Ohio History Journal

THE HERO

THE HERO

OF THE SANDY VALLEY

JAMES A. GARFIELD'S KENTUCKY CAMPAIGN

OF 1861-1862 -- -- -- -- II by ALLAN PESKIN

In the closing weeks of 1861 the customary quiet of the isolated Sandy Valley

in eastern Kentucky was disturbed by a ragged column of Confederate

soldiers which marched into the state from Virginia headed by an obese

general with a famous Kentucky name, Humphrey Marshall, who vowed

to free his state from the grip of northern tyranny.* Don Carlos Buell, the

Union commander in the state, who was faced with many problems more

pressing than this miniature invasion, dispatched a small brigade commanded

by an untested, thirty-year-old colonel to deal with Marshall. The colonel,

James A. Garfield, fresh from the halls of the Ohio Senate, commanded a

NOTES ARE ON PAGES 171-172

130 OHIO HISTORY

green collection of Ohio and Kentucky soldiers. Many of his Ohio troops,

particularly those of the Forty-Second Regiment, had been raised from

among his Western Reserve constituents, and neither troops, officers, nor

colonel had ever had the slightest taste of battle.

They learned quickly. Garfield, an untutored political appointee, easily

outmaneuvered the more experienced Marshall. By early January 1862 the

Confederates had begun to evacuate the valley, and after the nearly bloodless,

drawn battle of Middle Creek they were in full flight back to Virginia,

leaving behind only a small garrison at Pound Gap to guard the border.

With Marshall's abrupt departure Garfield found himself responsible for

the administration of eastern Kentucky. Civil authority had collapsed,

leaving Garfield and his soldiers as the only force in the valley capable

of maintaining order. Although the territory under his command had

never formally seceded from the Union, it had given aid and support to

the Confederacy and needed to be brought back to loyalty. The phrase was

not yet current, but Garfield was actually engaged in reconstruction.

This early in the war there was no settled official policy on the matter;

Garfield had to feel his way. He had few precedents to guide him. In

Missouri, General John C. Fremont had faced similar problems, but he

had come to grief over the slavery issue. Fortunately for Garfield his

problem was not complicated by the Negro question. There were no slaves

in this remote corner of the South, but there were difficulties enough from

the white population.

Garfield's Ohio soldiers were appalled by the squalor and ignorance they

found in the valley. In isolated cabins they encountered families that had

never seen a church, never heard of railroads, and who stared in open-

mouthed amazement at a common jackknife. Such people had not the

slightest understanding of the issues of the war that had intruded into

their valley. Some had supported the South only because Confederate

recruiters had told them the Yankees were coming to murder them all,

but "who or what the Yankees were, they had no idea."¹Others had seized

upon the confusions of wartime to settle their own private feuds, turning

the valley, Garfield said, "into a home of fiends and . . . this war into a

black hole in which to murder any man that any soldier from envy, lust

or revenge, hated."²

How could such a region -- isolated, backward, lawless, ignorant, sullenly

resentful of all authority, including that of the federal government -- be

brought back into a loyal relationship with the Union? In later years

this problem would be thrashed out on a larger scale, and two basic lines

THE HERO OF THE SANDY VALLEY 131

of policy would emerge: the radical position advocating stringent punish-

ment of treason, and the moderate approach favored by Lincoln. Later

on, when he sat in congress, Garfield was to become a spokesman for the

radicals, but in 1862, faced with the actual problems of administration,

he adopted a moderate policy. This policy was far more lenient than that

of the Kentucky legislature itself. By state law all Kentuckians who fought

for the Confederacy were liable to fine, imprisonment, and loss of citizen-

ship, while teachers, jurors, preachers, and all public officials had to swear

that they had never aided the rebellion.³

Whatever merit these measures may have had in the rest of the state,

their value, Garfield realized, was dubious in the Sandy Valley, a region

of such low political sophistication that many had not yet even heard the

news of Lincoln's election. Most of the valley's citizens left politics to

their local courthouse politicians. These were the men whose opinions

mattered, and without their support reconstruction was impossible. Although

many of them had been tainted with rebel sympathies, Garfield did not

punish or proscribe them. Instead, he merely ordered them to take an oath

to defend the government, and placed them on bond for their future

loyalty, confident that as realists they would now use their influence to

support federal authority.

While pursuing this mild policy of reconciliation, Garfield showed no

mercy to anyone, no matter what his politics, who disturbed the peace of

the valley. To demonstrate his determination he even hanged one of his

own Kentucky soldiers who had shot a rebel prisoner in cold blood. 4

Garfield realized that the valley needed peace and good order more than

anything else. "While all force and rebellion against the government must

promptly be put down," he argued, "it must also be remembered that the

people in this valley are to live together as fellow citizens and neighbors

after the war is over." 5

He announced his reconstruction policy in a "Proclamation" couched in

the full-blown rhetoric which southerners appreciated. "Citizens of the

Sandy Valley," he declared,

I have come among you to restore the honor of the Union, and to bring back the

old banner which you all once loved, but which by the machinations of evil men

and by mutual misunderstandings has been dishonored among you.... To those

who have taken no part in this war, who are in no way aiding or abetting the

enemies of the Union--even to those who hold sentiments averse to the Union,

but yet give no aid and comfort to its enemies--I offer the full protection of the

Government, both in their persons and property.

132 OHIO HISTORY

He called upon all who had taken up arms against the government to return

to their homes, promising them full amnesty. 6

In the later years of the war, after Garfield had learned to hate the enemy,

this sort of leniency would infuriate him when practiced by others, but at

the time it served his purpose well. When they heard of the proclamation,

Marshall's Kentucky soldiers, "men of no brains who had been scared

into the rebel army and whose lives," according to Garfield, "are not worth

to the country what the bullet would cost to kill them," 7 quietly slipped

away from Marshall's camp and returned shamefaced to their families.

Within a remarkably short time Garfield had restored order to the

valley. Except for scattered guerrilla activity in the distant reaches of

his command there was scarcely a sign to indicate that only a few months

earlier many had feared that this same region might throw in with the

Confederacy. In part, this represented a personal triumph for Garfield.

To the folks in the valley Garfield was almost as big a hero as he seemed

in the newspapers back in Ohio. "I believe I have never made a more

favorable impression of myself than I have upon . . . the citizens of this

valley," Garfield confided to his wife, with a touch of pride. "They have

the most extravagant notions of my doings here." 8

Had these Kentuckians known of Garfield's true intentions towards the

South, they might not have been so friendly. In his official pronouncements

Garfield never mentioned the delicate subject of slavery, but the problem

was never far from his thoughts. For public consumption he spoke of

the war as an effort to restore the Union, but at heart he was still as strong

an antislavery man as he had been back on the Western Reserve. Indeed,

all his old evangelical fervor was now focused on the hope of emancipation.

He realized, however, that the times were not yet ripe for an antislavery

crusade. "Let the war be conducted for the union," he privately urged,

"till the whole nation shall be enthused, inspired, transfigured with the

glory of that high purpose." Let the war be sanctified by the blood of

martyrs, let the full patriotism of the North be roused and marshaled, and

then, and only then, would the people realize that the preservation of the

Union required the destruction of slavery. "That this war will result

fatally to slavery I have no doubt. This assurance is to me one of the

brightest promises of the future. But," he added, "I am equally clear that

a declaration of emancipation by the administration would be a most fatal

mistake." 9 In God's own good time the logic of events would bring about

the inevitable end of slavery.

Garfield viewed the war in an almost mystical light, as having a logic

THE HERO OF THE SANDY VALLEY 133

of its own which acted independently of the will of its leaders. "Gen.

McClellan is weakly and wickedly conservative . . . and the President

nearly as bad," he charged. "But out of the very weakness and timidity

of our leaders I draw the hope that thus God has willed it--that He is the

commander-in-chief of our armies, and there is no central iron will making

ends for the war and effectively thwarting the Divine purpose. If McClellan

will discipline and mobilize the people into armies, and let them meet the

enemy, God will take care of the grand consequences." 10

The war might be a holy crusade, but it could also be grand fun. Even

in the midst of his solemn speculations concerning God's will, Garfield

could be diverted by an opportunity--rare in the life of any man--to enact

a favorite childhood daydream. After a week of violent rainstorms, the

Big Sandy, the lifeline of Garfield's brigade, had risen so high that navi-

gation was blocked. When Garfield saw his supplies dwindle to the point

where his men were compelled to go on half-rations, he resolved to take

matters into his own hands. Riding back to Catlettsburg he found that no

river-boat captain could be induced to risk the swollen currents. All

persuasion failing, Garfield expropriated a rickety steamer, the Sandy

Valley, and forced the captain to weigh anchor. Not even the threat of

Garfield's pistols could persuade the captain to take responsibility for such

a lunatic voyage, so Garfield himself had to take the wheel. This was the

moment of glory he had dreamed of so many years before, when as a sea-

struck boy he had trudged along the canal towpath, and he made the

most of it.

It was a rough trip. The river was clogged with floating debris, and the

trees which usually lined its banks were nearly submerged. One careless

twist of the rudder and these hidden trees could rake the bottom clean off

the boat. The over-burdened steamer paddled slowly upstream, making

only two or three knots an hour against the current. Garfield manned the

bridge around the clock, despite the captain's distraught protest that navi-

gation was impossible in the dark. At one point the rushing current picked

up the boat and whirled it over a hundred yards downstream before control

could be regained. At another spot the Sandy Valley ran aground. Garfield

ordered the crew to row to shore and stretch a cable from the banks. The

terrified crew refused to chance the currents, so Garfield himself jumped

into a small boat, made fast a line from the banks, and pulled the steamer

loose. The Sandy Valley at last puffed into Paintsville, with the triumphant

Garfield at the helm, just in time to feed the hungry soldiers. "So you

see," he proudly told his wife, "I have turned sailor at last." 11

134 OHIO HISTORY

In February the Eighteenth Brigade transferred its headquarters to

Piketon, fifty miles further up the Big Sandy. Garfield, who now had ample

reason to distrust this capricious river on which so much depended, cached

his stores on high ground, ten feet above the highest known flood level.

For a while his precautions seemed needless, as the unpredictable river

steadily dropped so low that Garfield feared it might dry up altogether. 12

Then, without warning, the weather turned. During the night of February 22,

after a succession of torrential rains, the Sandy overflowed its banks and

inundated the town. With water lapping at their tent flaps, the frightened

soldiers grabbed what they could carry, and scrambled for high ground.

Garfield tried to salvage his precious supplies but, as he confessed, "I was

conquered for the first time." 13 The surging river rose twelve feet in an

hour, and nearly sixty feet from its lowest watermark during the night.

When morning came Garfield's men looked out over a lake which covered

what had been Piketon. Two steamboats were moored in the town's main

street, while floating trees and log cabins careened by. 14

The waters receded as quickly as they had risen, but Garfield expected

further trouble. "I tremble for the sickness and suffering which must

follow. Four battles would not be so disastrous to us," he predicted. 15

As he had feared, disease crept into the camp in the wake of the flood.

By the middle of March sickness had depleted the brigade to skeleton

strength. It was a rare company that could muster as many as forty men

fit for duty. 16 Surgeon Joel F. Pomerene's medicine chest was worse than

useless, and the men (with reason) feared the hospital more than disease.

Garfield, a firm believer in "the power of will to resist disease," tried to

encourage his men back to health. When two of his former Hiram students

came to him in tears, begging to be sent home, Garfield threw his arms

around them and told them that he had been wrestling with sickness himself,

"as with a giant enemy," and they must do the same. Within a few weeks

both boys were dead. 17

Before the epidemic had run its course, over fifty Ohio boys had found

Kentucky graves. As he helplessly watched them sicken and die, Carfield

was tormented by guilt. "I declare to you there are fathers and mothers

in Ohio that I hardly know how I can endure to meet," he confessed to

his wife. "A noble young man from Medina County died a few days ago.

I enlisted him, but not till I had spent two hours in answering the objections

of his father who urged that he was too young to stand the exposure. He

was the only child. I cannot feel myself to blame in the matter, but I

assure you I would rather fight a battle than to meet his father." 18

THE HERO OF THE SANDY VALLEY 135

Until now it had been an easy war for Garfield, a trifle uncomfortable at

times, but not, on the whole, unpleasant. Now, for the first time, he was

face to face with the senseless misery of war. "This fighting with disease

is infinitely more horrible than battle," he groaned. "This is the price of

saving the Union. My God, what a costly sacrifice!" He now had a personal

stake in the war, an implacable determination that those responsible for the

death of his boys would not escape lightly. "If the severest vengeance of

outraged and insulted law is not visited upon those cursed villains who have

instigated and led this rebellion," he vowed, "it will be the most wicked

crime that can be committed. The blood of hundreds of the 18th Brigade

will, before summer, be crying from the ground to God for vengeance." 19

At the height of the epidemic, by a touch of ironic timing, Garfield learned

of his promotion to brigadier general. The commission, which was back-

dated to his victory at Middle Creek, had been engineered by his Ohio

political colleagues, with the assistance of Secretary of the Treasury Salmon

P. Chase (who smugly took full credit for the promotion), 20 but it was

not entirely a political appointment. Garfield had been doing the work of

a brigadier general for some time, and had already proven that he could

handle the post satisfactorily.

Garfield had not angled for the promotion personally. Ever since his

boyhood he had harbored a superstitious fear of place-seeking. This refusal

to promote his own fortunes was not due to a lack of ambition, but to a

dread of nemesis. Garfield put his trust in his destiny, and when good

fortune struck he always tried to placate nemesis by disclaiming personal

responsibility. In this instance he insisted, in a phrase that would run

through his career like an incantation, "I have never by word or written

sentence made any approach to forwarding the movement or inviting it.

Had I done so I should feel that I was marring the plans of God, and should

not succeed." 21

The new stars on his shoulders were a cause for regret as well as pride.

Always a sentimentalist, Garfield was pained by the thought that his pro-

motion might tear him away from his boys of the Forty-Second. After all

they had been through together since the days at Camp Chase, Garfield had a

strong attachment to his regiment. "I cannot tell you," he confided to a

friend, "how strange[ly] and painfully my whole being has been drawn

out in love for that body of men. The very sound of the word Forty Second

has a strange charm in it. It seems to me that I could never love any other

like it." 22 On the other hand, Garfield looked forward to the chance of

exercising a wider command. Cooped up in "this God-forsaken valley," 23

136 OHIO HISTORY

he half feared that the war was passing him by. Numerous signs seemed

to indicate that the rebellion might soon be crushed, perhaps as early as

June, 24 and he did not want to sit out the remaining days of the war in an

obscure theater of battle.

But before he could leave the valley he still had one job left to finish.

Rebel marauders were terrorizing the lower reaches of the valley. Reports

of atrocities filtered back to Garfield's headquarters: tales of men shot

down at their doorsteps by masked riders, of Union sympathizers hanged

in the sight of their horrified families, of cattle maimings and barn burnings.

Garfield dispatched an expedition of thirty men after these rebel guerrillas,

but the rebels knew this country well, and when Garfield's men blundered

their way through the mountains they were neatly bushwhacked, and had

to limp their way back to camp. 25 Despite his overwhelming superiority

in arms and men, Garfield was helpless before this handful of raiders. He

could not dissipate his force in futile hunts down every valley; he had to

destroy the enemy at its source. The only effective way to stop the guerrillas

was to smash the rebel garrison at Pound Gap which gave them arms and

encouragement.

Pound Gap, the last remaining Confederate toehold in eastern Kentucky,

was manned by a bedraggled contingent of fewer than three hundred men.

The gap was located on the border of Kentucky and Virginia, in the middle

of some of the wildest country in the entire region. To approach the gap

from the Kentucky side required a hard climb across rugged mountains

and through tangled thickets. These natural barriers had been augmented

by the Confederates, who had been busy for weeks tearing down bridges and

blockading the roads with fallen trees.

On March 14 Garfield pulled out of Piketon at the head of a picked force

of six hundred infantry and one hundred cavalry. In order to preserve the

advantage of surprise, they followed a roundabout trail across obscure bridle

paths, and waded through the beds of gushing creeks. 26 By the morning

of the fifteenth Garfield's band was assembled at the foot of the mountain

leading to the gap. Hesitant to risk his force in a frontal attack on the

Confederate breastworks, Garfield divided his troops. The plan was his

old standby--the flanking movement. The cavalry would take the main

road to the rebels' works and distract their attention, while the six hundred

infantrymen would sidle around the mountain, climb an unguarded path

and surprise the enemy from the rear, cutting off their retreat and capturing

the entire garrison. 27 This maneuver, so bold yet so simple, never failed

to appeal to Garfield, despite the fact that it never managed to work out

as planned, nor would it in this instance.

A light rain was falling when Garfield's men began their climb. As they

climbed higher, it turned to sleet, and then to a heavy snowfall. On to the

summit pushed Garfield's six hundred, in an eerie silence as the snow

muffled their footsteps and a thick white fog shrouded their movements.

Before the column reached the peak, the sound of gunfire told them the

cavalry had already begun its attack. The trap had been sprung prematurely.

It was not the cavalry's fault but Garfield's, for he had taken the wrong

path. 28 Abandoning all thought of surprise, his infantry ran at full speed

towards the Confederate camp, but the rebels were forewarned. They fled

138 OHIO HISTORY

in haste, with only a feeble show of resistance, leaving behind everything

that could not be scooped up on the run. As Garfield's men rounded the

gap, they saw only the fleeing backs of the enemy. They had time for a few

hurried volleys, but, as one of Garfield's disappointed warriors complained,

"it was like shooting birds on the wing." ²⁹For the first and only time in

the war Garfield himself fired upon the enemy. "I fired one shot among

them," he told his wife, "and the boys say I killed one but I think and

hope not." 30

Most of the rebel garrison scampered to the safety of Virginia. Garfield

sent his cavalry in pursuit, but after a six-mile chase through wild country

they returned to the gap, confident that the dispersed garrison would keep

on running for the rest of the day. 31 Garfield's unscathed soldiers sat down

in the Confederate mess hall to finish the dinner the rebels had left behind.

It was a poor meal but, under the circumstances, delicious. That night they

slept in the enemy's beds, and in the morning they loaded themselves with

bacon, blankets, and other loot and returned to Piketon after burning all

the buildings and destroying what they could not carry. 32 "In most respects,"

Garfield concluded, "it is the completest thing we have accomplished, but

it lacks blood to give it much place among the movements of the time." 33

It was also, though he did not realize it, Garfield's last independent command,

the last time he would lead his own troops in battle.

By the time the fleeing rebel garrison reached Marshall's Virginia head-

quarters to spread their version of the raid, it had begun to assume in their

minds the proportions of a major onslaught.34 Marshall, as usual, flew

into a panic. Although he tried to minimize the loss of the gap as an affair

"of no earthly consequence," he was convinced that it was the signal for a

full-scale invasion of Virginia. In nervous haste he called out the militia,

urged the declaration of martial law, and renewed his pleas for at least

10,000 reinforcements to meet Garfield's "7,500 men," which force he

imagined was even then on the march against him. 35

Garfield, of course, had no such plans. He was finished with eastern

Kentucky, and wanted nothing so much as a change of scenery. His future,

however, was the subject of a tug-of-war within the Union command. A

dashing, successful brigadier general was very much in demand, particularly

if he had political connections. General Fremont, always on the lookout

for a like-minded associate, put in a bid for Garfield, while Secretary of

War Edwin M. Stanton gently hinted to Buell that Garfield's talents should

be put to better work than patrolling a useless valley. Buell replied that

he was preparing an extensive move against Cumberland Gap, and that

THE HERO OF THE SANDY VALLEY 139

he was considering placing Garfield in charge of the operation. It would

have been a choice assignment, involving full command of ten infantry

regiments, five companies of cavalry, and an enviable chance to win fresh

glory, but Buell changed his mind only two days later. He sent Garfield

indefinite instructions to return to Louisville with the Forty-Second Ohio

to receive further orders.36 This meant the end of Garfield's association

with his old regiment. New commands awaited him, with possibly greater

chances for distinction. "But no matter what other regiments may be to

me," he sighed, "I mourn like a bereaved lover for my dear old 42nd."37

Near the end of March, the Forty-Second Ohio, veterans now, marched

out of Piketon, happy to leave the valley they had entered only four months

before. Their faces broadened into wide grins and they gaily cheered as

the regimental band, echoing their thoughts, struck up a familiar gospel

song, "Oh, Ain't I Clad to Get Out of the Wilderness." 38