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126]
Jacob D. Cox, Major-General, U. S. V.
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βAn affair of outposts.β
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The reasons which made it important to occupy
West Virginia with national troops were two-fold β political and strategic.
The people were strongly attached to the
Union, and had opposed the secession of
Virginia, of which State they were then a part.
But few slaves were owned by them, and all their interests bound them more to
Ohio and
Pennsylvania than to
eastern Virginia.
Under the influence of
Lincoln's administration, strongly backed, and, indeed, chiefly represented, by
Governor Dennison of
Ohio, a movement was on foot to organize a loyal
Virginia government, repudiating that of
Governor Letcher and the State convention as self-destroyed by the act of secession.
Governor Dennison had been urging
McClellan to cross the
Ohio to protect and encourage the loyal men when, on the 26th of May, news came that the
Confederates had taken the initiative, and that some bridges had been burned on the Baltimore and Ohio railroad a little west of
Grafton, the crossing of the
Monongahela River, where the two western branches of the railroad unite, viz., the line from
Wheeling and that from
Parkersburg.
[See map, p. 129.] The great line of communication between
Washington and the west had thus been cut, and action on our part was made necessary.
Governor Dennison had anticipated the need of more troops than the thirteen regiments which had been organized as
Ohio's quota under the
President's first call.
He had organized nine other regiments, numbering them consecutively with those mustered into the national service, and had put them in camps near the
Ohio River, where they could occupy
Wheeling,
Parkersburg, and the mouth of the
Great Kanawha at a moment's notice.
Two Union regiments were also organizing in
West Virginia itself, at
Wheeling and
Parkersburg, of which the first was commanded by
Colonel (afterward General)
B. F. Kelley.
West Virginia was in
McClellan's department, and the formal authority to act had come from
Washington on the 24th, in the shape of an inquiry from
General Scott whether the enemy's force at
Grafton could be counteracted.