! 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 Hancock Western Virginia Brooke Ohio 1860 *Wheeling Pennsylvania Marshall Wetzel Monongalia Ohio Maryland Pleasants Tyler Marion Preston Morgan Doddridge Harrison Taylor Hampshire Berkeley Wood Ritchie Barbour Tucker Wirt Lewis Hardy Calhoun Gilmer Randolph Mason Upshur Jackson Roane Braxton Pendleton !3 Webster Putnam Clay Cabell Charleston Highland Kanawah* Nicholas Pocahontas Wayne Boone Bath Fayette Greenbrier Virginia Logan Raleigh Alleghany Kentucky Wyoming Monroe McDowell Craig Mercer Buchanan Giles Tazewell Montgomery Bland Pulaski Wise Russell Wythe Floyd Smyth Scott Lee Washington Carroll Grayson Western Virginia Map. April 2014. Image created by author. All rights reserved. Tennessee North Carolina elevation on a Virginia topographic map, with Carroll, Floyd, Montgomery, Craig, Alleghany, Bath, and Highland Counties marking the boundary. A study of guerrilla warfare in western Virginia is valuable to the historiography of Civil War studies in at least four ways. First, it supports findings from studies of other areas of Appalachia that seek to explain the prevalence of such conflict in the mountains. The importance of kin was central to mountaineers’ actions, and family ties contributed to the brutality of the guerrilla conflict in the area. Second, such a study challenges the myth of a Union Appalachia during the war. While some areas of the mountains remained loyal to the Union, the region as a whole was not united and contained much secessionist sentiment. Third, it offers the backdrop for the political wrangling on both state and national levels that culminated in the creation of the state of West Virginia. Some politicians in favor of the new state argued that a separate state was necessary to pacify the region. Finally, it fills an important gap in the historiography of Civil War Virginia. What work has been done on guerrilla warfare in Virginia focuses mainly on northern Virginia. Western Virginia needs further study and consideration because it was unique from any other area in Appalachia or the Confederacy. When historian Stephen Ash wrote about the occupied South, he opted not to consider western Virginia at all, because in that area it was debatable “just who the real ‘invaders’ were,” and he believed it deserved a separate telling.4 Although Appalachia Virginia was similar to other areas of Appalachia in some respects—the citizens, for example, held firm to their beliefs regardless of outside influences or what the political climate dictated—it was unique in that a portion of its residents successfully seceded 4 Stephen V. Ash, When the Yankees Came: Conflict and Chaos in the Occupied South, 1861-1865 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1995), x. !4 from their state, thereby officially asserting their independence and intention to do what was best for themselves, regardless of consequences. In the few studies available on western Virginia, historians have separated the southwestern portion from the group of counties that now make up West Virginia and do not consider the area as the bloc that it was before the war, with no clear line dividing north from south.5 By the mid-nineteenth century, western Virginia was separated from the eastern part of the state by geology, economic systems, social characteristics, and political orientations. These regional tensions had existed since the earliest days of settlement. The Allegheny Mountains formed the most distinct physical division within Virginia, separating eastern Virginia from western. Eastern Virginia’s agricultural economy relied extensively on slave labor, a system not conducive to the rough terrain in the west where significantly fewer slaves lived. The most divisive differences, however, lay in the political realm. The planter aristocracy from mostly English descent in the Tidewater and Piedmont regions dominated Virginia politics, while settlers in the western part of the state were Scotch-Irish with more democratic roots. Those Scotch-Irish roots had created a culture filled with endemic violence and retributive justice where individuals were the guardians of their own interests and self-sovereignty kept the order. Politically, eastern and western Virginia differed on issues such as internal improvements, education, land policies, and taxation; ultimately eastern control of state politics ensured those disagreements were 5 Kenneth Noe correctly points out that several regions existed within these east/west sections, and that antebellum