Hess Earl J. Field Armies and Fortifications in the Civil War: The Eastern Campaigns, 1861-1864
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Tyler’s Mountain
Top of Alleghany
Big Sewell Mountain
Cheat
Mountain
Meadow Bluff
Rich Mountain
Laurel
Mountain
PENNSYLVANIA
Camp Elkwater
Cheat Summit Fort
Camp
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Beverly
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Western Virginia, 1861
Western Virginia and Eastern North Carolina 49
between Cheat Mountain and Rich Mountain to Beverly. It then forked; one
branch headed northwestward to the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad at West
Union before going west to Parkersburg on the Ohio River, and the other
branch led northward from Beverly to Philippi and Grafton.
∞
The Confederates were compelled to react. Gen. Robert E. Lee moved two
columns into the region, advancing Brig. Gen. Henry A. Wise into the Great
Kanawha River Valley and Brig. Gen. Robert S. Garnett up the Staunton-
Parkersburg Turnpike. Garnett led 6,000 men to Rich Mountain northwest
of Beverly, believing this to be the best place to stop the Union drive along
the thoroughfare. The pike passed through a saddle of Rich Mountain; just
to the west, Garnett deployed 1,300 men behind a fortification called Camp
Garnett. It was made of log breastworks, as the thin soil of the mountain did
not allow for a lot of digging. Trees were cut down for 150 yards in front to
form an abatis and open a field of fire. Garnett similarly fortified the point
where the other branch of the pike crossed Laurel Mountain north of Bev-
erly. He personally commanded the majority of his force at Laurel Mountain,
but twelve miles separated his two wings.
McClellan moved cautiously toward both positions with 20,000 men.
When engineer Lt. Orlando M. Poe found a low ridge in front of Camp
Garnett, McClellan hoped to place artillery there to shell the Confederates
out of their works. This plan probably would not have worked without an ac-
companying infantry assault, but McClellan’s subordinate Brig. Gen. Wil-
liam S. Rosecrans was willing to lead one. He found a local Unionist, twenty-
two-year-old David Hart, whose family farm lay alongside the pike on the top
of the mountain some distance behind Camp Garnett. Hart was willing to
show Rosecrans a footpath up the mountain that would allow him to bypass
the fortified camp and enter the pike in the saddle.
The plan worked well. Rosecrans carefully led 1,917 men along the path
on the night of July 10 and struck the paltry Confederate force holding the
saddle behind hastily constructed breastworks. Even though there were only
310 Rebel troops and one gun in position, the struggle lasted nearly all day
on July 11. The woods surrounding the Hart farmstead were thick but clear of
undergrowth, and the rude breastworks provided the only margin of advan-
tage the Rebels enjoyed; yet Rosecrans gained possession of the Hart farm-
stead and the pike by evening. Lt. Col. John Pegram, who commanded the
troops at Camp Garnett, evacuated the work that night and bypassed the
Hart farm to escape. Garnett also evacuated the fortification at Laurel Moun-
tain, but Pegram felt compelled to surrender his small force in Tygart’s Valley
on July 13, believing he had been cut off. Garnett was killed in a skirmish at
Carrick’s Ford that day as the Federals vigorously pursued his command.
50 Western Virginia and Eastern North Carolina
It was a hard-won victory that garnered enormous, and largely unde-
served, praise for McClellan. He demonstrated some of his later characteris-
tics: extreme caution, indecision, and an abiding fear of failure on the bat-
tlefield. John Beatty, an officer in the 3rd Ohio, pinpointed a reason for
McClellan’s waffling when he complained and explained in the same pas-
sage: ‘‘We do not know the strength of our opponents, nor the character and
extent of their fortifications. These mountain passes must be ugly things to
go through when in possession of an enemy.’’ It was reasonable for McClellan
to be cautious when commanding a large force in the crowded mountains,
where logistical problems were far worse than in other terrain, but nothing
can excuse McClellan’s refusal to advance on Camp Garnett when the sound
of Rosecrans’s hard-fought battle for the saddle could distinctly be heard on
July 11. Rosecrans fought his way to victory despite McClellan’s inaction. He
demonstrated the best way to deal with fortified mountain passes; there
always was a way to climb the mountain to right or left and outflank the
enemy, difficult as that process might be.
W. C. Johnson and E. S. Hartshorn, two early historians of Civil War
fortifications, noted the irony of this situation. They pointed out in 1915 that
Garnett had worked for twenty-five days constructing his fortifications and
lost them in a matter of hours without inflicting significant losses on his
opponent. ‘‘This engagement furnishes an excellent illustration of the futility
of expending much effort on works which can not meet the conditions for
which they have been constructed.’’
Rich Mountain also demonstrated that the use of fortifications would be a
key element of the western Virginia campaign. There seemed to be some-
thing psychologically appealing in a fort located on the top of a mountain.
The romantic image of a ‘‘mountain fastness,’’ reinforced with earthworks,
captivated the imagination of everyone. Beatty pondered the meaning of
Rich Mountain and how the Confederates would defend their region when
he wrote, ‘‘They will fight with desperation, I have no doubt. Nature has
fortified the country for them. He is foolishly oversanguine who predicts an
easy victory over such a people, entrenched amidst mountains and hills.’’
≤
Yet Union forces vigorously projected power into these mountains, and
they eventually carried the day. McClellan paused after the victory at Rich
Mountain and ordered the construction of a major fortification where the
turnpike crossed Cheat Mountain. Six companies of the 14th Indiana started
the work on July 16 and were later joined by the 15th Indiana, the 3rd Ohio,
and some Ohio cavalry and artillery units. The men cleared the trees on both
sides of the pike, where the land sloped west and east. The white pines were
used as abatis in front of the parapet, which also consisted of logs covered
Western Virginia and Eastern North Carolina 51
with dirt. The parapet was eight feet wide at the base and four feet wide at
the top. Two blockhouses were situated northeast and southwest of the point
where the pike crossed the summit, and a covered way, or a communication
trench with berms thrown up on both sides to protect against enemy fire, con-
nected the blockhouses to the fortification. Cabins were built inside the fort
as well, with lumber from a nearby steam sawmill. The huts measured twenty
feet by forty feet, had a fireplace at one end, and housed up to one-fourth of a
company of soldiers. Because a man named White owned the land, the spot
often was called White Top. The soldiers more commonly called it Cheat
Summit Fort, Fort Milroy, or Camp McClellan. At more than 4,000 feet above
sea level, it was the highest Federal fort in the eastern theater.
≥
The Union drive along the Staunton-Parkersburg Turnpike ground to a
halt because of logistical difficulties and McClellan’s desire to push another
column up the Great Kanawha Valley. He started 3,000 troops under Brig.
Gen. Jacob D. Cox in mid-July. Cox easily won success against Henry A.
Wise’s 4,000 Confederates, outflanking their position at Tyler’s Mountain
on the north side of the river and forcing them to retire. Wise evacuated
Charleston without a struggle, burned the bridge at Gauley, and retreated
eastward. Cox occupied Charleston on July 25, but McClellan had left the
region the day before, called by the authorities in Washington to take charge
of the defeated troops streaming back from Bull Run. He had managed to
use his success in western Virginia as a springboard to the top command in
the East.
Rosecrans richly deserved his promotion to succeed McClellan as the
Union commander in the mountains. He instructed Cox to stop at Gauley and
fortify it as a forward outpost. Often called Gauley Bridge, this tiny commu-
nity was the strategic gateway to the Kanawha River Valley from the east.
The Great Kanawha, which cut as much as 800 feet into the rugged moun-
tains, was formed by the confluence of the Gauley River from the northeast
and the New River from the southeast. The two streams met at Gauley
Bridge. Two miles south of town, the Falls of the Kanawha impeded river-
borne traffic coming up from the Ohio. The bridge at Gauley was built across
the Gauley River in 1822 on massive stone piers that remained after the
wooden bridge was burned by the Confederates.
Two engineer officers arrived at Gauley Bridge on August 5 to supple-
ment the one already serving with Cox, but the general felt they were not
needed. There ‘‘was little fortifying to be done beyond what the contour of
the ground indicated to the most ordinary comprehension.’’ Cox, an amateur
soldier, felt that West Point–trained engineers were not a sine qua non of
field operations. He thoroughly and competently fortified Gauley Bridge.
52 Western Virginia and Eastern North Carolina
The Federals put a gun emplacement on a nearby hillside and then ran an
infantry trench along the Gauley River to a small creek that emptied into the
stream. A redoubt was dug at the junction of the creek and the river. The
trench was then run beside the creek up the mountain to a gorge. The
parapet of this trench line consisted of barrels filled with earth, as there was
little topsoil. Much labor was expended in cutting thousands of trees in all
directions, up and down the slopes, to create fields of fire and to make a
nearly impenetrable slashing. Cox also converted a sawmill below the Falls of
the Kanawha into a blockhouse with loopholes for small arms.
∂
Wise was reinforced by Brig. Gen. John B. Floyd, bringing combined
Confederate strength in the region to 8,000 men. The two generals bitterly
despised each other, however, and each viewed the other as a rival. Wise
advanced to probe Cox’s position at Gauley Bridge, but Floyd took his men
to Carnifex Ferry, a crossing of the Gauley River some twenty miles up-
stream from Gauley Bridge. Neither general tried to help the other. Floyd
entrenched his men on the north side of the rugged stream atop a high river
bluff. He formed a bridgehead in neutral territory between Cox and Rose-
crans, but he did nothing to exploit that advantage. The only offensive action
he took was to send troops to rout the 7th Ohio, which was positioned two
miles north of the ferry at Cross Lanes, on August 26.
This small but embarrassing Union defeat and Floyd’s inaction prompted
Rosecrans to take the offensive. Floyd had 1,900 men in his fortified bridge-
head, which was called Camp Gauley. The countryside was very wild, the
bluff ascended to 450 feet, and the Gauley River wound through the hills like
one’s fancied image of a mountain stream. Floyd put an artillery emplace-
ment on the first high ground inland from the ferry, with a long line of
infantry trench attached to its left and a much shorter line appended to its
right. Ravines some 30 feet deep lay in front of each wing, while the road
continued northward from the artillery emplacement. The ravine in front of
the right wing was deeper than the one on the left. Some 200 yards in front
of the Confederate artillery was a slightly higher rise where Federal artillery
could be placed to bombard the work. Apparently the Confederates had not
cut the trees in front of the fortification far enough, and the Federals could
approach under cover. But Floyd’s greatest problem was that the formidable
crossing of the Gauley River was just to his back. Bridgeheads are strate-
gically important only if they are used for further offensive action into enemy
territory, but Floyd displayed no intention of doing that.
Rosecrans reduced this bridgehead with a force of 5,000 men on Septem-
ber 10. His attacks were repulsed that day, but Floyd felt compelled to give
up Camp Gauley that night and retreat across the river. Shortly after, Cox
Western Virginia and Eastern North Carolina 53
advanced from Gauley Bridge and forced Wise to retire without offering
battle. Wise and Floyd combined their forces at Big Sewell Mountain, a
commanding eminence thirty-five miles from Gauley Bridge. Here, on top of
this enormous height, the Confederates would finally halt the Union advance
along the line of the Great Kanawha, but only after much suffering and bitter
feuding among themselves.
∑
The animosity between Floyd and Wise boiled over at Big Sewell Moun-
tain. While Wise wanted to stay put and fight the Yankees, Floyd was con-
vinced that Meadow Bluff was a better place to make a stand. The bluff was
ten miles east of the mountain, and Floyd decided to take his command there
even though Wise elected to stay at Sewell. This was a petty move by Floyd,
conducted mostly because he wanted to get away from Wise, and it un-
necessarily divided the small Confederate force. Moreover, Meadow Bluff
was far less favorable as a defensive position than Big Sewell Mountain.
After crossing the mountain, the road descended into Meadow River Valley
and ran upstream along the bottomland. The river flows west and north-
west to empty into Gauley River at Carnifex Ferry. After running along the
bottomland for five miles, the road crossed Meadow River and ascended
Meadow Bluff near the modern town of Crawley. The bluff ranges from 100
to 200 feet high and offers a good position for defense against a frontal
attack, but high ground on the flanks would allow an attacker to turn the
position. Floyd set his men to work digging a line of infantry trench nearly
three miles long on top of the bluff. One company of the 22nd Virginia had
only ‘‘one axe [and] two butcher knives to work with, so some idea may be
formed of the efficiency of our defenses,’’ noted a soldier.
∏
While Floyd fortified his position at Meadow Bluff, Wise played the hero at
Big Sewell Mountain. It is a huge, elongated mountain with very steep sides
that utterly dominates the surrounding countryside. The road crossed the
mountain at an elevation of 3,021 feet. Only a couple of small remnants of the
works remain, and there are no extant maps of the fortifications, so it is
difficult to know how they conformed to the lay of the land. But Robert E. Lee
found it a good place to make a stand when he arrived in mid-September to
direct Confederate operations. He was largely unsuccessful, preferring to
give advice to his feuding subordinates rather than taking command. Lee
managed to draw most of Floyd’s force, regiment by regiment, back to Big
Sewell Mountain, so that he had 9,000 men there by October 1. Rosecrans
had joined Cox by then, and both Union forces advanced on the mountain.
The Federals endured rain, illness, and logistical problems but managed to
bring 8,200 men to Sewell. They hovered near the mountain for several days
in a vain effort to find a weak spot in the Confederate defenses. Then Rose-
54 Western Virginia and Eastern North Carolina
crans retreated on October 6 to a point near Gauley Bridge. Floyd followed up
this retreat in early November by advancing to shell the earthworks at Gauley
Bridge, but he made no serious effort to breach them before retiring. Thus
the campaign along the Kanawha–Gauley Bridge–Big Sewell Mountain line
came to an end. Both sides were stalemated in their mountain forts.
π
Operations along the Staunton-Parkersburg Turnpike had been taking
place during and after the period embraced by the battle of Carnifex Ferry
and the maneuvering and digging at Sewell Mountain and Meadow Bluff.
Lee had arrived in western Virginia in early August and had sent a small force
under Brig. Gen. William W. Loring against the Federals at Cheat Mountain.
The Federal commander, Brig. Gen. Joseph J. Reynolds, protected the ap-
proach to the rear of Cheat Mountain by digging a strong line of works across
the Huntersville-Huttonsville Pike in Tygart’s Valley. A Confederate force
moving north along this road could get behind Cheat Mountain and take the
summit fort in the rear. Called Camp Elkwater, Reynolds’s line of works
stretched 300 yards across the full width of the valley. The trench was six feet
deep and fourteen feet wide with a firestep inside and gun emplacements at
each end. It was a very strong and well-placed earthwork.
Loring struck at both Camp Elkwater and Cheat Summit. Like Rosecrans
and Cox at Big Sewell Mountain, his men hovered around the two positions
without mounting a major attack in mid-September; then they retired to a
new defensive position where the Monterey Turnpike crossed the Greenbrier
River. The Confederates dug in on a commanding bluff overlooking the river
crossing and called their earthworks Camp Bartow. Their artillery emplace-
ments were simple, semicircular parapets. They were yet incomplete when
Reynolds attacked on October 3. The Federals exchanged artillery fire and
tried unsuccessfully to outflank the position. Then Reynolds retired to Cheat
Mountain. Once again, high ground with a good field of fire and reinforced
with earthworks had stopped a strategic offensive. The stalemate achieved
by the Confederates at Big Sewell Mountain, a worthy accomplishment con-
sidering the string of disasters they suffered in the early part of the fighting
for western Virginia, was duplicated at Camp Bartow. But of course, the
Federals also were able to consolidate their gains by fortifying high ground.
∫
Despite their defensive achievement, the Confederates abandoned Camp
Bartow for fear that a larger, more aggressive Federal attack lay in the future.
They retired all the way to the top of Alleghany Mountain, five miles east of
Camp Bartow and ten miles east of Cheat Mountain. At an elevation of 4,400
feet, this entrenched Confederate camp was the highest fortification on ei-
ther side in the eastern theater. It was built on both sides of the Staunton-
Parkersburg Turnpike as it crossed the summit of the mountain. The fort was
Western Virginia and Eastern North Carolina 55
Remnants of Confederate Camp Bartow, West Virginia. This artillery emplacement
consisted of a simple parapet in a semicircular configuration. (Cohen, Civil War in
West Virginia, 50)
located west of the road, and several cabins and a protecting infantry trench
were situated east of it. Like Cheat Summit Fort, the works at Camp Alle-
ghany were built on a slope. There was no ditch in front of the modest
parapet, which consisted of rock covered with dirt from the trench. Thou-
sands of sugar maples were cut down to clear room for the camp and a field
of fire. At least thirty-five cabins were constructed.
The works here were tested when Brig. Gen. Robert H. Milroy took com-
mand of Union forces at Cheat Mountain. An aggressive commander, Milroy
was determined to capture Camp Alleghany before the most severe winter
weather set in. He led a force against Col. Edward Johnson’s Confederates on
top of the mountain on December 13, 1861. The resulting battle was sharp
and costly. Milroy tried to outflank the position; but his attack was repulsed,
and another, separate column approaching the camp from the cabin side
also was repelled. The Federals were forced to return to Cheat Mountain,
effectively ending the campaign in western Virginia for the time being.
Ω
Even though the Federal invasion of western Virginia had been under-
taken haphazardly, it had developed into a major effort that was largely
successful. The Yankees had advanced along both lines of penetration as far
as they could, given their logistical difficulties and the limited number of
troops that could be employed in the mountains. Cheat Mountain was more
56 Western Virginia and Eastern North Carolina
Remnants of Confederate defenses at Camp Alleghany, West Virginia. The simple
trench and parapet are placed below the military crest of the slope. (Cohen, Civil War
in West Virginia, 52).
than 100 miles from Parkersburg on the Ohio River, measured in a straight
line, while Gauley Bridge was 75 miles from the mouth of the Great Kanawha
River. The Confederates at Camp Alleghany were 30 miles west of the Shen-
andoah Valley, the eastern edge of the Appalachian Highlands, as measured
in a straight line; Big Sewell Mountain was 65 miles from the valley. At least
half of the mountainous western counties of Virginia had been denied to
the Confederacy. Union forces had turned the tide in the struggle for this
border region.
Fortifications played a large role in the western Virginia campaigns. Nei-
ther side could afford to commit enough power to gain a decisive advantage
over the other, and several indecisive engagements were fought. The use of
fortifications by both sides was among the key factors in creating this stale-
mate, on both the tactical and strategic levels. The Confederates relied on
fortified positions to slow down and stop the Union advance, and the Fed-
erals relied on fortified positions to hold their offensive gains. Neither side
had made much headway against the other by September, and from that
point on it became a matter of deciding who could outlast the other. The
better-organized and more numerous Federals eventually won this contest.
Western Virginia and Eastern North Carolina 57
No fortified position on either side was taken by direct attack in the
western Virginia campaigns. Most confrontations between an attacker and a
fortified defender resulted in probing moves, artillery exchanges, and finally
a decision not to attack at all. Both Rosecrans’s assault on Camp Gauley at
Carnifex Ferry and Milroy’s attack on Camp Alleghany were repulsed. But
several fortified positions were evacuated because the enemy outflanked the
position, as at Rich Mountain, or because of a breakdown of willpower on
the part of the defender, as at Carnifex Ferry and Camp Bartow. The strength
of the individual earthworks and their high, commanding positions deterred
vigorous attacks.
The weather and terrain affected the outcome of the campaign as much as
did fortifications. Unusually heavy rains fell that summer and fall, with a
twenty-day period of precipitation starting on July 22 followed by eight
weeks of sporadic showers. It actually snowed on top of Cheat Mountain in
August. Muddy roads made supply by wagon very difficult. The transporta-
tion system lay in the river and creek valleys, so flooding also became a
problem. The normal round of communicable diseases that always afflicted
new regiments was worsened by the weather. Floyd asserted that eleven
days of cold rain in September had ‘‘cost more men, sick and dead, than the
battle of Manassas Plains.’’ Lee was forced to send most of his troops away
from Big Sewell Mountain, after Rosecrans and Cox retreated from the area,
due to his supply problems. The 14th North Carolina took 750 men into
Virginia but had only 277 left for duty by spring. Charles Snead, a member of
the regiment, found it impossible to describe the conditions. ‘‘Our men suffer
from the want of blankets, and clothing,’’ he complained. ‘‘This is a cold, wet
country and unless we are attended to we shall surely die.’’ The winter
months were brutal. Benjamin Franklin Templeton, a member of the 2nd
Rockbridge Artillery, arrived at Camp Alleghany in December to find that his
mustache and beard were so frosted he could not open his mouth until he
warmed them by a fire.
∞≠
Disease, logistical difficulties, and harsh weather severely reduced the
combat effectiveness of the regiments involved in the western Virginia cam-
paigns. The Confederates could not afford to outlast the Federals in the
waiting game. When the spring campaigns heated up in the Tidewater, the
Rebels were forced to withdraw most of their troops from the mountains.
The fortified camps at Big Sewell Mountain and Alleghany were evacuated
by April 1862. The Federals also shifted most of their troops from the moun-
tains to other areas. Western Virginia became a separate state in 1863, but it
remained the scene of sporadic fighting for the remainder of the war.
∞∞
The campaign in the mountains had given rise to two commanders who