Rebels at the Gate: Lee and McClellan on the Front Line of a Nation Divided (14 page)

Garnett's résumé was stellar. He had graduated at West Point, class of 1841, and served as an instructor of tactics. As an aide to General Zachary Taylor in the Mexican War, he had been twice brevetted for gallantry. In 1849, while shipwrecked during an important mission to California, he designed the state's Great Seal. Garnett returned to West Point as commandant of cadets under Robert E. Lee. In 1857, he married a fair-haired New York socialite named Marianna Nelson and escorted her to Fort Simcoe, Washington Territory.

But Garnett's happiness was short-lived. Returning from an expedition the next year, he found Marianna and an infant son dead of “bilious fever.” Described as proud, reserved, and “cold as an icicle,” Garnett became “more frozen and stern and isolated than ever.” He buried his family, took extended leave, and returned to duty in a Confederate uniform—as adjutant general of Virginia forces.
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The army became his life. “In every one else,” a fellow officer remarked, “I have seen some mere human traits, but in Garnett every trait was purely military.” A future general described him as “brave, intelligent, impartial…truthful and full of energy.” That talent was badly needed in Western Virginia—Garnett received a brigadier's star and was sent into the mountains. But he remained a “dreary-hearted man.” The night before Garnett left Richmond, a staff officer heard him utter, “They have not given me an adequate force. I can do nothing. They have sent me to my death.”
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The scene at Huttonsville must have mortified the spit-and-polish Garnett. There he found twenty-three Confederate companies “in a most miserable condition as to arms, clothing, equipment and discipline.” From them he formed two regiments—the Twenty-fifth Virginia Infantry, led by Lt. Colonel Jonathan Heck, a Morgantown attorney, and the Thirty-first Virginia Infantry, headed by Lt. Colonel William L. Jackson, a former lieutenant governor of Virginia, with the remainder filling Lt. Colonel George Hansbrough's Ninth Virginia Battalion.
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Garnett's directive was to halt the Federal advance into Virginia. He hoped as well to strike the B&O Railroad, an important east-west Union supply line. General Lee's desire had been succinct: “The rupture of the railroad at Cheat River would be worth to us an army.”

Two mountain passes were the keys to Garnett's defense—one on the Staunton-Parkersburg Turnpike over Rich Mountain, another sixteen miles north on the Beverly-Fairmont Road at Laurel Hill. He called them the “gates to the northwestern country.”

On June 15, Garnett marched north. Lt. Colonel Heck's Twenty-fifth Virginia Infantry, two guns, and a squad of cavalry seized the pass over Rich Mountain. The next day Garnett occupied Laurel Hill with the Thirty-first Virginia Infantry, a company of cavalry and six pieces of artillery. His first impression was disappointing; the pass at Laurel Hill was “not so formidable” as he had been told.

Rich Mountain offered more promising terrain. The Staunton-Parkersburg Turnpike wound through a narrow defile at the mountain's western base. Garnett believed a fortified detachment there should be able to hold back “five times their number.” On the slopes, Confederate soldiers built fortifications as he watched. “General Garnett has the confidence of everybody,” wrote Lt. Colonel Heck, “He is the very man for the Northwest.” In his honor, the works at Rich Mountain were named “Camp Garnett.”
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Returning to Laurel Hill, the general established headquarters. His tenuous supply line stretched more than one hundred turnpike miles over the mountains to Staunton. Garnett barricaded roads along his flanks and sent out heavy escorts to gather forage as the troops dug in. He found it difficult to obtain reliable intelligence. “The enemy are kept fully advised of our movements…by the country people,” he complained, “while we are compelled to grope in the dark as much as if we were invading a foreign country.”

Garnett put the volunteers under rigorous drill and instruction. While standing guard one dark night, John Cammack halted Major Joseph Chenoweth, son of the Philippi bridge builder. The two engaged in pleasantries until Chenoweth asked to handle Cammack's musket. When Cammack refused, Chenoweth stormed off in anger. Cammack was relieved to learn he had acted properly; the major had received the arms of two other pickets—landing them in serious trouble.
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Reinforcements began to appear in Garnett's camps. From the east came Colonel William B. Taliaferro's Twenty-third Virginia Infantry, Colonel Samuel V. Fulkerson's Thirty-seventh Virginia
Infantry, a portion of the Twentieth Virginia Infantry, and Colonel James N. Ramsey's First Georgia Infantry. The Georgians created a sensation at Camp Laurel Hill. Led by a snappy fife-and-drum corps, they were handsomely uniformed and equipped—with imported cloth, silver, and body servants to attend every need. The veteran Colonel Taliaferro thought they had left home prepared “rather for a gay holiday than for real war.”

Local recruiting efforts added few more. By July 1, only twenty-three Confederates had signed up, not enough to make up for discharges. Garnett could muster just 4,500 men, a force President Davis described as “lamentably weak.” The dreary-hearted general saw little chance of offering battle. To Lee he confessed, “I cannot operate beyond my present position…with the present force under my command, and I deem it my duty to state the fact.…I can only say I shall watch vigilantly, and strike whenever and wherever I can see a reasonable hope of success.”
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Exaggerated reports of the Confederate buildup had already reached General McClellan's Cincinnati headquarters. McClellan now personally took the field to “dispose of Garnett before he was in condition to do much mischief.”

His young wife remained behind in Cincinnati. Mary Ellen McClellan was of modest height and shapely form. Her hair was golden, her eyes a splendid hazel. Her face beamed with affection, intelligence, and determination. She was utterly heartstopping—and six months pregnant. Now, just over a year after their union, George left his “charming Nelly” for the front. Her father, Randolph Marcy, the distinguished soldier and western explorer, accompanied his son-in-law as inspector general. “I
may
yet play my part on the stage of the world's affairs and leave my name in history,” George had told his love, “but Nelly whatever the future may have in store for me
you
will be the chief actor in the play.” He pledged to write a letter every day during the absence.
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On June 20, McClellan boarded a train for Western Virginia. “At every station where we stopped, crowds had assembled to see the ‘Young General,'” he wrote Nelly. “Gray-headed old men & women; mothers holding up their children to take my hand, girls, boys, all sorts, cheering and crying, God bless you! I never went thro’ such a scene in my life & never expect to go thro’ such another one.”

Trainloads of soldiers and ordinance were at his heels. McClellan brought nearly twenty thousand men—enough to thrash whatever might be ahead. “I will, without delay, beat them up in their quarters and endeavor to put an end to their attempts in this direction,” he told General Scott.
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McClellan reached Grafton on June 23, less than fifty miles from the enemy. He found military affairs in confusion. “Everything here needs the hand of the master & is getting it fast,” Nellie was informed. His eye was on the B&O Railroad, a vital artery for communication, troops, and supplies. He noted the Tray Run Viaduct at Rowlesburg, one of the most remarkable engineering works on the entire line. The towering viaduct, six hundred feet long and one hundred sixty feet high, spanned a deep gorge by means of slender iron columns. It was located in an isolated setting on Cheat River—the very spot coveted by General Lee. McClellan visited Rowlesburg in person, left one thousand men to guard the viaduct and five times that number to protect his railroad lifeline.
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McClellan's intelligence gathering was no more effective than Garnett's, a “peculiar characteristic” of that region. He did know that Confederates held the mountain passes. It was enough to formulate a plan. In a June 23 letter to General-in-Chief Scott, McClellan proposed a march on Beverly, via Clarksburg, Buckhannon, and Rich Mountain, to turn the Rebel position at Laurel Hill. The troops at Philippi under General Morris would follow up any retreat. Having disposed of Garnett, McClellan would dispatch troops to “reassure the Union men.”
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He scripted another proclamation to rally those Unionists, informing them that his army, led by “Virginia troops,” would support loyal civil authorities, that they were enemies to “none but armed rebels and those voluntarily giving them aid.” In an address “To the Soldiers of the Army of the West,” McClellan admonished his troops to “Bear in mind that you are in the country of friends, not of enemies; that you are here to protect, not to destroy:”

Your enemies have violated every moral law; neither God or man can sustain them. They have, without cause, rebelled against a mild and paternal Government; they have seized upon public and private property; they have out-raged…Northern men merely because they loved the Union; they have placed themselves beneath contempt, unless they can retrieve some honor on the field of battle. You will pursue a different course. You will be honest, brave, and merciful; you will respect the right of public opinion; you will punish no man for opinion's sake. Show to the world that you differ from our enemies…. Soldiers! I have heard that there was danger here. I have come to place myself at your head and to share it with you. I fear now but one thing—that you will not find foemen worthy of your steel.
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Sophia Hawthorn, wife of the celebrated author, compared McClellan's words to the sound of “the silver trumpets of Judah.” A letter to Nelly described “crowds of the country people who have heard of me & read my proclamations come in from all directions to thank me, shake me by the hand, & look at their ‘liberator, the General!'…Well, it is a proud & glorious thing to see a whole people here, simple & unsophisticated, looking up to me as their deliverer from tyranny.”

McClellan's mood was buoyant. To Nelly he boasted, “I hope to thrash the infamous scamps before a week is over—all I fear is that I can't catch them.” His soldiers were in fine spirits, too. “They will render a good account of themselves, or I am much mistaken,” he
told Secretary of the Treasury Salmon P. Chase. “I think we can show that one Southerner is not equal to
more
than three Northern men!”
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Foremost in mind were the Germans of the Ninth Ohio Infantry. On June 30, those “Bully Dutchmen” led the Federal march to Buckhannon, twenty-two miles west of Rich Mountain. At their head was William Starke Rosecrans, the engineer who had laid out Camp Dennison, and who was now a brigadier general. The forty-one-year-old Rosecrans was nearly six feet tall, compactly built with an aquiline nose, piercing eyes, a brilliant mind, and a sharp temper.

Rosecrans had graduated fifth in the West Point class of 1842. He had been superintendent of a coal company in Western Virginia, and later, as head of a Cincinnati kerosene refinery, was burned in an explosion that left his face permanently scarred. A devout Catholic, Rosecrans was utterly destitute of pretense. His speech grew nearly to a stutter when excited, and he was “nervous and active in all his movements,” never retiring before two o'clock in the morning, very often not until four, and sometimes not at all.
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While Federal troops closed on Garnett's army, McClellan also launched steps to “clean out the valley of the Kanawha.” He ordered General Jacob Cox at Camp Dennison to move toward Gallipolis, Ohio, with four regiments, in preparation for an advance up the Kanawha River. “Communicate frequently,” McClellan directed. “A telegraph line follows me out.”
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As a former railroad man, George McClellan understood the promise of the telegraph. Railroads used the technology to coordinate traffic, and telegraph lines were in place along the B&O. McClellan appointed Anson Stager, general superintendent of Western Union Telegraph Company, as military director of telegraph lines within the Department of the Ohio. Two experienced men, William S. Fuller and T.B.A. David, were hired as managers. Ignoring skeptics, McClellan detailed Fuller and David to construct a telegraph line along his route of march. It was a novel idea—the telegraph had never followed an American army into battle.