And gazing out, with a pensive air,
On the broad bitumen sea,”
for from pump to river all was flame.
The amount of oil destroyed was estimated at one hundred and fifty thousand barrels, and this has been fully confirmed by reports of owners published since the war; and taking into consideration the destruction of boats, machinery, buildings, &c., the damage was immense.
As soon as the destruction was complete, the raiders went out into the night, leaving a bitter remembrance of their visit in the hearts of the people who dwelt on the desolated shore of the Little Kanawha, and many an oilman was heard to wish, in substance, as the brigade marched away, that “he might never be any nearer hell than he had been that night.”
These things occurred about the 10th of May, and now the little army of Jones passed on through the counties of Calhoun, Gilmer, Braxton, Nicholas and Fayette, to Lewisburg in Greenbrier, during part of which march the command was divided for the better securing of rations of forage, and Col. Lomax with his regiment and White’s battalion took a new route through the mountains. Arrived at Lewisburg, the command halted from Saturday noon until Monday morning, and visited the celebrated Greenbrier White Sulphur Springs, where many of the men, by Gen. Jones’ permission, spent Sunday, the 17th of May, 1863.
On Monday morning, the brigade marched on by the noted Hot, Warm, and Alum Springs of Bath county, through Augusta to the camp near Mount Crawford in Rockingham, where it arrived on the evening of May 21st, having been absent thirty-two days.
Owing to the loss of papers and diaries, by the circumstances of war, it has been utterly impossible for the author to give more than the most meagre outline of the Western Virginia expedition of General Jones’ brigade, which took rank among the army campaigns as a very important one, it having aided, to no small degree, in securing to the Confederates the great victory at Chancellorsville, by accomplishing the objects for which it was intended, as explained in the beginning of this chapter.
The visible fruits of the expedition, besides the damage to the rail roads and oil works, were about nine hundred and fifty of the enemy killed, wounded and captured, about one thousand small arms and one cannon destroyed, twelve hundred horses and one thousand cattle brought safely through to the Valley.
About twenty bridges and tunnels on the Baltimore and Ohio and North Western Rail Roads had been destroyed, and the Southern sympathizers, of that country for a time relieved from the domineering rule which invariably characterized the home-made Yankee, wherever he had the power to annoy his Southern neighbor, and finding by this raid that it was not as impossible as they had thought, for the Confederate troops to come among them, these tories took the lesson to heart and acted more like men towards the people who differed with them in opinion and feeling, than before.