Benson J. Lossing, Pictorial Field Book of the Civil War. Volume 1.

[488] dragoons, was stationed with several hundred insurgents. Tompkins captured the pickets and then dashed into the town, driving a detachment of the insurgents before him. These were re-enforced, and a severe skirmish occurred in the street. Shots were fired upon the Union troops from windows. Finding himself greatly outnumbered by his enemy, Tompkins retreated in good order, taking with him five fully armed prisoners¹ and two horses. He lost one man killed, one missing, and four who were wounded. He also lost twelve horses and their equipments. It is estimated that about twenty of the insurgents were killed or wounded. Among the killed was Captain John Q. Marr, a highly esteemed citizen of Virginia, who had been a member of the late Secession Convention. “he has been the first soldier of the South,” said the Nashville Union, “to baptize the soil of the old Dominion with patriotic blood.”

this gallant dash of Tompkins gave delight to the loyal people, and made the insurgent leaders at Manassas and its vicinity very vigilant and active. They were expecting an attack from the direction of Washington City, and. Were alarmed by military movements already commenced in Western Virginia. Troops from the more Southern States were still crowding in, and it was estimated that these, with the Virginians under arms, comprised about forty thousand men, in the camp and in the field, within the borders of the. Old Commonwealth on the 1st of June, prepared to fight the troops of the Government.

there was a civil and political movement in Northwestern Virginia at this time, in opposition to the conspirators, really more important and more alarming to them than the aspect of military affairs there. It commanded the profound attention of the Government, and of the loyal and disloyal people of the whole country.

the members of the Virginia Secession Convention from the Western portion of the State, as we have observed, could not be molded to suit the will of the conspirators, and they and their colleagues defied the power of the traitors who controlled the Convention. Before the adjournment of that Convention, the inhabitants of Northwestern Virginia were satisfied that the time had come when they must make a bold stand for the Union and their own independence, or be made slaves to a confederacy of traitors whom they abhorred; and Union meetings were called in various parts of the mountain region, which were largely attended. The first of these assembled at Clarksburg, in Harrison County, on the line of the Baltimore and Ohio Railway, on the 22d of April, when resolutions, offered by John S. Carlile, a member of the Convention yet sitting in Richmond, calling an assembly of delegates of the people at Wheeling, on the 13th of May, were adopted. The course of Governor Letcher was severely condemned, and eleven citizens were chosen to represent Harrison County in the Convention at Wheeling. Meetings were held elsewhere. One of these, at Kingwood, in Preston County,

May 4, 1861.

evinced the most determined hostility to the conspirators, and declared that the separation of Western from Eastern Virginia was essential to the maintenance of their liberties. They