Rebels at the Gate: Lee and McClellan on the Front Line of a Nation Divided

by W Hunter Lesser

  As intrepid pioneers crossed the Alleghenies and established residence in fertile valleys to the west, the French—struggling with Britain for control of the Ohio Valley—exploited Indian fears. Vicious raids began to threaten settlements on the frontier. That violence, coupled with the defeat of British General Edward Braddock's army in 1755 near Fort Duquesne (present-day Pittsburgh), ignited the French and Indian War.

  Young George Washington was placed in command of Virginia's militia as settlers fled back across the mountains. He called for a chain of forts along the eastern ramparts of the Alleghenies, defenses that often provided a false sense of security. Near one, a horrified visitor discovered the bodies of three massacre victims. He wrote that they had been “scalped, and after thrown into a fire, [their] bodies were not yet quite consumed, but the flesh on many part of them, we saw the clothes of these people yet bloody, and the stakes, the instruments of their death still bloody & their brains sticking on them.”6

  British arms finally drove the French from their northern strongholds; war ended in 1763 with the Treaty of Paris. France ceded all Ohio Valley claims to the Crown. The Indians were not so pacified. Britain sought to appease the tribes with the Proclamation of 1763, forbidding settlement west of the Alleghenies. Land speculators balked, however, and treaties with the Iroquois and Cherokee reopened most of trans-Allegheny Virginia by 1770.

  Settlers again pushed across the mountains. In a move foreshadowing events of 1861, the Grand Ohio Company pressed claims in 1769 to make the western settlements part of a proposed fourteenth colony. The new colony—to be named Vandalia in honor of Queen Charlotte, who claimed descent from the Vandals—was to include all of trans-Allegheny Virginia and a portion of western Pennsylvania and Kentucky. Impending conflict between England and her American colonies doomed the plan.7

  Trans-Allegheny colonists on the front lines in the French and Indian War now fought as rearguard in the American Revolution. British troops disbanded garrisons in the Ohio Valley, leaving the frontier defenseless. By 1777, the British had pressured many Native American tribes to action, enticing them with payment for scalps. The “bloody year of the three 7s” was a period of unprecedented violence on the Allegheny frontier. Indian war parties from as far away as Detroit were dispatched in a murderous reign of terror.8

  Atrocities were committed by both sides in that bloody year of sevens. The venerated Shawnee chief Cornstalk bravely entered a Virginia garrison at Point Pleasant on the Ohio River that spring to make peace. Cornstalk was imposing, a magnificent orator who spoke impeccable English. But when a militiaman's scalped corpse was found outside the fort, enraged soldiers murdered the noble chief.

  The Revolutionary War ended with the British surrender at Yorktown in 1781, yet bloodshed in the west continued as most of the Indians were driven out. A new wave of European immigrants swept across the Alleghenies. They came for reasons monetary and political, and by 1790 some fifty-five thousand of them lived in Western Virginia.9

  The seven decades between this surge of immigration and the outbreak of war at Fort Sumter brought significant economic growth to the trans-Allegheny region. Settlers followed well-worn Indian trails through the mountains to build cabins and farms. In autumn, pack-horse caravans laden with pelts, tallow, ginseng, and home-brewed whiskey headed back across the mountains to trade. Grist mills and saw mills sprang from the wilderness as settlements grew into communities.

  Fledgling industries in salt, iron, pottery, and glass required improved transportation. Goods could be floated to market on major rivers in the Ohio Valley, but trade across the mountains remained difficult. River communities such as Wheeling, Parkersburg, and Charleston grew in size and stature while isolated settlements within the interior changed slowly.10

  Virginia's legislature addressed the problem in 1816 by creating a fund for internal improvements and a Board of Public Works. A surge of road building followed. Important routes were laid out by a talented French engineer named Claudius Crozet. These “turnpikes” were so named because a pike blocked the road at points for the collection of tolls and was “turned” upon payment.

  The James River and Kanawha Turnpike, completed by 1830, traversed the southern Alleghenies, bearing west from Covington in the Valley of Virginia through Lewisburg, Gauley Bridge, and Charleston to Guyandotte on the Ohio River. By 1838, the Northwestern Turnpike crossed the northern end of Virginia, connecting Winchester in the Shenandoah Valley with Parkersburg on the Ohio River. Its completion fostered the growth of towns such as Romney, Grafton, and Clarksburg. The Staunton-Parkersburg Turnpike, lying between the two earlier routes, was finished by 1847, winding over the mountains from Staunton in the Shenandoah Valley through Monterey, Beverly, and Weston to Parkersburg along the Ohio.

  Interlacing country roads, often impassible for much of the year, linked these three major east-west thoroughfares. One important north-south route was the Weston and Gauley Bridge Turnpike, joining the Staunton-Parkersburg Turnpike with the James River and Kanawha Turnpike. Another, the Beverly and Fairmont Road, connected the Northwestern and Staunton-Parkersburg Turnpikes by 1850.

  The new roads had a dramatic effect on commerce. Wagons of all descriptions creaked along their routes. Rumbling stage-coaches—often called “shake guts”—brought weary travelers to bustling taverns. Large droves of cattle and sheep filled the roads as they were herded to market.11

  But the heyday of turnpikes was short-lived. Track for the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad, a brainchild of Maryland businessmen, had been laid to Wheeling by 1852. Three-quarters of its route lay across northern Virginia. The Baltimore and Ohio was an engineering marvel, traversing the most rugged terrain yet faced by railroad builders in America. For a time it was the only rail link to the nation's capital. A branch line, the Northwestern Virginia Railroad, reached Parkersburg in 1857, connecting that Ohio River town to the main line at Grafton. The railroad spawned a new era of development. Virginians touched by it were bound into closer social and political union with the Northern states.12

  As population and commerce grew in the trans-Allegheny region, so did sectional differences with eastern Virginia. The Allegheny crests marked a boundary of contrasting economies. To the east lay fertile soils and a climate suitable for the production of staple crops on large plantations, requiring the labor of slaves. Rugged terrain and variable climate precluded a plantation economy in much of the west. Hardscrabble subsistence farms dotted the western landscape; diverse natural resources encouraged industrial development with less need for slavery.

  The people were of different stock. German, Scotch-Irish, and Welsh settlers were drawn to the trans-Allegheny region. Most shared an egalitarian culture quite unlike the English Piedmont and Tidewater aristocrats of eastern Virginia.

  By 1860, the forty-eight counties that would become Western Virginia contained 376,677 residents, about one-quarter of Virginia's population. The region was mostly rural, with some mountainous areas completely uninhabited. Only seven towns had populations of one thousand or more. Wheeling, the largest by far with fourteen thousand residents, was a major industrial and trading center on the Ohio River, strongly linked to northern interests by geography. Parkersburg, also on the Ohio (1860 population: 2,493), had been the scene of a frenetic oil boom in 1859 and was the western terminus of the Northwestern Turnpike, the Staunton-Parkersburg Turnpike, and the Northwestern Virginia Railroad. Charleston (1860 population: 1,520), the economic hub of the Kanawha Valley, had no railroad, but maintained trade with Cincinnati and Louisville via the Great Kanawha River, while the James River and Kanawha Turnpike gave it stronger ties to eastern Virginia. Railroad and turnpike communities such as Grafton, Fairmont, Weston, Beverly, Lewisburg, and Harpers Ferry were mere villages.13

  Virginia was also divided by slavery. The first African slaves arrived at Jamestown in 1619—a year before the Pilgrims landed at Plymouth. By 1860, there were 490,865 slaves in the Commonwealth. Few westerners owned them. The 18,371 slaves residin
g in forty-eight western counties that year made up less than 4 percent of Virginia's total. The slave population in Western Virginia actually decreased in the decade leading to the Civil War—portals to a growing “Underground Railroad” were enticingly near.14

  Virginia's constitution, adopted in 1776, strongly favored the east. Voting rights were limited to white male “freeholders” (property owners). The General Assembly and courts appointed state and county officials. Each county was given two delegates to the General Assembly, regardless of size or population. Western Virginia received only four of the twenty-four state senatorial districts. Easterners controlled the government, leading to complaints of an all-powerful “Richmond Junta.”

  Little tax money was spent west of the Alleghenies. Urging reform, Thomas Jefferson noted the gross inequities of Virginia's constitution as early as 1782: “The majority of the men in the state who pay and fight for its support are unrepresented in the legislature.” Westerners talked of revising the state constitution—and of carving Virginia in two.15

  Reform efforts led to a constitutional convention at Richmond in 1829. Representation and suffrage were the key issues. Western delegates sought representation on the basis of white population; easterners desired representation based on slave property as well. Led by former Presidents James Madison, James Monroe, and Chief Justice John Marshall, the east granted few concessions. Poor white farmers of the trans-Allegheny were looked on as mere peasants, occupying a niche similar to Tidewater slaves—unworthy to vote.

  Shenandoah Valley counties, formerly allied with the west, joined eastern Virginia to protect slave property. The resulting constitution further isolated the west. A Wheeling Gazette writer urged westerners to call their own convention for “a division of the state—peaceably if we can, forcibly if we must.”16

  On August 13, 1831, a “wild fanatical Baptist preacher” named Nat Turner and sixty Negro followers went on a murderous rampage, killing more than fifty whites in Southampton County, Virginia. Fear of additional slave uprisings sparked a great national debate. Abolitionists sought to end the “peculiar institution,” yet southerners defended it as a right ordained by God. One year later, the grandson of Thomas Jefferson offered a resolution in the Virginia General Assembly to gradually emancipate the slaves. After much debate, it was defeated.

  As discontent rose in the trans-Allegheny, Virginians gathered in the “Reform Convention” of 1850. Compromise was finally reached on the issue of representation; all white males over twenty-one years of age were given the right to vote. For the first time, Virginians—rather than their General Assembly and the courts—would elect the governor and state and local officials. Westerners claimed a triumph for democracy, but easterners won preferential taxation of slaves—and prohibition of legislative emancipation.17

  As the convention closed, President John Y. Mason exhorted the members to allay sectional strife: “May you long live to see this ancient commonwealth united and happy at home, honored and respected abroad.” It was not to be. The issue of slavery continued to fester. On the evening of October 16, 1859, it exploded. John Brown, an aging abolitionist from “bleeding Kansas,” led a raid on the United States armory at Harpers Ferry, Virginia. His goal was to arm the slaves and lead them in revolt.

  Slaves failed to respond, but the angry townspeople of Harpers Ferry and vicinity surrounded Brown's small band in the armory fire engine house. Brown's raid ended on the morning of October 18 when a company of Marines under U.S. Army Colonel Robert E. Lee stormed his stronghold. Brown was captured and taken to nearby Charles Town, Virginia, to stand trial for treason. There, on December 2, 1859, under tight security, he was hanged.18

  John Brown's raid polarized the nation. Pledging to halt the further spread of slavery, Abraham Lincoln was elected president in 1860. South Carolina promptly separated from the Union, followed by Mississippi, Florida, Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, and Texas in early 1861. The die was cast upon bombardment of Fort Sumter. Virginia now moved toward secession. The Alleghenies, a towering barrier in war and peace, were about to become the flashpoint in a great Civil War.

  PART I

  IMPENDING

  STORM

  CHAPTER 1

  A VERY GOD OF WAR

  “There are multitudes of brave men in the West, but no soldiers.”

  —George B. McClellan

  A dapper young figure paced the Ohio Statehouse floor on April 23, 1861. His step was firm, graceful, and deliberate. He was darkly handsome and wore a goatee and an earnest look. Although “rather under the medium height,” he was heavily muscled with broad shoulders and a barrel chest. He looked capable of great physical feats. It was said he could bend a quarter between thumb and forefinger—or heave a two-hundred-fifty-pound man over his head.19

  He was George B. McClellan, the new major general of Ohio Volunteers.

  General McClellan faced a daunting task. His charge was to build an army from the raw recruits streaming into the capital city of Columbus, in answer to President Abraham Lincoln's call for seventy-five thousand troops to put down the rebellion of Confederate states. But a convention in neighboring Virginia, angered by that call, had passed an Ordinance of Secession. With Virginia soon to join the Confederacy, Ohio and the other mid-western states lay vulnerable to attack.

  The United States's regular army could offer little aid. In 1861, it numbered barely seventeen thousand and was scattered across the continent. Loyal states were left to respond to the crisis on their own—to finance, organize, and equip the troops collected under Lincoln's call. But the states were ill prepared. Politicians, rather than soldiers, often headed their untrained militias. Northern governors, including Ohio's William Dennison, urgently sought out experienced military men to lead the new state troops.20

  Prominent citizens of Ohio had recommended a former army captain, the West Point–trained George McClellan. He was “a man of remarkable ability,” then-president of the eastern division of the Ohio and Mississippi Railroad. Governor Dennison examined a report McClellan had written on European military organization and saw he was “chock full of big war science.”

  Dennison hastily requested an interview, for McClellan was a hot commodity—the Northern states with the largest military contingents were all bidding for his services. Telegrams intimated that the governor of New York was to make an offer. A prestigious command in McClellan's native Pennsylvania was anticipated. In fact, the young railroad executive was bound for Harrisburg to discuss the matter when he received the summons from Dennison. Convinced that a desirable appointment was at hand, McClellan stopped in Columbus.21

  Jacob D. Cox, a new brigadier general in the Ohio service, met him at the railway station. “His whole appearance was quiet and modest,” recalled Cox of McClellan, “but when drawn out he showed no lack of confidence in himself. He was dressed in a plain traveling suit, with a narrow-rimmed soft felt hat. In short, he seemed what he was, a railway superintendent in his business clothes.” He came off as “a very charming man, and his manner of doing business impressed every one with the belief that he knew what he was about.”

  Governor Dennison outlined the predicament. Ohio's army needed to be built from scratch. There was little military experience on staff—a skilled leader was needed to take charge. McClellan offered keen insight. Given a few weeks' preparation, he vowed the state forces could be made ready for active service. When Dennison solicited his advice for defending Cincinnati, McClellan instructed the governor, “There is only one safe rule in war—i.e. to decide what is the very worst thing that can happen to you, & prepare to meet it.”

  Dennison offered the Ohio command; McClellan promptly accepted. Within hours, the governor strong-armed a bill through the legislature to secure his man. On April 23, 1861, thirty-four-year-old George McClellan became a major general of Ohio Volunteers. His selection was viewed as “full of promise and hope.” Great deeds were expected of young McClellan. It seemed, according to Cincinnati journalist Whitelaw
Reid, that “a very god of War” had leaped “out of the smoke and coal dust of the Ohio and Mississippi Railroad Office.” 22

  That “very god of War” was born George Brinton McClellan on December 3, 1826, the son of a distinguished Philadelphia surgeon. A child of privileged society, he conversed in Latin and French by the age of ten and enrolled at the University of Pennsylvania at thirteen. His interests soon gravitated to the military. Ancestral McLellans of Scotland had fought with the Stuart kings, and a great-grandfather had earned a general's star in the American Revolution.

  McClellan entered the U.S. Military Academy prior to his sixteenth year. He was a popular figure. One classmate wrote that he bore “every evidence of gentle nature and high culture, and his countenance was as charming as his demeanor was modest and winning.” McClellan graduated second in the West Point class of 1846—convinced he should have ranked first. He was commissioned a brevet second lieutenant in the elite Company of Engineer Soldiers.23