sutton. A Union detachment under Captain James L. Simpson’s Company C, Eleventh (West) Virginia Infantry, encountered the Confederates along the Birch River near Cowen in Webster County. Conley fought off the assailants until he ran out of ammunition. Badly wounded in hand-to-hand combat, he nonetheless continued to fight until the Union troops beat him to death with their gun butts. Some reports suggest that he died at the hands of his own brother, Union scout Private James P. Conley, for whom he had named his first son.

JANUARY 3, 1862

The Twenty-fifth Ohio’s Major George Webster led 738 troops of the Twenty-fifth Ohio and Second (West) Virginia Infantries and Bracken’s First Indiana Cavalry on a raid deep into the Greenbrier Valley. For three days (January 3–5), the Federals advanced in cold weather and heavy snow. After a skirmish at Marlins Bottom (Marlinton), Confederate pickets fired on the Federals two miles from Huntersville. One mile farther, Webster engaged 250 Rebel militia and regulars. The Rebels retreated half a mile nearer the town. They retreated again when attacked on the right and were pursued through the town. The Federals captured and burned large amounts of supplies, equipment, provisions and property. The Federals remained in the town for two hours. The first Federals to enter Huntersville in the war, they left much of the secessionist town in ashes. The Federal loss was one wounded and the Southern loss one killed and seven wounded.

JANUARY 4, 1862

In bitter winter weather, Confederate major general Stonewall Jackson converged on Berkeley County with eleven thousand troops at the onset of his ill-fated Romney Campaign. He aimed to drive the Federals from the area and destroy the B&O Railroad between Harpers Ferry and New Creek Station (Keyser) and the dams along the C&O Canal. The Confederates attacked at Bath (Berkeley Springs). The Stonewall Brigade under Brigadier General Richard B. Garnett and Lieutenant Colonel Turner Ashby’s Seventh Virginia Cavalry led the way. The various Union and Confederate forces clashed in many skirmishes throughout Berkeley, Morgan and Hampshire Counties, including Great Cacapon Bridge, Alpine Station, Warm Springs Mountain, Sir John’s Run, Slane’s Cross Roads (Slanesville) and Romney. The Union forces resisted weakly and fled across the Potomac River. Casualties totaled several dozen on each side.

JANUARY 5, 1864

Confederate major general Fitzhugh Lee, with Brigadier General Albert G. Jenkins’s cavalry brigade and McNeill’s Rangers, ended his raid of the South Branch area of the Potomac River. Owing to the suffering of his men and the impassability of the mountains in the harsh winter weather, Lee (nephew of Confederate general Robert E. Lee) failed to cut the B&O Railroad at New Creek Station (Keyser). Returning to the Shenandoah Valley, Lee’s cavalry passed through Romney with six hundred cattle, three hundred horses and mules and 110 Union prisoners. In the raid (January 2–5), the Confederates captured a wagon train, besieged the Federal garrison at Petersburg and attacked the Federal post at Moorefield Junction; they also burned Federal blockhouses at Burlington; Williamsport, Maryland; and McNemar’s Church. There were skirmishes at Ridgeville and Harpers Ferry. McNeill’s Rangers, led by Confederate cavalry and partisan rangers commander Captain John H. McNeill, took possession of Romney.

JANUARY 6, 1862

In order to divert Stonewall Jackson’s attention during his Romney Campaign, Union brigadier general Benjamin F. Kelley directed Colonel Samuel H. Dunning of the Fifth Ohio Infantry to attack a Confederate camp southeast of Romney at a mountain pass known as Blue’s Gap and Hanging Rock. The troops left Romney on the sixth and by marching all night in cold and snow covered the fifteen miles before daylight. In a brief engagement, the 2,400 Federals routed Confederate colonel Alexander W. Monroe’s militia and Captain George F. Sheetz’s Maryland cavalry, capturing two cannons, several wagons, ten horses, ammunition and camp equipment. The Confederates lost seven men killed, a number wounded and seven captured. The Federals suffered no losses, burned the North River bridge and a number of buildings and returned to Romney. Thinking that an attack on Winchester, Virginia, was developing, Jackson withdrew from Hancock, Maryland, and hurried to the relief of Winchester.

JANUARY 7, 1864

Major Harry Gilmor’s Maryland battalion of cavalry drove a Federal detachment in northwestern Hampshire County, burned their camp at Springfield and captured a large cache of supplies, including one and half tons of bacon.

JANUARY 8, 1861

As tensions increased between the North and South, U.S. Secretary of War Edward M. Stanton sent sixty soldiers under U.S. Army major Henry J. Hunt to defend the United States Armory and Arsenal at Harpers Ferry. Several days earlier, armory superintendent Alfred M. Barbour informed Washington that he feared an assault and was organizing volunteer companies to protect the arsenal. At Charleston, citizens gathered at a public meeting at the Kanawha County Courthouse. Speakers called for a Virginia statewide convention to debate the matter of secession. There were resolutions opposing Federal use of armed force against seceding states and calling for preservation of the Union under conditions acknowledging the rights and honor of the South. There were Union meetings at Mason and Wetzel Counties’ courthouses at Point Pleasant and Wellsburg.

JANUARY 9, 1864

In a raid of the South Branch Valley (January 8–10), Gilmor’s Maryland battalion of cavalry and McNeill’s Rangers defeated the Union force sent out to hunt down and capture them at Petersburg.

JANUARY 10, 1864

The Maryland Potomac Home Guard Brigade camp atop Loudoun Heights overlooking Harpers Ferry was attacked by Gilmor’s battalion of Maryland cavalry between 3:00 a.m. and 4:00 a.m. The Confederates made an attack on the camp by charging from three sides. Company A held the enemy in check long enough for the rest of the garrison to rally, and the enemy was driven back with a loss of five killed, two mortally wounded and one captured. The Union loss was four killed and seventeen wounded.

JANUARY 11, 1865

Confederate major general Thomas L. Rosser and 300 cavalry from the Shenandoah Valley embarked on a daring raid of the Federal depot at Beverly in Randolph County. The Confederates, specially chosen from the Sixth and Eighth Virginia Cavalries of Brigadier General William H.F. Payne’s brigade, departed on January 10 in heavy snow and below-zero cold. Wearing Federal overcoats, the Confederates achieved complete surprise. The 1,200 Federals were unable to offer organized resistance and were quickly overwhelmed—6 Federals were killed, 23 wounded and 583 taken prisoner. Rosser’s troops lost 1 killed, several wounded and 1 captured. The haul included about seven hundred stands of arms, one hundred horses, ten thousand rations and enough quartermaster stores for 600 men. The march into captivity to Staunton, Virginia, over the next seven days was a death sentence for many Federals by way of exhaustion and exposure; many others died after reaching prison.

JANUARY 12, 1862

Union colonel Edward Siber, Thirty-seventh Ohio Infantry, raided Logan County (January 12–15). Four companies headed for Chapmanville, one company advanced to the head of Mud River and another company with Siber went up the Spruce Fork of Little Coal. The Federals at Chapmanville were fired on while advancing up the Guyandotte River, with a loss of one man killed (January 13). Some Federals swam the river and attacked and burned the houses from which the shooting came, capturing several prisoners. Siber found Logan Court House (Logan) evacuated and militia dug in on the mountainside opposite the town. A skirmish was fought (January 14) during which one Federal was killed. Before withdrawing on January 15, the Federals burned the Logan County Courthouse and neighboring buildings.

JANUARY 13, 1865

A detachment of Federals of the Seventeenth West Virginia Infantry skirmished with and captured nine Confederate troops at Bulltown in Braxton County, including some of Captain John S. Sprigg’s company of the Moccasin Rangers, Nineteenth Virginia Cavalry. Sprigg lived near Bulltown. Some of the Rebels were dressed in Union uniforms and claimed that they were coming in to give themselves up when taken prisoner. A Federal raiding party under Major Elias S. Troxel, Twenty-second Pennsylvania Cavalry, passed through Pendleton and Hardy Counties on a raid from New Creek Station (Keyser). As the Union raiders approached Franklin, looking for Confederate soldiers and artillery, they found the town empty. Two local women had walked over North Mountain and through the snow to warn the Confederate garrison.

JANUARY 14, 1862

Stonewall Jackson’s army straggled into Romney over a period of several days, sick, demoralized and short on rations and equipment. For the first time since they left Winchester, Virginia, two weeks earlier in the Romney Campaign, the winter weather eased and the sun shone. Despite resentment among his command for their suffering, Jackson declared the campaign at a cost of four killed and twenty-eight wounded a success: Shepherdstown protected from shelling, the railroad communication with Hancock broken, all that portion of the country east of the Great Cacapon recovered, Romney and a large part of Hampshire County evacuated by the enemy without firing a gun, the enemy had fled from the western part of Hardy County and been forced on the offensive from the defensive.

JANUARY 15, 1863

Union colonel John C. Paxton’s Second (West) Virginia Cavalry raid against the Virginia & Tennessee Railroad at the New River bridge in southwestern Virginia (January 5–20) was turned back by the combined action of Confederate brigadier generals John Echols’s and