Page:Confederate Military History - 1899 - Volume 3.djvu/71



E now turn to a consideration of the Kanawha valley campaign of the early part of 1861, as that was a portion of Scott's plan of invasion of Virginia that was intrusted to McClellan; deferring until later the consideration of military operations along the Potomac, which, in sequence of time, would at this point demand attention. McClellan's original intention was to begin the invasion of Virginia from Ohio by way of the Kanawha valley along the great stage road to Staunton, having the same objective as Patterson from Pennsylvania up the Shenandoah valley; but events, treated of in the preceding chapter diverted him to the lines of the Baltimore & Ohio railroad, and led to the Rich Mountain campaign and the handing over of operations on the Kanawha line to a subordinate, with whom he was in constant telegraphic communication.

Previous to the building of the Baltimore & Ohio railroad, the most important way of travel across Virginia to the west was, as it had been from time immemorial, by the valleys of the James across the Appalachians, and down the Great Kanawha to the Ohio. Vast herds of buffaloes, from the rich open pasture lands of the Great Valley, first engineered and opened trails which the Mound Builders and the Indians followed, and which in turn became the bridle paths for the white men into the great Trans-Appalachian basin of the Ohio. Along these trails took place, for many years, numerous combats between the white man in his westward progress and the Indian who sought to stay that progress, until the decisive battle at Point Pleasant at the mouth of the Big Kanawha in the River Ohio, on October 9, 1774, broke the power of the great Indian confederacy of the northwest, and established the supremacy of the Virginia white man in that direction. The bridle paths were gradually widened into rude wagon ways, along which a steady