Edward Alfred Pollard, The lost cause; a new Southern history of the War of the Confederates ... Drawn from official sources and approved by the most distinguished Confederate leaders.

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[170] at various points between Lewisburg and Gauley Bridge. The danger seemed to him so pressing, that he fell back immediately with his entire force, first to Gauley Bridge and thence to Lewisburg, reaching the latter place about the 1st of August, and after a retreat which was necessarily much disordered, on account of his meagre means of transportation.

Within a few weeks after Gen. Wise fell back to Lewisburg, the Confederate cause in Western Virginia received the aid of a very effective body of men. John B. Floyd, who had been at one time Governor of Virginia, and afterwards Secretary of War under President Buchanan, was commissioned a brigadier-general in the Confederate army, and had succeeded in raising a command of three regiments of infantry and a battalion of cavalry. This force was intended for service in Western Virginia, and Gen. Floyd soon decided, with the approval of the War Department, that the defence of the Kanawha Valley was the object of first importance. He accordingly advanced to the White Sulphur Springs, nine miles east of Lewisburg, and held conferences with Gen. Wise. An advance towards the Gauley was promptly determined on, but the two bodies, under their commanders, moved at different times, and with perfectly distinct organizations, though within supporting distance.

Gen. Floyd moved first, and for some days skirmished vigorously with Cox's troops, which were in force at Gauley Bridge and in the neighbourhood of the “Hawk's Nest,” a picturesque and majestic monument of wooded rocks, rising a thousand feet from the river road, at a point ten miles below the mouth of the Gauley. Gen. Wise having come up, the joint Confederate forces now approached nearer the enemy, skirmishing with various success. But while thus occupied, it was ascertained that another foe threatened their flank.

Col. Tyler, commanding the Seventh Ohio Regiment, of nearly thirteen hundred men, was approaching the Gauley River at Carnifax Ferry, about five miles south of Summerville, in Nicholas County, and twenty-four miles above Gauley Bridge. His movement was therefore on the right flank of the Confederates, and had he succeeded in crossing the river and reaching their rear, he would have cut their communications with Lewisburg. Gen. Floyd at once determined to cross the river at Carnifax Ferry and encounter this movement of the enemy. He at once put his brigade in motion, taking with him a part of Wise's cavalry; that commander remaining with the larger body of his troops at Pickett's Mills in Fayette County, so as to hold the turnpike, and guard against any aggressive movement of Cox, which might have embarrassed that against Tyler.

The enterprise of Gen. Floyd was thoroughly successful. Having crossed the Gauley, he, on the morning of the 26th of August, fell upon Tyler at a place called Cross Lanes; defeated and dispersed his force; and