Guerrilla Warfare in Western Virginia, 1861-1865 ! !
!
LIBERTY UNIVERSITY ! !
“THEY CANNOT CATCH GUERRILLAS IN THE MOUNTAINS
ANY MORE THAN A COW CAN CATCH FLEAS”:
GUERRILLA WARFARE IN WESTERN VIRGINIA, 1861-1865 ! !
A THESIS SUBMITTED TO
THE FACULTY OF THE HISTORY DEPARTMENT
IN CANDIDACY FOR THE DEGREE OF
MASTER OF HISTORY ! !
BY KARISSA A. MARKEN ! !
LYNCHBURG, VIRGINIA
APRIL 2014 TABLE OF CONTENTS! ! !Introduction………………………………………………………………………………………1 Chapter I—Family and Cause: Guerrillas !Who Fought for Military Strategy…………………………………………………….…………29 Chapter II—Bandits, Outlawry, and Terror: !Guerrillas Motivated by Personal Advancement…………………………….…………………..73 Chapter III—A True People’s War: Guerrillas !Involved for Self-Preservation………………………………….………………………………100 !Conclusion…………………………………………………………..….….….….…..….….….132 !Bibliography………………………………………………………………….….….….………146 ! ! INTRODUCTION
The American Civil War unleashed great violence and chaos in the western mountains of
Virginia. There, in Appalachia, guerrilla warfare impacted a greater number of southerners than the war’s organized military campaigns. It quickly evolved into two distinct types: hostilities aimed against outside invaders and violence that occurred among neighbors. Missouri and
Arkansas experienced this conflict on the largest scale, but the Appalachian Mountains, where the terrain provided shelter and the element of surprise for guerrillas, also suffered a sizable amount of armed internal conflict. From northern Georgia, western North Carolina and Virginia, and eastern Tennessee and Kentucky, mountaineers battled national and state upheaval while trying to discern which political allegiances offered the securest future. This was especially challenging for those who lived along the northern border of the Confederacy, an area that changed hands as organized troops battled for supremacy. In addition, those in western Virginia experienced turbulence on two levels—a division of the state occurring within the division of the country. The conflict there between Unionists and secessionists remained bitter throughout the war, even after 50 counties split away to form the state of West Virginia in 1863.
Guerrilla conflict in the Confederacy created an outlet for those with strong family ties to contribute to the war effort close to home, but it also opened the door for violence and lawlessness to spread in contested areas. According to historian Daniel Sutherland, guerrilla conflict was not a sideshow to the larger war, but a crucial part, influencing the strategy of both politicians and soldiers. “It touched the lives of untold numbers of southern civilians and their communities. In much of the South, it was more than just part of the larger war; it was the war itself, a war with its own rules, its own chronology, its own policies, its own turning points, its
!1 own heroes, villains, and victims. In the end, it altered the nature of the entire conflict to a startling degree.”1
An understanding of that guerrilla conflict, then, is essential to gain a complete picture of the Civil War. However, for nearly a century after the war’s end, scholars largely ignored this particular subject. In the foreword of Virgil Carrington Jones’s 1956 groundbreaking work Gray
Ghosts and Rebel Raiders, Bruce Catton lamented that guerrilla warfare in the Civil War had been treated “as a colorful, annoying, but largely unimportant side issue.”2 For the citizens who lived under the terror and anarchy guerrilla warfare provoked, however, the subject was anything but a side issue. Soldiers who fought in the great campaigns could clearly identify their enemies, but those left at home often had no such luxury. As law and order collapsed in the chaos of a lingering war, southerners became trapped in a style of conflict that did not differentiate between combatant and civilian. The unpredictability of when violence might occur added to the horror, as neighbor turned against neighbor and communities split over political differences.3
Western Virginia’s unique civil war occurring within the context of the national struggle caused an area once united against the aristocratic eastern half of the state to be divided by a new state line in June 1863. The area impacted included all of present-day West Virginia and southwestern Virginia. The northern counties bordered the Maryland, Pennsylvania, and Ohio state lines, while the western and southern boundary continued along Virginia’s 1861 boarder touching Kentucky, Tennessee, and North Carolina. The eastern border followed the higher
1 Daniel E. Sutherland, “Sideshow No Longer,” Civil War History 46:1 (Mar. 2000): 5. 2 Sutherland, “Sideshow No Longer,” 5; Bruce Catton, foreword to Virgil Carrington Jones, Gray Ghosts and Rebel Raiders: The Daring Exploits of the Confederate Guerrillas (New York: Henry Holt and Company, 1956), vii. 3 For a more in-depth study on the characteristics of guerrilla warfare during the Civil War, see Michael Fellman’s introduction in Inside War: The Guerrilla Conflict in Missouri During the American Civil War (New York: Oxford University Press, 1989).
!2
Maryland