Ohio History Journal

4                                                   OHIO HISTORY

the whole game,"¹ President Lincoln quietly mobilized the Union sentiment

in Kentucky, while at the same time he professed respect for her "neu-

trality." In September the Confederates, suspecting that they had been out-

foxed, occupied Columbus, in western Kentucky. Her soil invaded, her neu-

trality violated, Kentucky officials called upon the North to expel the

aggressors.²

Kentucky was saved for the Union: but would it remain saved? Con-

federate columns under the skillful direction of Albert Sidney Johnston

massed on her borders, and Confederate agitators were busy raising troops

even in those areas nominally under Union control. Union commanders

followed one another in rapid succession, but none stayed in Kentucky long

enough to organize its defenses. Not even William Tecumseh Sherman, then

at his most eccentric, could provide the effective leadership needed. Sher-

man, in fact, acted so strangely that he was suspected of insanity and hastily

relieved of command.

He was replaced in November by Don Carlos Buell. General Buell soon

realized that his command was little better than an undisciplined rabble. His

officers were slovenly and ignorant of war; the men poorly equipped and

poorly trained. Whatever may have been his later shortcomings as a fighting

leader, Buell was the sort of martinet Kentucky then needed. From his com-

mand post at Louisville he issued a steady stream of orders: officers must

wear uniforms when on duty, reveille and taps must be sounded at the

proper hours, troops must refrain from looting--all these elementary but

essential procedures of military life had to be firmly impressed upon his

raw soldiers. What was to become the Army of the Cumberland began to

take shape under Buell's hand. Bolder men would lead it to victory, but

Buell forged the instrument they would use.³

Buell's strategic objective was Nashville, but before he could safely move

into Tennessee he had to secure his left flank. Two Confederate columns

were pushing through the mountains into southeastern Kentucky. One, under

Felix Zollicoffer, had already marched through the Cumberland Gap and

was menacing the interior. Buell sent his most able lieutenant, George H.

Thomas, to block Zollicoffer's advance. The other threat was less serious, but

it could not be ignored. Humphrey Marshall, with a force rumored to exceed

7,000 men, had entered eastern Kentucky through Pound Gap and was

making his way down the Sandy Valley.

Few less likely battlegrounds could be imagined, for few regions had so

little worth fighting over. This was a land that had scarcely changed since the

days of Daniel Boone; a land where dulcimers still twanged out Tudor

6                                                   OHIO HISTORY

The Forty-Second Ohio Volunteer Infantry had been recruited and or-

ganized in the fall of 1861 by Colonel James A. Garfield. Scarcely thirty

years old, Garfield had been serving his first term in the Ohio Senate at

the outbreak of the war. A part-time preacher for the semi-pacifistic Disci-

ples of Christ, and the president of the Western Reserve Eclectic Institute at

Hiram, Garfield was as unversed in military matters as most of his country-

men. Yet when he entered the army his civilian experience proved remark-

ably appropriate to his new duties. He recruited his regiment with the

techniques learned in the pulpit, and once the regiment was assembled he

found that managing a thousand boys was very much the same whether they

were in school or in uniform. The similarity was intensified by the fact that

many of the soldiers of the Forty-Second were recruited from the ranks of

his students at Hiram.

After a few months of training at Camp Chase, on the outskirts of Col-

umbus, the Forty-Second had been drilled to a neat military polish. But

when, in December, they were ordered to the Kentucky front, they were

still as raw and untested as their colonel. After an enthusiastic send-off at

Columbus, where Governor William Dennison had reviewed the regiment to

the cheers of a patriotic crowd, the boys of the Forty-Second were shipped

by rail to Cincinnati. There men, mules, and supplies were stuffed into two

crowded steamers bound up the Ohio for Catlettsburg at the mouth of the

Sandy River, the point where Ohio, Kentucky, and West Virginia meet.5

Garfield left the regiment in the hands of Lieutenant Colonel Lionel Shel-

don while he sped from Cincinnati to Louisville to confer with Buell. His

first interview left Garfield favorably impressed. "He is a direct martial

spirited man, and has an air of decision and business which I like."⁶ The

general wasted no time on small talk or preliminaries. Brusquely he told

Garfield that he had decided to put him in charge of a brigade to deal with

the invasion of eastern Kentucky. Buell airily confessed he knew little about

the country or the extent of the danger; he left the details of the campaign

entirely up to Garfield, who was to report back to Buell the next day with

a plan of operations.7

Garfield returned to his hotel room almost overwhelmed by the responsi-

bility which Buell had so casually thrust upon him. He had never seen a

battle, "never heard a hostile gun."⁸ He was not a soldier, only a country

schoolmaster who dabbled in politics, and now he found himself with an

independent command in a strange wild country, bearing sole responsibility

for the success or failure of what could be a vital campaign against an un-

known enemy. All that night he paced the floor alone, turning plans over in

THE HERO OF THE SANDY VALLEY                                    7

his mind. The more he studied a map of the region, the more appalled he

became. His command embraced six thousand square miles of wilderness

untapped by railroads or telegraph lines. The land was too desolate to sup-

port an army even in the best of seasons, and certainly not in winter.⁹

Supplies would hold the key to the entire campaign. And here, the one-

time canal boy instantly realized, was where he had the advantage. So long

as he held to the river he could bring supplies up from the Ohio by water,

while Marshall would have to haul every item painfully over the mountains

from Virginia. Marshall's advance, therefore, would be slow. Garfield could

meet him in the valley, block his advance with part of his brigade, and

send another part around the mountains to trap him and cut off his retreat.

Garfield spent the rest of the night working out the details of his campaign.

The next morning he reported to Buell. Buell listened impassively, without

comment or question. Garfield anxiously watched his face, but Buell did not

betray his opinion by so much as a raised eyebrow. The plan must have

pleased him, for Garfield's orders the next day were nothing more than an

elaboration of his own ideas.10

Now the Eighteenth Brigade, Colonel Garfield commanding, had only to

be set in motion. The Forty-Second Ohio would join with what remained of

Colonel Moore's Fourteenth Kentucky and proceed up the valley until they

met the rebels and blocked their advance. Meanwhile, the Fortieth Ohio,

then at Paris, Kentucky, under the command of Colonel Jonathan Cranor,

was to march east from Paris overland to the upper Sandy Valley, where,

with luck, it would sneak behind the rebel rear at just the proper time and

place, and crush them in a nutcracker movement. To round out the brigade,

Garfield was assigned four squadrons of cavalry, mostly Kentuckian, while

the Sixteenth Ohio Infantry was held at Lexington as a reserve.¹l Much to

his dismay, Garfield was given no artillery. Buell insisted that artillery in

that rough country would only prove a hindrance,¹² but Garfield, uncon-

vinced, continued to pester him for field guns at every opportunity.13

The rapidity with which things were happening to him left Garfield breath-

less. He hardly knew what to make of his new job. He regretted being

separated from his boys of the Forty-Second for even a short time.¹4 He

would have preferred to remain as their colonel in a subordinate position in

the main column, but Buell consoled him with the thought that an independ-

ent command offered greater opportunity for distinction.15 Neither Buell nor

Garfield mentioned what must have crossed both their minds: that the op-

portunities for conspicuous failure were equally great.

Garfield did not have much time to brood over the matter. The situation

8                                                   OHIO HISTORY

in the Sandy Valley was deteriorating rapidly. According to rumor Marshall

had already reached Prestonburg, and Colonel Moore's Fourteenth Ken-

tucky had retreated to Catlettsburg. Garfield hastily assembled his staff,

ordered supplies, engaged Union sympathizers familiar with the region to

act as scouts, and hopped on board the steamer Bay City for Catlettsburg.16

Before he left Louisville, Buell gave him some parting advice and washed

his hands of responsibility. "Colonel," he said, "you will be at so great a

distance from me and communication will be so slow and uncertain, that I

shall commit all matters of detail, and much of the fate of the campaign, to

your discretion."¹⁷ Garfield was on his own.

While Garfield was busy in Louisville, his regiment was invading Ken-

tucky. After an acutely uncomfortable voyage the Forty-Second Ohio had

steamed into Catlettsburg on December 19. The Fourteenth Kentucky,

dressed in splendid sky-blue uniforms, lined the shore and greeted its arrival

with cheers of welcome. The Ohio boys, glad to be on land once more, dis-

embarked and unloaded their baggage from the steamer. For the rest of the

day Catlettsburg was a busy, bustling place: mules were coaxed ashore,

wagons loaded, tent stakes pounded into the hard ground, and by sunset a

sea of white tents covered the area, and coffee pots were bubbling over camp

fires. It was all new and exciting. The boys of the Forty-Second had never

slept in tents before and they relished the experience of camping in a hostile

country. No enemy was nearby, but sentries were posted, and, as a private

fondly recalled, "we began to assume the airs of Veteran soldiers, if Vet-

erans have airs peculiar to them.^"18

The next day the brigade set out for Louisa, some twenty miles up the

Big Sandy. Their line of march, so neat and simple on the map, was

furrowed by ridges, hills, and valleys. Roads were a map-maker's fiction;

only bridle paths ran through this country. The 150 mules brought from

Ohio were not yet broken to the harness, and until they were (with language

which must have disturbed Chaplain Jefferson H. Jones) the baggage wagons

had to be pushed painfully up each hill. Superfluous baggage was dumped

by the roadside: discarded mess chests marked the path of the Forty-Second

Ohio through Kentucky. Then it began to rain -- a cold, pelting rain, almost

sleet. The men hunched under their coats and slogged through the mud.

There were no bridges, and swollen streams coursed through every ridge and

gulley. One perversely twisted creek had to be crossed twenty-six times in

five miles. It took two full days to reach Louisa. The march was long re-

membered as "a thirty mile wade."¹⁹

Garfield caught up with his sodden troops at Louisa in time to administer

10                                                     OHIO HISTORY

a moral lesson. His tired, hungry men had been unable to resist the tempta-

tion of foraging in Louisa's unguarded pastures. Amid the squawks of terri-

fied chickens, "poultry, pigs and fences . . . passed away like a dream."

Suddenly the drums sounded the long roll, and the regiment, sensing trouble,

ran to assemble at attention. They formed a hollow square in front of their

colonel, who looked down on them from his horse with obvious anger.

Men of the Forty-Second [he said], I thought when I left our old Buckeye

State at the head of this fine-looking body of soldiers, that I was the proud

commander of a Regiment of gentlemen, but your actions this evening, were I

not better acquainted with each and all of you, would bitterly dispel that illusion.

Soldiers, we came to Kentucky to help her sons free her sacred soil from the

feet of the rebel horde.... Show these Kentuckians, who are your comrades

under one flag, that you did not come to rob and steal . . . and hereafter I shall

believe that I command a regiment of soldiers, and not a regiment of thieves.

The chastened soldiers slunk away, leaving behind a mound of cabbages,

hams, and corn meal. "In our simplicity," one of Garfield's light-fingered

men recalled, "we then thought it wrong to confiscate rebel property, but as

time moved on and our faces became bronzed, so also did our conscientious

scruples, and we totally forgot the moral teachings of Colonel Garfield."²⁰

The next day the rain turned to snow. After spending a sleepless night

huddled around the camp fires for warmth, the brigade prepared to move

further south. Wagon wheels spun helplessly on the ice, and the baggage had

to be loaded onto flatboats and poled up the river.21 Sticking close to the

river so as not to be cut off from its supply line, Garfield's brigade pushed

step by weary step to the source of George's Creek, a branch of the Big

Sandy. There they established a base, called Camp Pardee, and waited for

their stores to catch up with them. "It is the worst country to get around in

I ever saw," Garfield complained. "There is not room enough to form a

regiment in line, for want of level ground."²²

Meanwhile, as the Eighteenth Brigade was toiling up the valley, Hum-

phrey Marshall was slowly advancing from the south to meet Garfield and

his "damn Union Psalm singers."²³ Marshall's expedition had fared badly

from the first. Although he was an experienced soldier with a West Point

education and a distinguished Mexican War record, General Marshall was

a poor choice for this assignment. His mission required speed and daring,

but Marshall's three-hundred-pound bulk and his cautious temperament ren-

dered success unlikely. Petulant with his superiors, indulgent with his men,

Marshall inspired affection but not respect. Discipline inevitably sagged:

one disgruntled aide volunteered to eat the first man Marshall should shoot

for a crime.²⁴

12                                                  OHIO HISTORY

almost none wore overcoats.²⁸ Even to friendly observers they seemed

"ragged, greasy, and dirty . . . more like the bipeds of pandemonium than

beings of this earth." Trying to live off the land in a region that could barely

support its own inhabitants, Marshall's hungry men turned into an army

of beggars. A charitable group of Shakers was appalled to see these soldiers

fight one another over a loaf of bread. "They surrounded our wells like the

locusts of Egypt," the Shakers complained, ". . and they thronged our

kitchen doors and windows, begging for bread like hungry wolves."²⁹

Exposed to the elements, weakened by hunger, many of Marshall's soldiers

succumbed to such unmilitary maladies as the measles, and even Marshall

himself suffered the indignity of mumps. Out of the 3,000 men who had set

out from Virginia, less than 2,000 were fit for combat.30 Marshall, whose

heart, according to an aide, was "tender as a woman's," suffered along with

his men. He often gave up his tent to the sick, and made his bed on the

ground under a wagon.³¹

"I sometimes wonder," Marshall asked himself, "why I undergo all this

exposure and hardship?"³² I was a good question, and one which must have

puzzled the Confederate high command as well. Marshall's expedition had

almost no military justification. He could not use the valley as a base from

which to launch raids behind Buell's lines, for he lacked sufficient cavalry.

In his reports to headquarters he outlined grandiose plans for dashing into

Kentucky, destroying railroads, and wreaking general havoc, but these plans

depended on a large mounted force that, he lamely suggested, would have

to be raised "in some way."33 At other times Marshall spoke as if he re-

garded his campaign as nothing more than a recruiting expedition. He ap-

parently believed that once he set foot upon his native soil, the supporters

of his cause would flock to his standard. He was disappointed. Confederate

recruiters had already skimmed the cream of southern sympathizers from

the valley. Those left behind were mostly indifferent to the struggle.³⁴ Even

if Marshall found a large body of eager volunteers, how could he arm them?

Many of his own soldiers were without weapons. He had a few good Belgian

rifles, but most of his men carried nothing more deadly than shotguns or

squirrel rifles. General Robert E. Lee sympathized with Marshall's plight,

but he too had no rifles to spare. The best he could do was to offer to supply

Marshall with pikes.35

By early January, Marshall had inched his way to Paintsville, only

eighteen miles from Garfield's camp on George's Creek. Advance scouts

from both sides traded shots and scurried back to base with the news that

a large enemy force was nearby. Marshall frantically dug in, fortifying the

THE HERO OF THE SANDY VALLEY                                   13

approaches to Paintsville to meet the expected assault. His position was

difficult. He could, conceivably, dash forward, surprise Garfield, and smash

his way through his lines, but this was risky. And even if it should succeed,

what could Marshall do then, except continue his aimless advance, with

each step carrying him further from his base of supplies and closer to the

enemy? He could sit in Paintsville and wait for the enemy to attack, but

supplies and morale were too low to survive a lengthy siege. To retire without

a fight would be shameful, so Marshall decided to hold the line at Paints-

ville for the time being and hope for the best. If dislodged, he vowed he

would strike for the interior of Kentucky "and rouse the country as I go or

fall in the effort." At all costs he had to avoid the humiliation of a retreat

from his native state, "for I know that if I am driven over the mountains

again," he told his commander, "our cause in Kentucky is lost."36

Garfield too was in a quandary. From the reports of his scouts and spies

he had pieced together a reasonably accurate picture of the forces moving

against him. He knew that Marshall had between 2,000 and 2,500 men en-

trenched behind the Paintsville fortifications, and an additional three or

four hundred cavalry at a separate camp on Jenny's Creek.37 He also knew

that his own force was pitifully weak in comparison. His only reliable

soldiers were the thousand well-equipped but green recruits of the Forty-

Second Ohio, and about five hundred poorly armed Kentuckians in Colonel

Moore's regiment. Most of the Kentucky units in his command were "little

better than a well disposed, Union-loving mob," while his "demoralized,

discouraged" Kentucky cavalry, untrained and unarmed, was worthless for

any task more demanding than scout duty.38 The Fortieth Ohio under Colonel

Cranor, which was supposedly hurrying with reinforcements, was lost some-

where in the Kentucky mountains. Garfield had heard no word from Cranor

from the time he left Louisville until January 1, when a weary scout stag-

gered into camp with the news that Cranor was still about a week's march

away.³⁹

According to a popular military maxim of the day, which Garfield must

have known, an attacking force was supposed to outnumber the defenders by

about three to two. By this rule of thumb Garfield needed three or four

thousand men rather than the 1,500 he could muster. Furthermore, he keenly

regretted his lack of artillery and was convinced that without it he could not

dislodge Marshall.⁴⁰

Had Garfield been looking for excuses to justify inactivity, he could

certainly have found enough to satisfy even Buell. Instead, Garfield, a

strong believer in "the success of vigorous and well directed audacity," was

14                                                   OHIO HISTORY

eager for action. Overriding the cautious protests of his officers at a council

of war, he prepared to advance on Marshall's works.⁴¹ Enraptured with the

prospect of capturing an enemy army, he brushed aside all objections. "I

cannot tell you how deeply alive to the scheme in hand are all the impulses

and energies of my nature," he wrote his wife. "I begin to see the obstacles

melt away before me, and the old feeling of succeeding in what I undertake

gradually taking quiet possession of me."42

Too impatient to wait for the Fortieth Ohio to catch up with him, he

ordered Cranor to cut south in the direction of Prestonburg. This would

bring Cranor's regiment into the valley about ten miles south of Marshall's

camp at Paintsville.⁴³ Garfield was still obsessed with his original plan of

surrounding and trapping Marshall's force. However Napoleonic this scheme

may have seemed in his eyes, it was actually the height of recklessness.

Cranor's regiment united with his own would have given his brigade a rough

equality with the enemy. Instead, Garfield chose to divide his force in the

face of an enemy superior to each of his columns. Garfield was allowing

a fortified enemy to come between his right and left wings -- in effect, de-

liberately allowing himself to be flanked. To make matters worse, he had

made no provision for cooperation between Cranor and himself. Indeed, he

was not even sure of Cranor's location nor of the condition of his regiment.

Rather than trapping Marshall, the most likely result of this maneuver would

be the destruction of Garfield's own army should Marshall be so unobliging

as to attack each of Garfield's isolated wings before the trap closed. When

Garfield looked back on his campaign in the years after the war, he shud-

dered at his folly. "It was a very rash and imprudent affair on my part," he

admitted. "If I had been an officer of more experience, I probably should not

have made the attack. As it was, having gone into the army with the notion

that fighting was our business, I didn't know any better."⁴⁴

In the comedy of errors which constituted the eastern Kentucky campaign,

Garfield held the advantage. His mistakes resulted from a weakness for elab-

orate plans and combinations, but Marshall had no plan at all. It has been

said that God judges the sins of the warm-blooded and the sins of the cold-

blooded on a different scale. Garfield was a warm-blooded commander. He

may have been impetuous and over-optimistic, but he was not afraid to take

a chance, and he was resourceful enough to exploit good fortune when it

came his way. Marshall, huddled behind his trenches, allowed his opponent

to seize the initiative at every turn.

Marshall's works were thrown up at the foot of a hill on the main road

three miles south of Paintsville. Three roads led into Paintsville. Uncertain

THE HERO OF THE SANDY VALLEY                                    15

which approach Garfield would take, Marshall posted pickets on each road

about a half mile above the town. Within the town he stationed a regiment

of infantry and his artillery battery, ready to rush to the defense of which-

ever route should be threatened.

By January 4, Garfield had reached the outskirts of Paintsville. Cranor's

location was still a mystery, but a timely cavalry reinforcement had brought

the Eighteenth Brigade to something close to full strength. This cavalry

squadron actually belonged to Garfield's political crony Jacob Dolson Cox,

now a major general in charge of operations in the neighboring Kanawha

Valley. Cox, a good neighbor, lent some of his cavalry, commanded by Lieu-

tenant Colonel William M. Bolles, to his friend for a few days. The tem-

porary nature of these reinforcements gave urgency to Garfield's moves; he

could not afford a long siege but had to dislodge Marshall while he still had

the loan of this squadron of cavalry. But which road should he take? Gar-

field decided on deception. On the morning of January 5 he divided his

forces into three small detachments and sent them down each of the roads,

placing cavalry in front to mask their size. The first group rode down the

river road on the left. When they encountered the Confederate pickets, they

made a show of noise and activity. As expected, the pickets reported their

movements to the regiment in town, which came charging up the road to

their defense. About an hour later Garfield's second detachment made a

similar demonstration against the pickets on the hill road at the right.

Marshall's reserve regiment wheeled about to march to their aid. When they

reached the left flank they heard of the attack on the center. Marshall's forces,

weary from scurrying from threat to non-existent threat, were now convinced

that a large army was moving against them on all three roads. They fled to

the security of their entrenchments in wild panic, leaving Paintsville de-

serted.⁴⁵

Behind his earthworks Marshall nervously peered up the road for signs

of the approaching enemy. While he was waiting, messengers brought reports

of Cranor's force closing in on his position from the east. Even though

Marshall was operating in supposedly friendly country, his intelligence

reports continually misled him. He believed the most exaggerated rumors

of Garfield's strength. Prudent by nature, Marshall easily convinced himself

that his position was untenable. Leaving his cavalry behind to disguise his

intentions, he packed his wagons, burned what he could not carry, and re-

treated up the valley.⁴⁶

This was the decisive moment of the campaign. From this point on Marsh-

all could only keep retreating, with no logical place to stop this side of

16                                                   OHIO HISTORY

Virginia. Garfield's only task would be to prod him along more quickly.

It was fortunate for Garfield that Cranor did not obey his order to block

Marshall's line of retreat, for if Marshall had been trapped he would have

been compelled to stand and fight. Instead, Garfield gained his objective

without firing a shot. The bloodless victory at Paintsville was the true turning

point. The more spectacular action which followed was all anticlimax.

Unaware that the enemy had flown the "trap" he was setting, Garfield

picked his way cautiously through the empty streets of Paintsville. He dis-

patched his borrowed cavalry up Jenny's Creek to ferret out the rebel cavalry

encamped there, while with the rest of his men he edged toward Marshall's

fortifications. Night had already fallen on the evening of January 7 when

Garfield finally entered the deserted earthworks. He was struck by the signs

of Marshall's hasty exit -- "their camp fires were still smoldering, and the

scattered remnants of their stores lay in sad confusion. The frozen tracks of

thousands of feet were plain under the light of the new moon."⁴⁷

He had barely time to savor the experience of sitting at Marshall's desk

when an urgent message came from Colonel Bolles that he had contacted the

enemy cavalry. Garfield ordered him to hold off his attack until he came

to his aid. He assembled a detachment of four hundred men, ferried them

across the Big Sandy on flatboats, and then struck out across the hills for

Jenny's Creek. The plan was his old favorite --  the flanking movement.

While Colonel Bolles engaged the enemy's attention, Garfield would sweep

behind them and attack their rear.48 Even under ideal conditions this type of

maneuver (to which Garfield seemed addicted) required delicate timing;

at night, through unfamiliar country, its success was doubly uncertain.

Garfield's men marched for thirteen miles, "wading streams of floating

ice, climbing rocky steeps, and struggling through the half-frozen mud,"

until ready to collapse.49 Jenny's Creek, swollen by the recent snows, had

to be bridged at two separate points. Garfield himself stood waist deep in the

swirling water as he directed the construction.50 They reached the junction

point at midnight, only to find the enemy gone. Instead of waiting for Gar-

field to arrive, Colonel Bolles had attacked and dispersed the rebel cavalry

on his own, killing six, wounding several more, and so scattering them that

they were of no further use to Marshall.51 Garfield's march had been a wild

goose chase, and his half exhausted soldiers had to turn around and trudge

the thirteen miles back to camp. As they marched, they grumbled about their

officers, "mounted on good horses," who rode in comfort. Some of the men,

unable to take another step, lay down behind fences, and would have frozen

to death had they not been prodded awake and forced to move on.52 As they

THE HERO OF THE SANDY VALLEY                                     17

neared camp, a volley of bullets from the hills drove them scurrying for

cover. This was the Forty-Second Ohio's baptism of fire, but the circum-

stances were far from heroic, since the barrage was from their own advance

pickets who had mistaken them for the enemy.53

Returning to camp, they found that Colonel Cranor and the Fortieth Ohio

had arrived during their absence. Wisely disregarding Garfield's order to

move towards Prestonburg across the enemy's line of retreat, Cranor had

gone to Paintsville instead, where he could join the rest of the brigade. His

arrival was timely, for it coincided with the departure of Colonel Bolles's

borrowed cavalry. Worn out by their long march across Kentucky, Cranor's

men needed rest before they could be of much use, but the impatient Gar-

field could not wait. As he saw Marshall slip from his grasp, he yearned to

pursue: "I felt as though we had . . . out-generalled the enemy, but I was

unwilling he should get away without a trial of our strength."⁵⁴ He as-

sembled all of his men who were fit to march, about 1,100 in all, stuffed

their haversacks with three days' rations, and at noon on January 9 moved

up the river road. "I fear we shall not be able to catch the enemy in a

'stern chase,' " he said, using the jargon of his boyhood canal days, "but

we shall try."⁵⁵ Resorting once again to his pet flanking maneuver, he dis-

patched his cavalry to follow the enemy's line of retreat, while Garfield at

the head of his foot soldiers planned to take a roundabout route to cut off

their retreat.56

The pursuit was hampered by cold, sleety rain, and later by the steady

harassment of Marshall's rear guard. Felled trees blocked their path, and as

they climbed over these obstructions, hidden snipers fired pot shots and

then melted back into the hills. These wild volleys did no damage, but Gar-

field, now alert to danger, picked his way "inch by inch" up the valley to

the mouth of Abbott's Creek.57 As the tempo of skirmishing increased, Gar-

field realized that he was approaching the main body of Marshall's forces,

and that a battle was imminent. He sent a courier back to Colonel Sheldon at

Paintsville with an urgent order to bring reinforcements. Shortly after dusk

he led his men to the top of a high hill overlooking Abbott's Creek, where

they bedded down for the night. The enemy was too near to permit the

luxury of camp fires. Wrapped in their greatcoats, Garfield's men shivered

through the night as an icy rain beat down upon them.⁵⁸

That same night in Marshall's camp, the dispirited, retreating rebels de-

cided they had had their fill of Kentucky. A round robin signed by Marshall's

company captains urged him to quit the state for winter quarters in Virginia

or Tennessee.⁵⁹

THE HERO OF THE SANDY VALLEY                                    19

all's forces lay deployed. It was a strong defensive position, with the ad-

vantages of terrain and concealment in Marshall's favor. Garfield sent two

companies up the slope of the ridge on his side of the valley to clear it of

any rebels who might be stationed there. While they were climbing up the

hill, Garfield in the valley below fretted with impatience. Too keyed up to

stand passively by, he ordered the rest of his troops into battalion drill,

"for the sake of bravado and audacity," as under the eyes of the puzzled

Confederates they wheeled and marched as if on parade.62 By marching his

men round and round the base of the hill Garfield also hoped to give the

watching Confederates an exaggerated impression of his forces. Apparently

the deception succeeded, for Marshall, never one to minimize difficulties,

was convinced that Garfield commanded at least 5,000 men.63

Assured by his scouts that the hill was unoccupied, Garfield transferred

his command post to the top, on a peak ominously named Grave Yard Point.

His next step was to determine the precise location of the enemy, but Gar-

field's cavalry, which should have been responsible for reconnaissance, was

still off somewhere chasing Marshall down the wrong valley. Garfield had

to make do with what he had. He ordered his personal mounted escort, less

than a dozen men in all, to ride across the plain in the hope of drawing the

enemy's fire. As expected, Marshall's green troops nervously blazed away

long before the riders came within range, revealing their position.64

The enemy's salvo had scarcely ceased reverberating before Garfield

launched two Kentucky infantry companies under Captain Frederick A. Wil-

liams across the valley to dislodge the rebels. Holding cartridge boxes and

rifles above their heads, they waded the icy, waist-deep creek, and dashed

towards the opposing ridge. This was the opportunity for which Marshall's

artillery captain had been waiting. For a month he had nursed his precious

guns, hauling them over mountains, tugging them through mud, and de-

laying the advance of the entire brigade. Now, all his work could be justi-

fied. He zeroed in on the charging federals, waiting until they reached point-

blank range before pulling the lanyard. With a high-pitched scream a twelve-

pound shell lobbed high in the air, headed unerringly for Williams' ad-

vance guard --- and plopped harmlessly into the mud. Marshall's shells were

all duds, and although his cannon boomed noisily away throughout the rest

of the afternoon, they inflicted no damage other than splattering a few fed-

erals with mud.

When Garfield's line had crossed the valley, they reached a virtually

perpendicular ridge. Grabbing hold of projecting limbs and roots, they

scurried up the hillside as best they could. The hill was too thickly wooded

20                                                   OHIO HISTORY

to permit elaborate tactical maneuvers. Each man climbed and fought at his

own speed, firing and reloading as he advanced. From the safety of a large

clump of rocks at the top of the ridge, the rebels let loose volley after volley

at the exposed Union line, but the steep downhill angle of fire, combined

with the natural tendency of green troops to aim high, caused most of their

bullets to whiz wildly over their enemies' heads. Their fire inflicted a fearful

toll on tree branches and low-flying birds, but it left Garfield's men virtually

unscathed. Eventually they worked their way to the top of the hill, close

enough to exchange curses as well as shots. Every now and then a group of

rebels would detach themselves from their sheltering boulders and dash down

the hillside. The Union troops would then fall back for a while, and then

climb up once more.

This was the pattern of the day's fighting: a succession of uncoordinated

charges and withdrawals, with a great deal of shooting and very little blood-

shed--"a regular 'bushwhacking' battle."⁶⁵ Garfield handled his troops with

little imagination or enterprise, throwing them against the rebel line in

driblets, never committing more than two or three hundred at any one time.

Marshall, for his part, fought a completely passive battle, content, by and

large, merely to maintain his original position.66 At various times during the

afternoon a well directed charge could have sent Garfield's disorganized

men reeling down the valley, but Marshall did not really want a victory.

He was satisfied to continue his retreat in peace.

By the bloody standard of later battles Middle Creek was a tame affair,

but to the participants, few of whom had seen combat before, it was a dan-

gerous and exciting afternoon. From his vantage spot on Grave Yard Point,

overlooking the smoke-filled valley, Garfield had no doubt but that he was

witnessing "one of the most terrific fights which has been recorded in the

war."⁶⁷ By late afternoon Garfield feared that the battle was approaching its

climax. He vividly reconstructed the situation later to his wife: "My re-

serve was now reduced to a mere handfull, and the agony of the moment was

terrible. The whole hill was enclosed in such a volume of smoke as rolls from

the mouth of a volcano. Thousands of gun flashes leaped like lightning from

the clouds. Every minute the fight grew hotter. In my agony of anxiety I

prayed to God for the reinforcement to appear." He was just on the point

of leading his men in person on a final desperate charge when he looked

behind him "and saw the Hiram banner sweep round the hill."68

It was Colonel Sheldon, at the head of seven hundred reinforcements from

Paintsville. Since receiving Garfield's message earlier that morning they

had been marching at a frenzied pace, their urgency stimulated by the distant

THE HERO OF THE SANDY VALLEY                                    21

sound of gunfire. When they finally hove into sight, they were greeted by a

wild cheer from their embattled comrades, who took new heart at their

appearance and charged once more up the hill, forcing the rebels back to

the rocky summit. Night was falling when Sheldon's reinforcements began

to pick their way across the muddy valley. By the time they reached the

foot of the hill it was too dark to fight. Fearing that his men might fire on

one another in the dark, Garfield recalled his troops, leaving Marshall still

ensconced upon his ridge.69 On this inconclusive note the battle of Middle

Creek came to an end. "We had many hard fights for two years after," a

veteran later told his grandchildren, "but Middle Creek was cold and cheer-

less, and a sharp fight."70

That night Garfield's men slept on their arms on Grave Yard Point, con-

fident that the fighting would be renewed in the morning. In the middle of

the night they were startled to see a brilliant light flash from across the

valley. It was Marshall burning his stores to lighten the load of his soldiers,

who were then stealthily evacuating the scene of the battle. In the morning

Garfield's cavalry, "ingloriously" absent during the fighting, finally ar-

rived.71 Garfield sent them after the retreating enemy, but after a desultory

pursuit they drifted back to camp empty-handed.72 Supplies were too low for

the brigade to follow Marshall in force, nor could they remain on Grave

Yard Point forever, so Garfield ordered his troops to fall back to replenish

their stores and lick their wounds.

These wounds were remarkably light, considering how sharp the fighting

had been. Only twenty-one men had been wounded, three of them mortally.73

The rebel dead, scattered over the field, were buried by Garfield's men

where they fell. From the excited, boastful reports of his soldiers Garfield

estimated that the Confederates had suffered 125 killed and at least that

many wounded. He even implied that he had seen twenty-seven, or sixty, or

eighty-five of these dead himself.74 Marshall, who was certainly in a better

position to know, calculated his losses at no more than eleven killed and

fifteen wounded. When he came to estimate Garfield's casualties, however,

Marshall too displayed considerable imaginative flair, claiming to have

killed 250 and wounded 300 more. "We saw his dead borne in numbers from

the field," he said.⁷⁵

It was not bluster alone which led Garfield to exaggerate the carnage

at Middle Creek. This was his first battle, his first sight of corpses, and it

left him shaken. "It was a terrible sight," he told his family, "to walk over

the battle field and see the horrible faces of the dead rebels stretched on

the hill in all shapes and positions."⁷⁶ Years later, talking to his Ashtabula

22                                                    OHIO HISTORY

neighbor William Dean Howells, he declared that "at the sight of these

dead men whom other men had killed, something went out of him, the habit

of his lifetime, that never came back again: the sense of the sacredness of

life, and the impossibility of destroying it."77

Another soldier, Captain Oliver Wendell Holmes, after long reflection,

later concluded that "the generation that carried on the war has been set

aside by its experience . . . [for] in our youth our hearts were touched

with fire. It was given to us to learn at the outset that life is a profound and

passionate thing."⁷⁸ Holmes thought that the sufferings of war had made

its participants better men; but suffering need not always be ennobling: it

can teach the cheapness of human life as well as its importance. Garfield

was neither brutalized nor ennobled by his wartime acquaintance with vio-

lence and death, but he was changed. Along with his entire generation,

Garfield had lost his innocence. His world--the sheltered, benevolent, provi-

dential world of pre-war America--was shattered, and try as he might, it

could never be reassembled.

After tidying up the battlefield the Eighteenth Brigade withdrew to Pres-

tonburg. Finding that that "mud-cursed village" had been picked bare

by Marshall, Garfield had to fall back all the way to Paintsville.79

Marshall interpreted (or professed to interpret) Garfield's return to Paints-

ville as an admission that the federals had been "signally and unmistakably

whipped."⁸⁰ Garfield's "footsore" but proud soldiers, however, never

doubted that the victory had been theirs. "Soldiers of the Eighteenth

Brigade!" their colonel grandiloquently proclaimed,

I am proud of you. You have marched in the face of a foe of double your

numbers. . . . With no experience but the consciousness of your own man-

hood, you have driven him from his stronghold, leaving scores of his bloody

dead unburied. I greet you as brave men. Our common country will not

forget you. I have recalled you from the pursuit that you may regain vigor

for still greater exertions. . . . Officers and soldiers, your duty has been

nobly done.81

Back in Ohio these sentiments were heartily applauded. Morale was low

on the home front. "You scarce meet a man that dont look and talk

gloomily," Garfield's friend J. H. Rhodes observed.⁸² To victory-starved

northerners the news from Middle Creek was a welcome relief from the

constant humiliation of defeat and inactivity. Fathers and friends of the

boys of the Forty-Second Ohio took Garfield to their hearts. "The feeling

of the public for you has deepened remarkably," Rhodes reported. "I can

THE HERO OF THE SANDY VALLEY                                    23

not begin to tell you how strongly you are fixed in their affections. . . . I

have heard the most extravagant expectations of your future." Even Gov-

ernor David Tod let it be known that he had forgiven Garfield for opposing

his nomination, and was ready to help further his career.⁸³ From General

Buell came an official commendation for his "perseverance, fortitude, and

gallantry,"⁸⁴ and a movement was afoot, inspired by the Ohio Senate, to

promote Garfield to general.⁸⁵

To satisfy a public avid for details of its new hero, the press invented

graphic accounts of Garfield shucking off his coat in the heat of battle and

charging in his shirt sleeves while shouting, "Go in boys! Give 'em hell!"86

Newspapers all over the North hailed "the bold lion in the path of Humphrey

Marshall" for having led "the quickest and most thorough move since the

breaking out of the Great Rebellion." Colonel Garfield, "the Kentucky

hero, who so signally routed the Falstaffian Humphrey Marshall," was a

ten-day wonder until news of Thomas' more spectacular victory over Zolli-

coffer at Mill Springs gave the public a new hero to admire.⁸⁷

On the Confederate side of the lines the "Falstaffian" General Marshall

vigorously insisted that he, not Garfield, was the true victor of Middle

Creek. "Let a few facts decide that question," he argued. "He came to

attack and did attack, and he was in force far superior to mine. He did

not move me from a single position I chose to occupy. At the close of the

day each man of mine was just where he had been posted in the morning."

If Garfield had won, he asked, why did he not pursue? Instead, he had

fallen back to his base at Paintsville, "whence he came in mass to drive

me out of the State. He returned without accomplishing his mission."88

There was some force to these arguments. Neither side, in truth, had

come out of Middle Creek with much glory. But no amount of explanation

could disguise the fact that Garfield was now well established in Kentucky

while Marshall was leaving the state. Garfield may or may not have won

the battle; he certainly won the campaign. Marshall insisted that hunger,

"an enemy greater than the Lincolnites,"⁸⁹ was the only reason for his with-

drawal, but he missed the point. Supplies were as important to military

success as victory in battle. Garfield handled his supply problem with

imagination and skill, Marshall trusted to luck. A truly enterprising com-

mander would have solved his supply shortage (as some Confederate gen-

erals were to do) by attacking the federals and seizing their stores.

Instead Marshall was content to manufacture excuses,90 and slink away.

His only problem now was in which direction to retreat. His proper course

should have been to head towards central Kentucky and join with the other

24                                                    OHIO HISTORY

Confederate column. By drawing Garfield away from his river supply line,

Marshall could neutralize his opponent's main advantage. Originally this

had been Marshall's intention, and he had grandly sworn to die in the

attempt if necessary. By mid-January, however, the situation in Kentucky

had changed. With the defeat and death of Zollicoffer at Mill Springs, the

Confederate invasion of Kentucky had collapsed, leaving Marshall with

no place to go but Lack to Virginia. Besides, he was now thoroughly sick

of Kentucky. Disease, hunger, and desertions had inspired him with "a per-

sonal hatred for the country," and he longed to return once more "to the

haunts of cultivated men."⁹¹ Later that month, when he was ordered to

fall back to Virginia through Pound Gap, he hastened to comply.92 Except

for a small garrison left to guard the gap, eastern Kentucky was now free

of Confederates.

[To be concluded in the next issue]

THE AUTHOR: Allan Peskin, who teaches

history at Fenn College, is writing a biography

of President Garfield.

NOTES

THE HERO OF THE SANDY VALLEY

1 John G. Nicolay and John Hay, eds., Complete Works of Abraham Lincoln (Cumberland Gap,

Tenn., 1894), VI, 360.

2 For a discussion of Kentucky's "neutrality," see E. Merton Coulter, The Civil War and

Readjustment in Kentucky (Chapel Hill, N.C., 1926).

3 See the sketch of Buell in Whitelaw Reid's Ohio in the War: Her Statesmen, Generals and

Soldiers (Columbus, 1893), I, 695-724.

4 The War of the Rebellion: A Compilation of the Official Records of the Union and Con-

federate Armies (Washington, 1880-1901), Series I, Vol. IV, 225-230. Cited hereafter as Official

Records. As all references are to Series I, the series number is omitted from subsequent citations.

5 Otto F. Bond, ed., Under the Flag of the Nation: Diaries and Letters of a Yankee Volunteer

in the Civil War (Columbus, 1961), 12-13; F. H. Mason, The Forty-Second Ohio Infantry

(Cleveland, 1876), 46-47.

6 Garfield to J. H. Rhodes, December 17, 1861. J. H. Rhodes was a close friend and colleague

of Garfield's at Hiram. This letter is part of a collection of Garfield material, mainly of a per-

sonal nature, which has been loaned by the Garfield family to Professors Harry Brown and

Frederick DeForest Williams of Michigan State University, who kindly allowed me to examine it.

All Garfield letters cited are in this collection unless otherwise noted.

7 Garfield to his wife, December 16, 1861.

8 James A. Garfield, "My Campaign in East Kentucky," North American Review, CXLIII

(1866), 527. This account must be used with care, since it is apparently a hastily dictated memoir

prepared for purposes of campaign publicity. The dates are incorrect, as are many of the

details.

9 Garfield to his wife, December 16, 1861.

10 Garfield, "My Campaign in East Kentucky," 527-528.

11 Official Records, VII, 503-504; Garfield to his wife, December 16, 1861.

12 Official Records, VII, 22-23.

13 For example, see Official Records, VII, 25, 26, 27.

14 Garfield to his wife, December 20, 1861.

15 Garfield to J. H. Rhodes, December 17, 1861.

16 Garfield to his wife, December 20, 1861; Garfield, "My Campaign in East Kentucky," 528.

17 Garfield, "My Campaign in East Kentucky," 528.

18 Bond, Under the Flag of the Nation, 13-14.

19 Mason, The Forty-Second Ohio, 53-55.

20 Bond, Under the Flag of the Nation, 14-15; Mason, The Forty-Second Ohio, 54-55, 57. The

two accounts differ on details of this incident.

21 Mason, The Forty-Second Ohio, 55; Garfield, "My Campaign in East Kentucky," 529.

22 Garfield to his mother, January 26, 1861.

23 Humphrey Marshall to Alexander Stephens, December 13, 1861. All Marshall letters cited

here are at the Filson Club, Louisville, Kentucky. I am indebted to Mr. Jon Kaliebe, who

kindly allowed me to examine an unpublished paper entitled "The Big Sandy Campaign," from

which this and the subsequent references to Marshall letters have been taken.

24 Robert Underwood Johnson and Clarence Clough Buel, eds., Battles and Leaders of the

Civil War (New York, 1887-88), I, 397.

25 See Official Records, IV, 495.

26 Ibid., VII, 43.

27 Kaliebe, "The Big Sandy Campaign."

28 Johnson and Buel, Battles and Leaders, I, 394.

29 Clement Eaton, A History of the Southern Confederacy (New York, 1961), 95.

30 Official Records, VII, 43, 45.

31 Johnson and Buel, Battles and Leaders, I, 395-397.

32 Humphrey Marshall to Alexander Stephens, December 23, 1861.

33 Official Records, VII, 43.

34 In his attempts to raise troops, Marshall was usually disappointed. As he later disgustedly

observed, "It was wonderful to see how ignorant, how apathetic, how utterly unconscious of the

despotism which guarded their moral nature those people were. . . . Sometimes they would

84                                                                        OHIO HISTORY

join a company and desert before they had marched twenty miles." Official Records, LII, Pt. 2,

p. 284.

35 Johnson and Buel, Battles and Leaders, I, 394.

36 Official Records, VII, 46.

37 Ibid., 25-26.

38 Ibid., 32: see also p. 27; Garfield, "My Campaign in East Kentucky," 529.

39 Carfield to his wife, January 1, 1862.

40 Official Records, VII, 25-26.

41 Garfield to his wife, January 13, 1862.

42 Garfield to his wife, January 1, 1862.

43 Official Records, VII, 26.

44 Reid, Ohio in the War, I, 747n.

45: Official Records, VII, 26-28; Mason, The Forty-Second Ohio, 59-60; (Carfield, 'My Cam-

paign in East Kentucky," 530-531; Garfield to his wife, January 18, 1862.

46 Garfield, "My Campaign in East Kentucky," 530-531.

47 Garfield to his wife, January 13, 1862.

48 Ibid.

49 Bond, Under the Flag of the Nation, 17.

50 Mason, The Forty-Second Ohio, 65.

51 Official Records, VII, 28: Garfield to his wife, January 13, 1862.

52 Bond, Under the Flag of the Nation, 17-18.

53 Garfield to his wife, January 13, 1862.

54 Ibid.

55 Official Records, VII, 28-30.

56 Garfield to his wife, January 26, 1862.

57 Ibid.

58 Ibid.; Mason, The Forty-Second Ohio, 67.

59 Official Records, VII, 52.

60 Garfield to his wife, January 13, 1862; Mason, The Forty-Second Ohio, 67.

61 Official Records, VII, 30.

62 Garfield to his wife, January 13, 1862.

63 See Official Records, VII, 56.

64 Garfield to his wife, January 13, 1862: Mason, The Forty-Second Ohio, 69. In Confederate

accounts of the battle this ruse becomes transformed into a full-scale cavalry charge. See

Official Records, VII, 46-48; Johnson and Buel, Battles and Leaders, I, 396.

65 Frederick A. Henry, Captain Henry of Geauga: A Family Chronicle (Cleveland, 1942), 113-

114.

66 Official Records, V1I, 56.

67 Garfield to his wife, January 13, 1862.

68 Ibid.

69 Mason, The Forty-Second Ohio, 72-73; Henry, Captain Henry of Geauga, 113; Garfield to

his wife, January 13, 1862.

70 Henry, Captain Henry of Geauga, 114.

71 Garfield to his wife, January 13, 1862.

72 Official Records, VII, 31.

73 Ibid.

74 Garfield to his wife, January 13, 1862; Official Records, VII, 29, 31; Henry, Captain Henry

of Geauga, 113; Bond, Under the Flag of the Nation, 19.

75 Official Records, VII, 48.

76 Garfield to his mother, January 26, 1862.

77 William Dean Howells, Years of My Youth (New York, 1916), 205-206.

78 Max Lerner, ed., The Mind and Faith of Justice Holmes: His Speeches, Essays, Letters and

Judicial Opinions (Boston, 1943), 16.

79 Official Records, VII, 31; Bond, Under the Flag of the Nation, 19.

80 Official Records, VII, 56.

81 Quoted in Theodore Clarke Smith, The Life and Letters of James Abram Garfield (New

Haven, Conn., 1925), I, 193.

82 J. H. Rhodes to Garfield, February 6, 1862. James A. Garfield Papers, Library of Congress.

83 J. H. Rhodes to Garfield, January 6, [1862]. Garfield Papers, Library of Congress. This

letter is incorrectly dated by the Library of Congress as 1861.

NOTES                                                                                   85

84 Official Records, VII, 23.

85 See petition of Ohio Senate to President Lincoln [copy], February 3, 1862, in Garfield

Papers, Library of Congress.

86 Cleveland Herald, January 16, 1862.

87 Newspaper comments collected by J. H. Rhodes from the New York Post and other papers

and quoted in a letter to Garfield, January 20, 1862. Garfield Papers, Library of Congress.

88 Official Records, VII, 56. See also ibid., 46-48, 55-57; Johnson and Buel, Battles and

Leaders, I, 396.

89 Official Records, VII, 48.

90 Ibid., 48-50.

91 Humphrey Marshall to Alexander Stephens, February 22, 1862.

92 Official Records, VII, 57-58.

WILLIAM SANDERS SCARBOROUGH

* This is the second and final part of an article on William Sanders Scarborough, the first

part of which appeared in the October 1962 issue (v. 71, pp. 203-226).

1 Transactions of the American Philological Association, 1882, XIII (Cambridge, Mass., 1882),

iv. The Transactions of the American Philological Association will be referred to hereafter as

Transactions only.

2 Ibid., 1884. XV (Cambridge, Mass., 1885), vi.

3 At this commencement Jebb had received an honorary LL.D. Dictionary of National Biography,

1901-1911 (Oxford, 1912), 367-369.

4 Transactions, 1885, XVI (Cambridge, Mass., 1886), xxxvi.

Ibid., 1886, XVII (Boston, 1887), ii; ibid., 1887, XVIII (Boston, 1888), ii.

6 Education, IX (1888-89), 263-269.

7 Ibid., 396-399.

8 Ibid., X (1889-90), 28-33.

9 Transactions, 1888, XIX (Boston, 1889), xxxvi-xxxviii; ibid., 1889, XX (Boston, 1889), v-vi.

10 Ibid., 1890, XXI (Boston, n.d.), xlii-xliv. Later, he read a paper with the same title before

the National Educational Association.

11 Ibid., 1891, XXII (Boston, n.d.), 1-lii.

12 Education, XII (1891-92), 286-293. The paper was based largely on Grote's History, VII,

154.

13 Education, XIV (1893-94), 213-218. It was also summarized in Transactions, 1892, XXIII

(Boston, n.d.), vi-viii.

14 "Hunc Inventum Inveni," Transactions, 1893, XXIV (Boston, n.d.), xvi-xix.

15 Ibid., 1894, XXV (Boston, n.d.), xxiii-xxv.

16 Ibid., 1895, XXVI (Boston, n.d.), xi.

17 Ibid., 1896, XXVII (Boston, n.d.), xlvi-xlviii.

18 Ibid., 1898, XXIX (Boston, n.d.), lviii-lx.

19 Education, XIX (1898-99), 213-221, 285-293.

20 Transactions, 1902, XXXIII (Boston, n.d.), xx.

21 Ibid., 1903, XXXIV (Boston, n.d.), xli.

22 Ibid., 1906, XXXVII (Boston, n.d.), ii, xxx-xxxi.

23 Ibid., 1907, XXXVIII (Boston, n.d.), ii, xxii-xxiii.

24 Ibid., 1908, XXXIX (Boston, n.d.), v.

25 Ibid., 1911, XLII (Boston, n.d.), ii.

26 Ibid., 1912, XLIII (Boston, n.d.), ix-xvii.

27 Ibid., 1913, XLIV (Boston, n.d.), iii.

²⁸ Ibid., 1916, XLVII (Boston, n.d.), ii.

29 Arnett was born at Brownsville, Pennsylvania, March 16, 1838, and died at Wilberforce,

Ohio, October 7, 1906. For a listing of a collection of his papers, see The Benjamin William

Arnett Papers at Carnegie Library, Wilberforce University, Wilberforce, Ohio, compiled by

Casper L. Jordan (Wilberforce, Ohio, 1958).

30 Leonard E. Erickson, "The Color Line in Ohio Public Schools, 1829-1890" (unpublished

Ph.D. dissertation, Ohio State University, 1959), 333-339.

31 Champion City Times (Springfield, Ohio), March 1, 1887.

32 The Centennial Jubilee of Freedom at Columbus, Ohio (Xenia, Ohio, 1888), 67.