Page:Southern Historical Society Papers volume 34.djvu/307

 The Imlwfen Paid and I(s Effects. 2P9

and he, too, retreated towards the Ohio River, and finally wound up his West Virginia campaign the winter of i864-'5 at Cum- berland City, Maryland, by accepting unconditionally and jointly with General Benjamin Franklin Kelly an invitation on the part of Jessie McNeil to accompany him to Richmond, Vir- ginia.

What Confederate soldier is now living who was permitted to see the sight of two major-generals of the Federal army dressed out in full uniform, covered with medals of honor, mounted on two old poor, lanky Confederate mules, each ca- parisoned with a blind-bridle and the little duck-tailed Confede- rate saddle, coming into camp? Such was the appearance of Generals Crook and Kelly when they appeared in the Confede- rate camp, and from their own account, the half -clad, starving Confederate soldiers treated them with the utmost respect, and divided their scant rations with their two distinguished prison- ers. Such is the fate of war. "This is the state of man: To- day he puts forth the tender leaves of hopes; to-morrow blos- soms and bears his blushing honors thick upon him; the third day comes a frost, a killing frost, and when he thinks, good easy man, full surely his greatness is a-ripening, nips his root, and then he falls." By the first day of June, 1863, the Federals had abandoned all the territory of Western Virginia that they had acquired by their forward movement in the early spring, and even contracted their lines further back towards the Ohio River than they were at the close of the year of 1861, and by the ist of September, 1862, General Loring occupied the Ka- nawha Valley, and General Jenkins passed through Western Virginia into the State of Ohio, and when winter closed in on the mountains of Virginia that year the outermost posts of the Federals were in Beverley, in Randolph county; Bulltown, in Braxton county; Summerville, in Nicholas county, and Fay- etteville, in Fayette county ;, all of these places were fortified with ditches and parapets, and were well supplied with artillery, and the troops lived in block houses with portholes The Con- federates occupied the entire Greenbrier Valley and the coun- ties of Highland, Pendleton and Hardy, and scouted well down towards the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad.

The writer spent the winter of i862-'63 in Pocahontas county,