Major-General Loring took command of all the Confederate forces in southwestern Virginia on the 19th or 20th of May, and Heth was already in march to oppose Crook's forward movement. On the 23d Heth, with some 3000 men, including three batteries of artillery, attacked Crook at Lewisburg, soon after daybreak in the morning. Crook met him in front of the town, and after a sharp engagement routed him, capturing four cannon, some 200 stand of arms and 100 prisoners. His own loss was 13 killed and 53 wounded, with 7 missing. He did not think it wise to follow up the retreating enemy, but held a strong position near Lewisburg, where his communications were well covered, and where he was upon the same range of highlands on which we were at Flat-top, though fifty miles of broken country intervened. [Footnote: Official Records, vol. xii. pt. ii. pp. 804-813.] Meanwhile Frémont had been ordered to Banks's relief, and had been obliged to telegraph me that we must be left to ourselves till the results of the Shenandoah campaign were tested. [Footnote: Id., pt. iii. p. 264.] Rumors were rife that after Jackson retired from Frémont's front at Franklin, Johnson's division was ordered to march into our part of West Virginia. We were thus thrown, necessarily, into an expectant attitude, awaiting the outcome of Frémont's eastward movement and the resumption of his plans. Our men were kept busy in marching and scouting by detachments, putting down guerilla bands and punishing disorders. They thus acquired a power of sustained exertion on foot which proved afterward of great value.
There was, in a way, a resemblance in our situation and in our work to that of feudal chiefs in the middle ages. We held a lofty and almost impregnable position, overlooking the country in every direction. The distant ridges of the Alleghanies rose before us, the higher peaks standing out in the blue distance, so that we seemed to watch the mountain passes fifty miles away without stirring from our post. The loyal people about us formed relations to us not unlike those of the feudal retainers of old. They worked their farms, but every man had his rifle hung upon his chimney-piece, and by day or by night was ready to shoulder it and thread his way by paths known only to the natives, to bring us news of open movement or of secret plots among the Secessionists. They were organized, also, in their own fashion, and every neighborhood could muster its company or its squad of home-guards to join in quelling seditious outbreaks or in strengthening a little column sent against any of the enemy's outposts. No considerable hostile movement was possible within a range of thirty miles without our having timely notice of it. The smoke from the camp-fires of a single troop of horse could be seen rising from the ravines, and detachments of our regiments guided by the native scouts would be on the way to reconnoitre within an hour. Officers as well as men went on foot, for they followed ridges where there was not even a bridle-path, and depended for safety, in no small degree, on their ability to take to the thickets of the forest-clad hillside if they found themselves in the presence of a body of the Confederate cavalry. Thirty miles a day was an easy march for them after they had become hardened to their work, and taking several days together they could outmarch any cavalry, especially when they could take "short cuts" over hills and away from travelled roads. They knew at what farms they could find "rations," and where were the hostile neighborhoods from which equally enterprising scouts would glide away to carry news of their movements to the enemy. At headquarters there was a constant going and coming. Groups of home-guards were nearly always about, as picturesque in their homely costume as Leather-stocking himself, and many of our officers and men were hardly less expert as woodsmen. Constant activity was the order of the day, and the whole command grew hardy and self-reliant with great rapidity.
General Pope was, on the 26th of June, assigned to command the Army of Virginia, including the forces under McDowell and Banks as well as those in the Mountain Department. [Footnote: Official Records, vol. xii. pt. iii. p. 435.] Fremont was relieved from command at his own request, and the Mountain Department ceased to exist. [Footnote: Id., p. 437.] Pope very wisely determined to unite in one army under his own command as many as possible of the troops reporting to him, and meanwhile directed us to remain on the defensive. [Footnote: Id., p. 471.] I ventured on the 3d of July to suggest by telegraph that my division would make a useful reinforcement to his active army in the field, and reiterated it on the 5th, with some explanation of my views. [Footnote: Id., pp. 451, 457.] I indicated Fayetteville and Hawk's Nest as points in front of Gauley Bridge where moderate garrisons could cover the valley defensively, as I had done in the preceding year. Getting no answer, I returned to the subject on the 13th. [Footnote: Id., p. 471.] Pope, however, did not issue his address upon assuming active command till the 14th, when his much ridiculed manifesto to the army appeared. [Footnote: He had announced his assignment and his headquarters at Washington on June 27 (Id., p. 436), but he now issued the address as he was about to take the field (Id., p. 473).] Since the war General Pope has himself told me that this, as well as the other orders issued at that time and which were much criticised, were drafted under the dictation, in substance, of Mr. Stanton, the Secretary of War. He admitted that some things in them were not quite in good taste; but the feeling was that it was desirable to infuse vigor into the army by stirring words, which would by implication condemn McClellan's policy of over-caution in military matters, and over-tenderness toward rebel sympathizers and their property. The Secretary, as he said, urged such public declarations so strongly that he did not feel at liberty to resist. They were unfairly criticised, and were made the occasion of a bitter and lasting enmity toward Pope on the part of most of the officers and men of the Potomac Army. It seems that Mr. Lincoln hesitated to approve the one relating to the arrest of disloyal persons within the lines of the army, and it was not till Pope repeated his sense of the need of it that the President yielded, on condition that it should be applied in exceptional cases only. It was probably intended more to terrify citizens from playing the part of spies than to be literally enforced, which would, indeed, have been hardly possible. No real severity was used under it, but the Confederate government made it the occasion of a sort of outlawry against Pope and his army. [Footnote: It is only fair to recollect that in the following year Halleck found it necessary to repeat in substance Pope's much abused orders, and Meade, who then commanded the Potomac Army, issued a proclamation in accordance with them. (Official Records, vol. xxvii. pt. i. p. 102; pt. iii. p. 786.) For Pope's submission of Order No. 11 to Mr. Lincoln and the limitation placed on it, see Id., vol. xii. pt. iii. pp. 500, 540. For general military law on the subject, see Birkhimer's "Military Government and Martial Law," chap. viii. For the practice of the Confederates, see the treatment of the Hon. George Summers, chap. xix. post.] Only two days later he issued an order against pillaging or molestation of persons and dwellings, as stringent as any one could wish. [Footnote: Official Records, vol. xii. pt. iii. p. 573.]
On the 5th of August Pope suggested to Halleck that I should be ordered to leave about 2500 men intrenched near Gauley Bridge, and march with the remainder of my command (say nine regiments) by way of Lewisburg, Covington, Staunton, and Harrisonburg to join him. Halleck replied that it was too much exposed, and directed him to select one more in the rear. Pope very rightly answered that there was no other route which would not make a great circuit to the rear. Halleck saw that Jackson's army near Charlottesville with a probable purpose of turning Pope's right flank might make a junction impossible for me, and stated the objection, but concluded with authority to Pope to order as he deemed best, "but with caution." [Footnote: Official Records, vol. xii. pt. iii. pp. 534, 540, 543.]
On the 8th of August Pope telegraphed me, accordingly, to march by way of Lewisburg, Covington, Warm Springs, and Augusta Springs to Harrisonburg, and there join him by shortest route. He indicated Winchester or Romney as my secondary aim if I should find the junction with him barred. [Footnote: Id., pp. 460, 462, 551.] This route avoided Staunton, but by so short a distance that it was scarcely safer, and the roads to be travelled were much harder and longer. At this time several detachments of considerable size were out, chasing guerilla parties and small bodies of Confederate troops, and assisting in the organization or enlistment of Union men. The movement ordered could not begin for several days, and I took advantage of the interval to lay before General Pope, by telegraph, the proof that the march would take fifteen days of uninterrupted travel through a mountainous region, most of it a wilderness destitute of supplies, and with the enemy upon the flank. Besides this there was the very serious question whether the Army of Virginia would be at Charlottesville when I should approach that place. On the other hand, my calculation was that we could reach Washington in ten days or less, by way of the Kanawha and Ohio rivers to Parkersburg, and thence by the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad to the capital. [Footnote: Id., vol. xiii. pt. iii. pp. 555, 559.] My dispatches were submitted to General Halleck, and on the 11th of August General Pope telegraphed a modified assent to my suggestions. He directed that 5000 men should remain in West Virginia under my command, and the remainder proceed to Washington by river and rail. [Footnote: Official Records, vol. xiii. pt. iii. p. 560.] An incursion of the enemy's cavalry into Logan County on my right and rear was at the moment in progress, and we used great activity in disposing of it, so that the change in our dispositions might not be too quickly known to our adversaries nor have the appearance of retreat. [Footnote: I at one time supposed that the orders to march across the country originated with General Halleck, but the Official Records of the War fix the history of the matter as is above stated.]
It is a natural wish of every soldier to serve with the largest army in the most important campaign. The order to remain with a diminished command in West Virginia was a great disappointment to me, against which I made haste to protest. On the 13th I was rejoiced by permission to accompany my command to the East. [Footnote:Id., pp. 567, 570.] Preliminary orders had already been given for making Fayetteville and Hawk's Nest the principal advanced posts in the contracted operations of the district, with Gauley Bridge for their common depot of supply and point of concentration in case of an advance of the enemy in force. I organized two small brigades and two batteries of artillery for the movement to Washington. Colonels Scammon and Moor, who were my senior colonels, were already in command of brigades, and Colonel Lightburn was in command of the lower valley. The arrangement already existing practically controlled. Scammon's brigade was unchanged, and in Moor's the Thirty-sixth Ohio under Crook and the Eleventh were substituted for the Thirty-seventh and Thirty-fourth. The organization therefore was as follows; namely, First Brigade, Colonel Scammon commanding, consisted of the Twelfth, Twenty-third, and Thirtieth Ohio and McMullin's Ohio Battery; Second Brigade, Colonel Moor commanding, consisted of the Eleventh, Twenty-eighth, and Thirty-sixth Ohio and Simmonds's Kentucky Battery. One troop of horse for orderlies and headquarters escort, and another for similar service, with the brigades, also accompanied us. The regiments left in the Kanawha district were the Thirty-fourth, Thirty-seventh, Forty-fourth, and Forty-seventh Ohio, the Fourth and Ninth West Virginia Infantry, the Second West Virginia Cavalry, a battery, and some incomplete local organizations. Colonel J. A. J. Lightburn of the Fourth West Virginia was in command as senior officer within the district. [Footnote: Official Records, vol. xii. pt. iii. pp. 567, 570; vol. li. pt. i. pp. 738, 742, 754.]
Portions of the troops were put in motion on the 14th of August, and a systematic itinerary was prepared for them in advance. [Footnote: Id., vol. li. pt. i. p. 738.] They marched fifty minutes, and then rested the remaining ten minutes of each hour. The day's work was divided into two stages of fifteen miles each, with a long rest at noon, and with a half day's interval between the brigades. The weather was warm, but by starting at three o'clock in the morning the heat of the day was reserved for rest, and they made their prescribed distance without distress and without straggling. They went by Raleigh C. H. and Fayetteville to Gauley Bridge, thence down the right bank of the Kanawha to Camp Piatt, thirteen miles above Charleston. The whole distance was ninety miles, and was covered easily in the three days and a half allotted to it. [Footnote: Id., vol. xii. pt. iii. p. 629.] The fleet of light-draft steamboats which supplied the district with military stores was at my command, and I gave them rendezvous at Camp Piatt, where they were in readiness to meet the troops when the detachments began to arrive on the 17th. In the evening of the 14th I left the camp at Flat-top with my staff and rode to Raleigh C. H. On the 15th we completed the rest of the sixty miles to Gauley Bridge. From that point I was able to telegraph General Meigs, the Quartermaster-General at Washington, that I should reach Parkersburg, the Ohio River terminus of the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad, on the evening of the 20th, and should need railway transportation for 5000 men, two batteries of six guns each, 1100 horses, 270 wagons, with camp equipage and regimental trains complete, according to the army regulations then in force. [Footnote: Official Records, vol. xii. pt. iii. pp. 577, 619, 629; vol. li. p. 754.]
At Gauley Bridge I met Colonel Lightburn, to whom I turned over the command of the district, and spent the time, whilst the troops were on the march, in completing the arrangements both for our transportation and for the best disposition of the troops which were to remain. The movement of the division was the first in which there had been a carefully prepared effort to move a considerable body of troops with wagons and animals over a long distance within a definitely fixed time, and it was made the basis of the calculations for the movement of General Hooker and his two corps from Washington to Tennessee in the next year. It thus obtained some importance in the logistics of the war. The president of the railway put the matter unreservedly into the hands of W. P. Smith, the master of transportation; Mr. P. H. Watson, Assistant Secretary of War, represented the army in the management of the transfer, and by thus concentrating responsibility and power, the business was simplified, and what was then regarded as a noteworthy success was secured. The command could have moved more rapidly, perhaps, without its wagons and animals, but a constant supply of these was needed for the eastern army, and it was wise to take them, for they were organized into trains with drivers used to their teams and feeling a personal interest in them. It turned out that our having them was a most fortunate thing, for not only were the troops of the Army of the Potomac greatly crippled for lack of transportation on their return from the peninsula, but we were able to give rations to the Ninth Army Corps after the battle of Antietam, when the transportation of the other divisions proved entirely insufficient to keep up the supply of food.
From the head of navigation on the Kanawha to Parkersburg on the Ohio was about one hundred and fifty miles; but the rivers were so low that the steamboats proceeded slowly, delayed by various obstacles and impediments, At Letart's Falls, on the Ohio, the water was a broken rapid, up which the boats had to be warped one at a time, by means of a heavy warp-line made fast to the bank and carried to the steam-capstan on the steamer. At the foot of Blennerhassett's Island there was only two feet of water in the channel, and the boats dragged themselves over the bottom by "sparring," a process somewhat like an invalid's pushing his wheel-chair along by a pair of crutches. But everybody worked with a will, and on the 21st the advanced regiments were transferred to the railway cars at Parkersburg, according to programme, and pulled out for Washington. [Footnote: Official Records, vol. xii. pt. iii. pp. 619, 629.] These were the Thirty-sixth Ohio, Colonel Crook, and the Thirtieth Ohio, Colonel Ewing. They passed through Washington to Alexandria, and thence, without stopping, to Warrenton, Virginia, where they reported at General Pope's headquarters. [Footnote:Id., pp. 636, 637, 668, 676.] The Eleventh Ohio (Lieutenant-Colonel Coleman) and Twelfth (Colonel White), with Colonel Scammon commanding brigade, left Parkersburg on the 22d, reaching Washington on the 24th. One of them passed on to Alexandria, but the other (Eleventh Ohio) was stopped in Washington by reason of a break in Long Bridge across the Potomac, and marched to Alexandria the next day. [Footnote: Official Records, vol. xii. pt. iii. pp. 650, 677.] The last of the regiments (Twenty-eighth Ohio, Colonel Moor, and Twenty-third, Lieutenant-Colonel Hayes), with the artillery and cavalry followed, and on the 26th all the men had reached Washington, though the wagons and animals were a day or two later in arriving. [Footnote: Id., p. 698.]
In Washington I reported to the Secretary of War, and was received with a cordiality that went far to remove from my mind the impression I had got from others, that Mr. Stanton was abrupt and unpleasant to approach. Both on this occasion and later, he was as affable as could be expected of a man driven with incessant and importunate duties of state. In the intervals of my constant visits to the railway offices (for getting my troops and my wagons together was the absorbing duty) I found time for a hurried visit to Secretary Chase, and found also my friend Governor Dennison in the city, mediating between the President and General McClellan with the good-will and diplomatic wisdom which peculiarly marked his character. I had expected to go forward with three regiments to join General Pope on the evening of the 26th; but Colonel Haupt, the military superintendent of railways at Alexandria, was unable to furnish the transportation by reason of the detention of trains at the front. [Footnote: Id., pp. 625, 677.] Lee's flank movement against Pope's army had begun, and as the latter retreated all the railway cars which could be procured were needed to move his stores back toward Washington. On the afternoon of the 26th, however, arrangements had been made for moving the regiments at Alexandria early next morning. [Footnote: Ibid, and pp. 678, 679.] The wagons and animals were near at hand, and I ordered Colonel Moor with the Twenty-eighth Ohio to march with them to Manassas as soon as they should be unloaded from the railway trains. But during the night occurred a startling change in the character of the campaign which upset all our plans and gave a wholly unexpected turn to my own part in it.