Page:Confederate Military History - 1899 - Volume 3.djvu/74

60 authority that was so strongly rising in that region. Before leaving Richmond, Wise was informed that John B. Floyd, recently United States secretary of war, had also been appointed brigadier-general, and specially charged with organizing a large body of troops in the southwestern part of the Great Valley and adjacent regions, the locality of his home where he was extremely popular, and with the protection of the Virginia & Tennessee railroad, the great route of travel to the Confederate capital from all the southwest; and that it would doubtless occur that there would be a junction of his force with that of Wise, in which event Floyd, as the ranking officer by commission, would command their united forces.

Nothing more fully illustrates the poverty of preparation that Virginia had made for a most gigantic warfare than General Floyd's appeal of July 1st, by special messenger, to the governors of South Carolina and Georgia, for the loan of arms, saying that he had three regiments and a fourth rapidly forming, but needed 1,600 guns to arm them, and giving as his excuse for thus applying that neither the Confederate government nor the State of Virginia could furnish arms for his troops, and he was fretting under the delay caused by this want.

On June 23d, Wise, with his legion, reached Gauley bridge, 100 miles beyond the terminus of the Virginia Central railroad, and reported from Charleston, on the 6th of July, that he had 2,705 men in his command, all infantry but 181.

Gen. J. D. Cox began his invasion of the Great Kanawha valley on the 11th of July, in accordance with instructions from McClellan, crossing the Ohio from Gallipolis to Point Pleasant, and moving up the Kanawha. Cox's movements were greatly facilitated by the use of Ohio river steamboats, which, thrown out of trade by the war, were plentiful, and accompanying his columns, made the problem of supplies and transportation for the larger portion of his troops an easy one to solve. In moving up the Kanawha detached columns of troops marched along the roads on each side of the river, while his main body followed in a fleet of steamboats, keeping in rear of his marching columns, but near enough to reinforce either bank in case of attack.

The first day, July 11th, his command made 13