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

[531] He collected a considerable force at that place, and had outlying detachments at Bealington, Buckhannon, Romney, and Philippi. Ex-Governor Henry A. Wise, with a brigadier's commission, had been organizing a brigade in the Great Kanawha Valley, beyond the Greenbrier Mountains, for the purpose of holding in subjection the loyal inhabitants of the fertile regions of that river. He was now ordered to cross the intervening mountains around the head-waters of the Gauley River, and co-operate with Garnett; and every measure within the means of the “Confederates” was used for the purpose of checking the advance of McClellan's forces, and preventing their junction with those of Patterson in the Shenandoah Valley.

General McClellan took command of his troops in person, at Grafton, on the 23d of June, and on that day he issued a proclamation to the inhabitants of Western Virginia, similar in tenor to the one sent forth from Cincinnati a month earlier.

May 23, 1861.

He severely condemned the guerrilla warfare in which the insurgents were engaged, and threatened the offenders with punishment, “according to the severest rules of military law.” He also told the disloyal people of that section that all who should be found acting in hostility to the Government, either by bearing arms or in giving aid and comfort to its enemies, should be arrested. To his soldiers he issued an address two days afterward, reminding them that they were in the country of friends, and not of enemies, and conjuring them to behave accordingly. He denounced the insurgents as outlaws, who, without cause, had rebelled, and seized public property, and “outraged the persons of Northern men merely because they came from the North, and Southern men merely because they loved the Union ;” and he exhorted his soldiers to pursue a different course. He concluded by saying :--“I now fear but one thing — that you will not find foemen worthy of your steel.”

The entire force of Ohio, Indiana, and Virginia troops, now under the command of McClellan, numbered full twenty thousand men, and he resolved to advance. He sent a detachment, under General J. D. Cox, into the Kanawha Valley, to meet Wise and keep him in check, while his main body, about ten thousand strong, led by himself, advanced from Clarksburg, on the Baltimore and Ohio Railway, twenty-two miles west of Grafton, in the direction of Buckhannon, to attack Garnett at Laurel Hill, near Beverly. At the same time a detachment of about four thousand men,¹ under General Morris, moved from Grafton toward Beverly, by way of Philippi; and another body, commanded by General Hill, was sent to West Union, eastward of Philippi, toward St. George, in Tucker County, to prevent the escape of the insurgents by that way over the Alleghany Mountains, to join Johnston at Winchester.

Morris was instructed not to attack Garnett, but to thoroughly reconnoiter the country, make such feints as would deceive the insurgents with the belief that they might expect the main attack from that officer, and to keep them employed until McClellan should gain their rear. Morris carried out the plan faithfully. He advanced to Bealington, within a mile of Garnett's camp, which was on a wooded slope on the eastern side of the Laurel