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Battle of Cheat Mountain Retyped by Norman Alderman

Page history last edited by Anonymous 2 yrs ago

Juanita S. Dilley 2/25/40

Battle Cheat Mountain
September 13, 1861

The fortifications at Valley and Midle mountains were made because of a report of William Skeen, a lawyer at Huntersville,

who furnished them with a map, and who pointed out that the railroad at Millboro was exposed to attac as well as the

railroad at Staunton and that it is no many miles distant by turnpike. Therefore, Robert E. Lee was sent to Pocahontas

to put up fortifications at this place. He arrived at Valley mountain on August 8, 1861. All histories say that his fortifications

were on Valley Mountain. That in part is true for that was the pass that his troops watched, but his main camp was south

of the pass through middle Mt. and the signs there today show the greatest amount of work. Lee's troops were volunteers

and amateurs in the art of war. There was a lot of sickness in his camp that summer. Almost all of Lee's troops, as well as

other confedertroops ikn the county that summer 1861 were lolanders from the cotton country. Many of them had never see

a mountain before. That was why the mountains got them. There were very few mountain men in camp.

The Confederate forces took up all of Greenbrier Valley. They had arimies at Traveler's Repose (Camp Bartow) under the

command of Loring. At Huntersvilles (Camp Northwest) at Marlinton and To Alleghency. These troops came from all of the south.

They had been placed there owing to the fact that it soon became apparent the Virginia west of the great divide was not going

to put many soldiers into the field to aid secession.

At this time Rober E. Law was a brigadier general of the Confererate troops and was ordered to the Greenbrier Valley to take

command of the units there . General Loring outranked Lee, but took orders from him.

McClellan swept everything before him for he had railroad transporation into the center of the state, while the confederates

were gathering from the south by slow marching and wagon trail over the endless mountains. By the middle of the summer,

McClellan had a large army in the Tygarts Valley at Elk River. Here that army dug on of the biggest trenches and bunkers of

the war to hold the road. To keep the fort from being flanked and surprised from behind, another army had made a most

elaborate fortified camp at White's Top of Cheat on the Staunton and Parkersburg Turnpike. This place also lent itself to easy

defense. The road here passes through a gap between to beautiful hills, and the soldiers fortified both sides of the road.

The Union and Confererate forces faced eash other for about two months, each waiting for the other to give battle. Finally,

about the middle of September, Lee planned to attack the fortifications at Elkwater. Realizing that the pike was closed the

the fortifications at White Top, the orders were that of the night of Sept. 13, (Some authorities say the 11th), the army from

Camp Bartow were to clim Back Allegeheny then leave the road and silently pass Whites Top through the spruce woods and

to fall in behind these fortifications. A part of the army was to satay and whatch the army at White Top to keep them from

joining the other Union forces. The rest of the Army from Camp Bartow were to drop down into Tygarts Valley and march up

stream and attack the Elwater fortifications in the rear, while Lee marched down and attacked the front. Never was a battle

better planned, and never was one worse executed, but Lee could not have known what the spruce woods on top of Cheat

were like or he would not have expected an army of southerners to get through at night. Lee's camp was in hardwood territy

where a man could easily walk through. But to take an army throught the jungles of Cheat in the night is an unheard of

project. There were dense growths of spruce something like a hundred thousand board feet to the acre. There were many

windfalls that could not be seen at night. There were great patches of lalurel that even a Pocahontas bear could not penetrate.

The ground was covered with a plant called hobblerod that made a passage both painful and difficult. Also betwen Back

Allegheny and Cheat was a strip of boggy, swamp country so covered with spruce that the sun could hardly penetrate. To add

to the horrows of the southern boys, the first snow of the winter began to all that night, and when the men got into that the

morass through which Cheat River winds its murky way they scattered. All sense of direction was lost. The soldiers were cold, l

ost and bewildereded. They threw away their guns and engaged in a mad scramble to get out. Most of their found their way back

to Camp Bartow or to Lee's camp, but it was several days before they were in shape to present a warlike front.

The attack of September 14, on Elwater had failed because the mountains took a hand in it.

On the next day, Lee sent down from his Valley Mountain Camp a recognoitering party under the command of Major John A.

Washington.   The part was seee to see if Loring had gotten acceoss Cheat with his troops. They got to near the Federal breastworks

and were fired upon. Major Washington was killed.

Lee evidently decided not to attaqck the Federals at either Elkwater or White Top. Anyway there was no more fighting that year on

the Randolph and Pocahontas lines.

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Here is a bit of history not found in any of the dispatches. It was told to Andrew Price when he taught school at Big Springs on the site

of Lee's camp. Told by an eye witness: The summer of 1861 terminated in one of the biggests rains that ever fell in these mountains

and producedc one of the biggest floods ever known in these streams. This downpour lasted all night and at daybreak next morning

both armies, Federal and Confederate had broken camp in the night and both were in headlong retreat.

The Confederates fled south up Old Field Fork of Elk and cut a timber barricade at Crooked For at the foot of Elk Mountain (This barricade

played a part in other skirmishes later.)

The Federals retreated from Tygarts Valley turned east at Huttonsbille and marched toward Staunton and fought the battles at Bartow

and Top Allegheny.

Lee having extricated his army went to Richmond. When he found his summers work reduced to nothing by this great misap in the jungle,

he was inclined to believe the report that the mountain guide had misled his troops and lost them in the wilderness, and for a time it

looked as if a certain young Pocahontas County man, who had undertaken to guide them, would be hanged. But Lee must have learned

that he had been at fault for ordering them to penetrate the Cheat thicket in the nigh for nobody was executed. (I have not been able to

learn who the guide was). This material was taken from W.Va. Blue Book 1928--from articles by Andrew Price.

When the spruce timber was cut from Ceath Mountain many years after the way, muskets, haversacks, and other articles were found

where the army had cast them aside in their escape from the jungle.

In 1927 when th enew highway over Middle and Valley Mountains (Seneca Trail) was being grade at Route 24, a great army dump pile

was uncovered and all sorts of war trophies ranging from muskets to parts of cannons were found. These were left by Lee's first

command in the Civil War.

Places in Pocahontas that were Lee's headquarters in 1861:

    1, Valley and Middle Mountains
     2. Meadow Bluff on Sept. 24
    3. Tall House at Marlins Bottom
    4. At Sewell Mountain on Oct. 20

During the year 1861 all of Lee's activities were confined to W.Va. At Richard McNeel's farm near Mill Point, Mrs. McNeel, a Confederate

sympathizer; prepare a fine meal but Lee refused to eat it for fear of poison.

Lee's Horse

When Lee as in the Green brier Valley, in 1861, he came across the best horse he had ever see, the grey gildling, Traveler. Foaled in the

Little Levels off Pocahontas and developed in the Big Levels of Greenbrier Co. No better horse ever set foot to the road, though this region produced its thousands like unto the farm famed Traveler. (Pocahontas Times.)

See also The 5th Calvary

Map of the Battle of the Greenbrier River

The Battle of the Greenbrier River

A Daily Dispatch

The Battle of the Greenbrier Part II