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by the Confederate cavalry.
Averill's loss was two hundred and seven men, and a Parrott gun, which burst during the fight.
The Confederate loss was one hundred and fifty-six men.
Much later in the year,
Averill, still watching in
West Virginia, made another aggressive movement.
He left
Beverly, in
Tygart's Valley, early in November, with five thousand men of all arms, and, moving southward, again encountered “Mudwall”
Jackson.
He drove him until the latter was re-enforced by
General Echols, who came up from
Lewisburg, when the
Confederates took a strong position on the top of
Droop Mountain, in Greenbrier County.
Averill stormed them there,
and pushed them back into
Monroe County, with a loss of over three hundred
men, three guns, and seven hundred small-arms.
Averill reported his own loss at “about one hundred, officers and men.”
West Virginia was now nearly purged of armed rebels, and not long afterward,
Averill started on the important business of destroying the communication between
Lee and
Bragg over the Virginia and Tennessee railway.
With the Second, Third, and Eighth Virginia mounted infantry, the Fourteenth Pennsylvania (Dobson's battalion) Cavalry, and
Ewing's battery, he crossed the mountains over icy roads and paths, in the midst of tempests a part of the time, and, on the 16th of December, struck the railway at
Salem, on the headwaters of the
Roanoke River.
There he destroyed the station houses and rolling stock, and a large quantity of Confederate supplies;
1 cut and coiled up the telegraph wires for half a mile; and in the course of six hours tore up the track, heated and ruined the rails, burned five bridges, and destroyed several culverts in the space of about fifteen miles. This raid aroused all of the
Confederates in that mountain region, and seven separate commands
2 were arranged
in a line extending from
Staunton