This text is part of:
[176] the high gorges of the Greenbriar Mountain into the valley of Tygart at the head of several thousand mounted men. On the 24th he takes possession of Beverly, and the next day of Philippi. On the same day a detachment of his column makes a demonstration on the side of Moorefield against a Federal post which holds the defile of Greenland Gap. Whilst Kelley is occupied by this feint, Jones, following the course of Cheat River, by a rapid march pushes as far as Morgantown on the Pennsylvannia frontier, where he arrives on the 27th, picking up an immense booty on his way. Then, retracing his steps, he rallies a portion of his troops who had followed another route, and on the 29th he appears suddenly before the town of Fairmont, situated on the right side of Tygart Valley River, near its junction with the Monongahela. A little lower down, below the junction, the railroad between Grafton and Wheeling, the only line which connects this section of country with the Northern States, crosses from the right to the left side of the Monongahela over a magnificent iron bridge three hundred yards long. It is this great work that Jones wishes to destroy, and whilst the defenders of Fairmont are vainly waiting for him, barricaded in their town, he seizes a suspension-bridge thrown over the stage-road a little below the railway-bridge, and only defended by a few soldiers. He is thus enabled to cross the river, and, capturing about one hundred men who are guarding the viaduct in the rear, compels them to lay down their arms, and, contrary to the provisions of the cartel of exchanges, releases them on parole. Barrels of powder are introduced into the interior of the piles of the bridge, which are composed of enormous brass tubes, and their explosion causes the whole structure to crumble to pieces. After this Jones quickly falls back upon the mountains, while the Federal troops hasten from Grafton to protect the railroad; but too late. After this expedition we have only to mention a trifling engagement in the vicinity of Fayette Court-house on the borders of New River. After Jones' check in front of Point Pleasant the Federals had ascended the valley of the Kanawha, which bears the name of New River in the upper part of its course, and had occupied the approaches of the defiles of Cotton Hill, which had been so warmly disputed the previous year. On the 19th and 20th of May, after a few
Philadelphia, Jos. H. Coates and co., 1883.
Tufts University provided support for entering this text.
This work is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 United States License.
An XML version of this text is available for download, with the additional restriction that you offer Perseus any modifications you make. Perseus provides credit for all accepted changes, storing new additions in a versioning system.