Military Reminiscences of the Civil War, Volume 1 - April 1861-November 1863 by Jacob Dolson Cox
page 108 of 598 (18%)
page 108 of 598 (18%)
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Gauley River, and I occupied an unfurnished room in the house for
office purposes. A week was spent, without molestation, exploring the country in all directions and studying its topography. A ferry guided by a cable stretching along the piers of the burnt bridge communicated with the outposts up the New River, and a smaller ferry below the Kanawha Falls connected with the Fayette road. Systematic discipline and instruction in outpost duty were enforced, and the regiments rapidly became expert mountaineers and scouts. The population was nearly all loyal below Gauley Bridge, but above they were mostly Secessionists, a small minority of the wealthier slaveholders being the nucleus of all aggressive secession movements. These, by their wealth and social leadership, overawed or controlled a great many who did not at heart sympathize with them, and between parties thus formed a guerilla warfare became chronic. In our scouting expeditions we found little farms in secluded nooks among the mountains, where grown men assured us that they had never before seen the American flag, and whole families had never been further from home than a church and country store a few miles away. From these mountain people several regiments of Union troops were recruited in West Virginia, two of them being organized in rear of my own lines, and becoming part of the garrison of the district in the following season. I had been joined before reaching Gauley Bridge by Chaplain Brown of the Seventh Ohio, who had obtained permission to make an adventurous journey across the country from Sutton to bring me information as to the position and character of the outposts that were stretching from the railway southward toward our line of operations. Disguised as a mountaineer in homespun clothing, his fine features shaded by a slouched felt hat, he reported himself to me in anything but a |
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