Even in their own time, the accomplishments of Union and Confederate regular and partisan forces fighting in the Allegheny region of northwestern Virginia were almost unknown to the public. These engagements were overshadowed by larger battles farther east, but they were just as deadly.
In November 1862, for example, Col. John D. Imboden led a Confederate cavalry raid into the mountains. An invasion by more than 5,000 Confederates followed the next April and, as a result, led to harsh retaliation against the local “secesh” by aggravated Union officials.
On Nov. 7, Imboden and 310 mounted men of his 1st Virginia Partisan Rangers left their secluded camp along the South Fork River in Hardy County, Va., intent upon destroying the Cheat River Bridge of the strategic B&O Railroad at Rowlesburg.
At the head of the column, Bill Harper, celebrated mountain man and famed panther killer, led the graybacks northwest in a driving snowstorm toward the Allegheny front. No doubt most of the men were confident that Harper, with his intimate knowledge of the backwoods, would get them to their objective before Union partisans could spot the riders and warn the garrison at Rowlesburg of their approach.
Continuing snowfall slowed the Confederates and it was not until the next morning that, six miles north of the mouth of Seneca Creek, they began the steep, winding ascent of the Allegheny. By sundown, the column had covered only about 18 miles, and the colonel decided to stop to rest men and horses.
Around midnight, a local man appeared and warned the colonel that Yankees were about. He told Imboden that the Confederate force had just missed running into a column of 600 Union infantry marching up Dry Fork that day, and that Brig. Gen. Robert H. Milroy was off to the west with about 4,000 soldiers marching from Beverly south to Monterey.
Later, in his report to Maj. Gen. Thomas J. “Stonewall” Jackson, Imboden wrote, “I hesitated about going forward, knowing that my escape from the country would be extremely difficult, perhaps impossible.” But his horses needed fodder, so he decided to press on at least as far as Saint George and capture a small force of Federals guarding the town.
That night the snow and sleet kept falling, making the going rough for both man and beast. Along the trail, one of the mules of Imboden’s famed “Jackass Artillery” slipped and rolled down a hill into the Dry Fork with its mountain howitzer still strapped to its back. Fortunately, the tough beast was uninjured and was soon back in the column. The Confederates reached Saint George about sunrise and surrounded the town.
Inside Saint George that snowy Sunday morning, Capt. William Hall and 30 soldiers from Company F, 6th (West) Virginia Infantry were just getting ready to eat a hot breakfast. Hall, headquartered in Tucker County’s new brick courthouse, had no idea of the threat until a warning shot fired by one of his pickets shattered the stillness. Within the makeshift fort, whose doors and windows were heavily barricaded with logs, Hall called out to his mountaineers, “Boys, take care of your Captain!”
Hall, however, surrendered the garrison after receiving Imboden’s assurances that he would parole his soldiers. Imboden and his officers then joined Hall for breakfast at his headquarters. The Southerners relieved the Northerners of their blankets and overcoats before paroling them — and also cleaned out Solomon Parsons’ store, making it the second time that they had robbed the establishment that year.
For a time, Imboden still considered attacking Rowlesburg and then making a wide detour through Pennsylvania and western Maryland to get back to Virginia. Realizing, however, that he could probably not strike the rail town until next morning, by which time the garrison most likely would have been reinforced, he reluctantly decided to withdraw. His best chance, he thought, would be to march south, pick up Milroy’s trail “and follow him until I reached a point where I could pass him in the night.” About 10 a.m., the Confederates, weighed down with booty, rode their weary horses back toward the Dry Fork.
By 9 p.m., they had crossed Dry Fork and rested before continuing along Glady Creek, following a trail they had blazed in August. By late afternoon of Nov. 10, the cold, wet graybacks camped along Frazier Creek, just 10 miles east of Beverly. While they were there, a Southern sympathizer came into camp and told Imboden that the countryside was in an uproar. More important, the colonel “also learned that Milroy’s baggage train was probably at Camp Bartow, on Greenbrier River.” He instantly made plans to capture the prize.
On the 11th, the Confederates, with the aid of a local guide and Imboden’s compass, traveled cross-country through a dense pine forest. About 5 p.m., they camped for the night at Upper Sinks, only 11 miles from Camp Bartow.
A bone-chilling rain was falling the next morning when the Confederates rode out. Leaving six exhausted horses, the partisans no doubt envisioned sweeping down on Milroy’s unsuspecting teamsters. As Imboden later recalled, however, they had traveled only four miles when “my guide became bewildered and we became lost in one of the darkest and most impenetrable pine forests of the Allegheny.” Around noon, the frustrated colonel ordered them back to Upper Sinks.
On the morning of the 13th, Imboden “set out to cross the Allegheny by a path that strikes the head of the North Fork about the Pendleton and Highland Line.” The weather was clear and sunny, and by 3 p.m. the Confederates reached their destination. Imboden promptly sent two troopers to scout the narrow valley and, not long after, found out from a local and a recently paroled prisoner that while Milroy had fallen back to Camp Bartow, Col. George R. Latham (2nd West Virginia Infantry), with a force of about 500 infantry, two guns, and some cavalry, was blocking the path at Circleville, six miles north. In addition, just across the mountain to the east, a column of 1,300 bluecoats was moving north through the South Branch Valley toward Franklin.
Imboden struck east across the mountains, and around 3 a.m. on the 14th, rode into his camp beside the South Fork. There he learned that while he had been gone, a Yankee force had surprised those remaining at the camp and captured 50 rangers and almost all livestock. He ordered his men to ride south to a safer camp at Augusta Springs.
Although Imboden failed in his second quest to destroy the Cheat Bridge, he did claim that the snow-plagued mission had probably saved the important Confederate rail center of Staunton by diverting the expected attack by Milroy’s column. Gen. Robert E. Lee was disappointed by these meager results, but was encouraged by Imboden’s persistence. In a letter to Stonewall Jackson, Lee asked the general to inform Imboden “that it is my desire that he will not lose sight of this important enterprise.”
In the meantime, back in the highlands, some bitter Unionists were plotting revenge. Capt. Horace Kellogg (123rd Ohio Infantry), claiming to be acting on instructions from Gen. Milroy, began extorting money from Tucker County Southern sympathizers to repay loyal citizens for their losses suffered by the raids and was threatening to “burn their houses and shoot their men” if they did not give him timely warnings of future raids. Kellogg was relieved of his command when his actions were discovered. Capt. Joseph A. Faris, his successor, made a mostly futile attempt to recover the stolen money.
Imboden’s raids of August and November were just a preview of his greater effort to destroy the Rowlesburg Bridge in April and May of 1863. By now a brigadier general and the commander of the Northwestern Virginia Brigade, he led a force of 3,365 men north toward Beverly along the Staunton-Parkersburg Turnpike, attempting to attract the attention of troops guarding the railroad.
Farther east, Brig. Gen. William E. “Grumble” Jones and 1,900 troopers headed toward Rowlesburg and other points along the B&O. Although stymied by a determined force of 300 West Virginians at the town, Jones pressed on, tearing up track and burning bridges in other places along the line before linking up with Imboden at Buckhannon on May 2.
For the next few weeks, the Confederates roamed at will through the northwest, defeating Union forces in a few skirmishes and destroying the oil fields at Burning Springs before returning to the Shenandoah Valley with a huge herd of “impressed” livestock.
• Steve French is a teacher in Martinsburg, W.Va., and a member of the Harpers Ferry Civil War Round Table.
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