The Annals of the Civil War Written by Leading Participants North and South
Alexander Kelly McClure, Ed.

[85] Adjutant General; Major A. L. Long, Chief of Artillery; Captain Corley, Chief Quartermaster; Captain Cole, Chief Commissary; Lieutenant Matthews, Aide-de-camp, and Colonel Starks, volunteer Aide-de-camp; and, as the country was full of enthusiasm on account of the recent victory at Manassas, he was about to enter upon his new field of operations under the most favorable auspices.

General Loring, accompanied by his staff, left Richmond on the 22d of July, the day after the battle and victory of Manassas. On the 24th he arrived at Monterey, a small village about sixty miles west of Staunton; there he found Jackson, who informed him that on arriving at the Greenbrier river he had found Cheat Mountain Pass so strongly occupied by Federals that he deemed it inadvisable to attempt to carry it by a direct attack. So he retired, leaving Colonel Edward Johnston, with the Twelfth Georgia Regiment and Anderson's Battery to occupy the Alleghany Mountain Pass, and posting Rust's Arkansas Regiment and Baldwin's Virginia Regiment in convenient supporting distance of Johnston, established himself at Monterey, with Fulkerson's and Scott's Virginia Regiments, the First Georgia Regiment (Colonel Ramsey's), Major Jackson's Cavalry, and Shoemaker's Battery. Having heard of a Pass about forty miles west, near Huntersville, by which Cheat Mountain might be turned. he sent Colonel Gilliam, with his own Virginia Regiment and Colonel Lee's Sixth North Carolina Regiment, being a force of about two thousand men, to occupy this Pass, and had ordered the remaining troops intended for the Army of Northwestern Virginia to proceed direct from Staunton to Huntersville. This was the condition of affairs when General Loring arrived at Monterey and assumed command. He remained several days in the neighborhood of Monterey, examining the condition of the troops and reconnoitering the position of the enemy on Cheat Mountain. Cheat Mountain Pass is a narrow gap near the top of the mountain, whose natural strength had been greatly increased by the art of engineers since its occupation by the Federals. It was approachable from the east only by the Parkersburg turnpike, which, ascending the rugged side of the mountain, enters this narrow defile and winds its way through it for nearly a mile before it begins the western descent.

The Federals finding this Pass unoccupied, and foreseeing the importance the Parkersburg turnpike would be to the Confederates in their attempt to re-occupy West Virginia, seized it and fortified it, and now held it with a force of about twenty-five hundred men; the remainder of the Federal force was in the vicinity of Beverly, a village a few miles west of Cheat river. General Loring, having