...osting 900 men at Coal and 1,600 at Two Mile and Elk, with outposts at Ripley and Barboursville; while 1,000 men were scattered in the rear from Gauley bridge past Summersville to Birch river, toward Rich mountain . He could not safely make the Parkersburg diversion suggested by Garnett and Lee. Instead he asked that Garnett reinforce the Kanawha army, at the very time that the latter general was engaged in h...