Rebels at the Gate: Lee and McClellan on the Front Line of a Nation Divided (17 page)

The Battle of Rich Mountain was over. Flushed with success, General Rosecrans's troops scattered through the woods after the enemy. Those 310 Confederates had held their ground for more than two hours, despite being outnumbered six to one. By all accounts, they had been a “gallant and determined” foe. Yet their defeat on the mountaintop foreshadowed the demise of Camp Garnett and opened the turnpike to Beverly, just five miles east. If Federal troops reached that town, they could trap General Garnett's army at Laurel Hill—then march unimpeded toward the Virginia Central Railroad at Staunton, one hundred five miles southeast. That railroad led another one hundred and twenty miles to the Confederate capitol at Richmond.
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From the direction of Camp Garnett there was silence. Contrary to plan, General McClellan had not assailed the Confederate works. His loss of nerve (another evolving trait) left General Rosecrans in a tight spot on top of Rich Mountain. Rosecrans was square between the enemy forces. It was well
after 6 P.M. before his men were gathered—too late for weary troops to fall upon the Confederates nearly two miles below at Camp Garnett. Pointing the captured guns down the pike in opposite directions, Rosecrans braced for a counterattack as darkness settled in.
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The hours had passed slowly for McClellan's troops in front of Camp Garnett that day. Heads snapped to attention when shots rang out and the thunderous peal of artillery echoed from the rear of Pegram's fortifications. “Every man sprang to his feet,” recalled John Beatty, “assured that the moment for making the attack had arrived. General McClellan and staff came galloping up, and a thousand faces turned to hear the order to advance; but no order was given. The General halted a few paces from our line, and sat on his horse listening to the guns, apparently in doubt as to what to do; and as he sat there with indecision stamped on every line of his countenance, the battle grew fiercer in the enemy's rear.”
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That firing, distant and stationary, baffled McClellan. “If the enemy is too strong for us to attack,” John Beatty wondered, “what must be the fate of Rosecrans's four regiments, cut off from us, and struggling against such odds? Hours passed; and as the last straggling shots and final silence told us the battle had ended, gloom settled down on every soldier's heart, and the belief grew strong that Rosecrans had been defeated, and his brigade cut to pieces or captured.”
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McClellan saw an officer ride into Camp Garnett, followed by wild cheering that prompted him to write off his quirky brigadier. He made it known that Rosecrans had disobeyed orders, that the “fussy goose” bore responsibility for whatever disaster had occurred. Fearing the worst, McClellan armed his teamsters.
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The Confederate officer seen at Camp Garnett was none other than Lt. Colonel John Pegram, returning from the battlefield to rally his men. Pegram led a detachment up the mountain to counterattack, but found them too demoralized to fight. Sending those men through the woods toward Beverly, he stumbled back to Camp Garnett again, not reaching the fortifications until almost
midnight. Declaring the situation hopeless, Pegram ordered his troops to abandon their camp.

That night, mapmaker Jed Hotchkiss led nearly six hundred Confederates in single file through the black woods north of the turnpike, bearing east. After resting in his tent for some time, the beleaguered Colonel Pegram sent an orderly to halt the column until he caught up. Unaware of Pegram's meddling in the darkness, Hotchkiss and fifty members of the Twenty-fifth Virginia at the head of the line continued on their way. The rest of the Confederates were soon following Pegram, who had no idea where he was headed.
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General Rosecrans learned of the evacuation of Camp Garnett from a prisoner brought in during the night. At daybreak on July 12, Rosecrans led his brigade warily down the turnpike into the enemy camp, taking charge of nearly seventy sick and wounded Confederates. Also seized were two additional cannons, four caissons and ammunition, nineteen thousand cartridges, two stands of colors, a large quantity of clothing, tents, camp equipment, wagons, teams, and personal items.

One of the captured Rebels weighed more than three hundred pounds. The portly officer, captain of the “Hardy Blues,” directed his men from the seat of a buggy. He was still on that perch as Federal troops circled round. “I am forced to surrender,” he boomed, “because the d____d fools took a bridle path across the mountains. Had they gone by the road, sir, like gentlemen, so I could have used my buggy, I should have accompanied them.” A waggish Federal retorted, “Boys, this is old ‘Secesh’ himself.”
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A messenger was sent through the abandoned works to notify General McClellan. The general had directed pioneers to cut a road for artillery up the ridge south of Camp Garnett. He was making ready to shell the Rebels when Rosecrans's messenger informed him that they were already gone. A look of amazement came over McClellan's face. It had been nearly fifteen hours since the battle ended.
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The news sent cheers roaring down the valley. Bands struck up “Yankee Doodle.” McClellan's order to the troops was, “Up tents and after them.” The general and his staff rode through the deserted works in a “dazzling display.” General Rosecrans received a hero's welcome. His displeasure with the commanding general was only later expressed officially: “General McClellan, contrary to agreement and military prudence, did not attack.”
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Soon the battlefield was reached. “It is horrible to review the carnage,” wrote one Hoosier. The ground was covered with “a large number of horses, cattle, hogs, &c. Trees, stumps and rocks are shattered with bullets. Some cannon balls are sticking in the trees.” Broken weapons, clothing, and personal items lay scattered about.
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To raw recruits, the toll was shocking. Fellow Americans had suddenly become mortal foes. “It was a bloody affair when we consider the number engaged,” wrote Lt. Orlando Poe. “I don't want to witness the effect of
another
battle.” By later standards, the casualties were minor. More than twenty-two thousand Americans would be lost on a single day at Antietam in 1862, almost five thousand in barely half an hour at Cold Harbor in 1864. Yet at Rich Mountain in 1861, the twelve Federal soldiers killed and sixty-two wounded, along with the loss of more than eighty Confederates, were no less powerful.

One of every four Confederates at the Hart farm had been killed or wounded. Among them was Private Henry Clay Jackson, a member of the Upshur Grays. Before the fight, young Jackson had boasted that he would “kill a damn Yankee and cut out his heart and roast it.” The action had just commenced when he was struck in the throat by a ball and killed, never firing a shot. Captain John Higginbotham, the “lead magnet,” escaped with a flesh wound, but field commander Julius DeLagnel was missing and presumed dead.
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The dead of both armies were buried on the field. A large trench—reportedly dug before the fight and labeled “For Union men”—was filled with Confederates instead. “The dead presented
a ghastly spectacle. I never conceived anything half so hideous. No power of expression is adequate to describe it,” wrote William D. Bickham, reporting for the
Cincinnati Daily Commercial
. “They had about twenty five thrown into a ditch,” affirmed an Ohio corporal, “and of all the hor[r]id sights I ever looked upon this was the most hor[r]id. They were thrown in without any regard to order or the usual rites of scripture, some with shattered skulls, mangled limbs or ghastly bayonet wounds.” A few were naked, recalled a Hoosier sergeant, all “blackened with smoke.” Newsman Bickham blanched at the “fearful orifices perforating their heads, through which the brains oozed in sickening clots…Oh horrible! Most horrible!”
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The Hart house became a makeshift hospital, filled with “convulsive and quivering” bodies. Wounded Confederates were placed under guard on an upper porch to protect them from the curious. The “bloody-handed surgeons,” wrote one observer, “with lint, chords, bandages, saws, scalpels, probes, and bullet forceps, were busy bandaging and dressing what could be saved, and amputating hopelessly shattered and lacerated limbs.”

Heartrending groans filled the air. A dying sixteen-year-old boy begged piteously for his mother. General McClellan stepped in to inquire of the wounded, and exited with tears in his eyes. Newsman Bickham wrote, “I shall not attempt to depict the ghastly pictures of horrid wounds and shuddering forms of poor victims, to whom it would have been merciful if they could have died…and yet could not eke out a last suffering gasp.”
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A divergent scene laid mere steps away. From the brow of Rich Mountain, Federal soldiers beheld a stunning landscape of verdant forests, fields, and ridges. The mountains were “piled peak above peak,” marveled one, “like the congealed bellows of a mighty ocean covered with their thousand shaded mantle of emerald leaves.” The contrast was breathtaking. “We had just passed through some of the works of sinful man,” he wrote, “and we now had an untarnished view of the works of Almighty God. You can better imagine than describe my feelings at this moment.”
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“
Cheat River ran red with their blood.”

—James E. Hall, Thirty-first Virginia Infantry

While battle raged at Rich Mountain on the afternoon of July 11, 1861, Confederate General Robert Garnett took supper in front of his tent, sixteen miles north at Laurel Hill. Garnett's camp was under a desultory bombardment, yet he seemed oblivious to the bursting shells. The Confederates at Laurel Hill marveled at his “cool and undisturbed manner.” When an exploding round showered Garnett with dirt, he calmly emptied his cup, beckoned to a servant for more coffee, and went on with his meal.
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The general soon faced a sterner test. Later that night, word arrived of Pegram's defeat. Now the Federal troops at Rich Mountain could march unimpeded into Beverly—square across Garnett's line of retreat. With General Morris testing his front, and McClellan threatening his rear, Garnett had no choice but to evacuate. Leaving tents in place and campfires burning to deceive Morris, Garnett's army slipped away under cover of darkness.
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Heavily laden Confederate wagons creaked over Laurel Mountain, bearing south. As the column neared Beverly at daybreak on July 12, Garnett received more bad news. His scouts—
mistaking Confederate soldiers in town for the enemy—reported that the road ahead was blocked. It was almost a death-knell. Garnett's last avenue of escape was a rough wagon grade leading northeast through the mountains. Backtracking a few miles, the general led his army along the Leading Creek road toward the Cheat River valley, bound for the Northwestern Turnpike at Red House, Maryland. From there, he hoped to cross the Alleghenies by a circuitous route, regaining the Staunton-Parkersburg pike near Monterey, Virginia—a rugged detour of nearly one hundred fifty miles. The alternative was surrender.
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The sun was high at Laurel Hill on July 12 before General Morris learned of Garnett's departure. Morris patched together a strike force to give chase, placing a forty-eight-year-old Connecticut Yankee named Henry Washington Benham in command. Benham was an officer of experience. Stout, red-faced, blustering, and dictatorial, he was a veteran of the Mexican War and a crack engineer—having graduated first in his 1837 West Point class. A captain in the regular army, he outranked the militia colonels of Morris's command.
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Captain Benham's troops, 1,840 in number, were eager “as bloodhounds for the chase.” The Confederates held a twelve-hour lead when they took up the trail. Garnett's army was easily tracked. Deep mud, worked into a jelly by the active feet of men and horses, marked the line of retreat. The route was littered with abandoned equipment, cast off to lighten the wagons. At one place, discarded playing cards shingled the road, prompting a wag to remark that the Rebels must be trumped—they had “thrown down their hands.”

Slowed by barricades, intense darkness, and a pelting rain, Benham's bloodhounds halted on the Leading Creek road late that evening. Billy Davis of the Seventh Indiana wrote that “fires were built and we stood around them trying to warm our chilled bodies, looking and longing for the first peep of day.” Early on July 13, Colonel Steedman's Fourteenth Ohio Infantry picked up the trail, followed by two guns of Barnett's Cleveland Artillery, Colonel
Dumont's Seventh Indiana, and Colonel Milroy's Ninth Indiana Infantry regiments. The main column under General Morris followed at some distance. Although drenched by mountain storms, these bloodhounds set a furious pace.
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At the village of New Interest (present-day Kerens), the track of fleeing Rebels turned east on a rude mountain trace. “That road defies description,” reported Cincinnati newsman Whitelaw Reid, hot in pursuit. “Part of the time it ran through lanes so narrow that a horseman could not pass on either side of the wagon train; then it wound through mountain gullies where the wheels of the wagon would be on the sides of the opposite hills, while beneath rushed a stream of water.” At every step, the mud grew deeper. Benhams's men slipped and staggered, plunging into knee-deep pools, then “reeling like drunken men in the mire.” Kneaded by the feet of thousands, liquid mud “flowed down the mountain road like thick tar.”