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Updated: June 9, 2025
The Ohio regiments were to be moved forward so that the Eleventh, Forty-fourth, and Forty-seventh could be quickly concentrated on the Lewisburg turnpike in front of Gauley Bridge, where Colonel Crook could join them with the Thirty-sixth by a diagonal road and take command of this column. I assigned to him a mixed battery of field-pieces and mountain howitzers.
On the 5th of August Lieutenant Wagner of the Engineers arrived at Gauley Bridge with instructions from General Rosecrans to superintend the construction of such fortifications as might be proper for a post of three regiments.
We could not, from where we stood, see the post at Gauley Bridge nor even the place on Cotton Mountain where the enemy's battery was placed, and we walked a little way apart from our staff officers to a position from which we could see the occasional puffs of white smoke from the hostile guns.
Here was Gauley Mount, the country-house of Colonel C. Q. Tompkins, formerly of the Army of the United States, but now the commandant of a Confederate regiment raised in the Kanawha valley. Across New River the heavy masses of Cotton Mountain rose rough and almost inaccessible from the very water's edge.
General Hunter had been operating up the Shenandoah Valley with some success, having fought a battle near Staunton where he captured a great many prisoners, besides killing and wounding a good many men. After the battle he formed a junction at Staunton with Averell and Crook, who had come up from the Kanawha, or Gauley River.
For ten days after we occupied Gauley Bridge, all our information showed that General Wise was not likely to attempt the reconquest of the Kanawha valley voluntarily. His rapid retrograde march ended at White Sulphur Springs and he went into camp there. When we entered the valley, we heard of his proclamations and orders, which breathed the spirit of desperate hand-to-hand conflict.
On the opposite side of New River there was no road, the mass of Cotton Mountain crowding close upon the stream with its picturesque face of steep inclines and perpendicular walls of rock. The bridge of boats which Rosecrans had planned at Gauley Bridge had not been built, because it had been found impossible to collect or to construct boats enough to make it.
It was not Floyd's army, but the physical obstacles presented by the country that chained him to Gauley Bridge.
The gate of the Kanawha valley The wilderness beyond West Virginia defences A romantic post Chaplain Brown An adventurous mission Chaplain Dubois "The River Path" Gauley Mount Colonel Tompkins's home Bowie-knives Truculent resolutions The Engineers Whittlesey, Benham, Wagner Fortifications Distant reconnoissances Comparison of forces Dangers to steamboat communications Allotment of duties The Summersville post Seventh Ohio at Cross Lanes Scares and rumors Robert E. Lee at Valley Mountain Floyd and Wise advance Rosecrans's orders The Cross Lanes affair Major Casement's creditable retreat Colonel Tyler's reports Lieutenant-Colonel Creighton Quarrels of Wise and Floyd Ambushing rebel cavalry Affair at Boone Court House New attack at Gauley Bridge An incipient mutiny Sad result A notable court-martial Rosecrans marching toward us Communications renewed Advance toward Lewisburg Camp Lookout A private sorrow.
From Gauley Bridge a road runs up the Gauley River to Cross Lanes and Carnifex Ferry, something over twenty miles, and continuing northward reaches Summersville, Sutton, and Weston, making almost the only line of communication between the posts then occupied by our troops in northwestern Virginia and the head of the Kanawha valley.
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