Volume 14 , Issue 37

Pendleton County, (West) Virginia - Period of Interstate War

The period of interstate war in the History of Pendleton County, West Virginia by Oren Frederick Morton, published around 1910, it tells the story of Pendleton during the great upheaval of 1861.

During the controversy over the expediency of secession, the valley of Virginia was in strong sympathy with the eastern district of the state, the prevailing attitude of the Pendleton people was the same as that of the Valley.

The secession issue reached an acute stage when a convention of the Virginia people met at Richmond in February of 1861. On April 17 it adopted an ordinance of secession, by a vote of 88 to 55, the counties beyond the Alleghanies generally opposing the measure.

The delegate from Pendleton, Henry H. Masters, voted with the majority and in doing so he reflected the views of a large majority of his own people. It was only after nine weeks of debate that the convention came to the point where it was willing to pass the ordinance. This quickly turned the scale in favor of secession and it was the call of President Lincoln for troops to put down the revolution in the cotton states.

This meant coercion, which the prevailing political thought of Virginia held to be inconsistent with the nature of the Federal bond. In the popular vote held May 22, the 48 counties forming West Virginia repudiated the ordinance by an overwhelming majority, but not nearly large enough to overcome the heavy affirmative vote in the rest of the state. The action of the state as a whole led to favorable or unfavorable action in the various counties. On the 10th of May the following resolution was adopted by the county court of Pendleton:

"Whereas, the Constitution of Virginia by the Ordinance of Secession having dissolved all connection between the United States and the State of Virginia, and the said Ordinance having been ratified by an overwhelming majority of the voters of the state, and thus exempting all officers of Virginia from their obligation to support the said constitution: Be it therefore resolved by this Court that if any member or members of the Court have any scruples or doubts upon the subject, it is hereby declared to be their duty to resign their offices herewith."

All the justices in attendance came to the clerk's desk and took the oath to support the constitution of the Confederate States of America. The justices present and signing were James Boggs (president), Samson Day, John W. Dolly, Jacob Dove, William F. Dyer, James A. Harding, Daniel Harold, Solomon Hedrick, Benjamin Hiner, John Kiser, Samuel Puffenbarger, Harry F. Temple, Isaac Teter, Jacob Trumbo, Salisbury Trumbo, and Jesse Waybright. The beginning of hostilities was not entirely abrupt. The mails were carried between Franklin and Petersburg until after Federal and Confederate had elsewhere come into armed collision.

During 1861 the actual shock of war was not felt within the limits of Pendleton. Volunteers numerously enlisted to serve in the Confederate army, yet aside from the withdrawing of labor from the farms, the industries and the government of the county proceeded in much the same paths as usual.

After the failure of the Confederate operations in the Greenbrier valley, General Edward Johnson of Georgia was posted on the summit of the Alleghanies to defend this route against attack from the west.

Camp Alleghany was located 9 miles from the Crabbottom. In Johnson's force were some Georgia troops, who keenly felt the severe winter weather of this mountain height. As the year 1861 drew toward its close, it brought out with increasing clearness a division of sentiment within Pendleton county. The county was disrupted as well as the state. There was an element squarely opposed to a new and peremptory call for Confederate recruits. It was found in neighborhoods in all three of the valleys, but was most pronounced in the districts of Union and Mill Run, especially the former. The situation was much the same as around Camp Alleghany, where Johnson reported much Union sentiment, but also a disinclination to take up arms for either side.

The resistance to Confederate enlistment on the part of these Pendleton people led them to organize under the West Virginia government into companies known officially as "Home Guards," and in common usage as "Swamp Dragons," or "Swamps." These men were not enlisted Federal soldiers, though in effect they were Federal auxiliaries.

The general war between North and South was not properly a civil war at all, although it is usually so termed. But the local hostilities which raged in Pendleton as in other counties along the border line were in the nature of true civil war with its unhappy result of a deep and lingering ill-feeling.

It was war in a more terrible sense than in the case of counties lying at a distance from the zone of fighting. Families as well as neighborhoods were divided, and the weakness of the civil power loosened the usual respect for law. Broad room was given for the display of private grudges and of personal stupidity. The families of the two factions continued to dwell side by side, and neighborly regard was not always suppressed by the division of sympathy.

There was an extreme tension, and in the inflammable state of the social atmosphere this led inevitably to bushwhacking and to burning and pillage. With neighbor against neighbor, and with a paralysis of trade and industry, destitution hitherto unknown, began to appear in these valleys. The bullet from the rifle of a former neighbor was an almost constant peril, and as a place to sleep the screen of the brush was sometimes safer than the house.

The government of Virginia, as it stood at the passing of the ordinance of secession, continued in force until the close of hostilities. As the state was divided within itself, and as the views of the opposing sides were irreconcilable, the Union counties set up what became known as the "Reorganized Government of Virginia," with its capital at Alexandria. Neither state government recognized the legitimacy of the other, and the line between their spheres of influence was defined by Federal and Confederate bayonets. The western counties now saw their chance to obtain statehood, and they pressed their claim with great vigor. The Reorganized Government was entirely friendly to this purpose, because it represented only 7 counties aside from the 48 of West Virginia.

As a result of two conventions at Wheeling in May and June, the Reorganized Government passed a division ordinance, which was submitted to the people October 24, 1861, and carried by a vote of 18,408 to 781. A convention to frame a constitution met one month later, and the document it drew up as ratified 3 April 1862.

The boundary fixed by the division ordinance included Pendleton in the new state of West Virginia. Yet Pendleton remained within the confederate lines, and a majority of its people adhered to the Richmond government. It was not represented in either of the Wheeling conventions, but in the constitutional convention John L. Boggs sat as a delegate for the Union element. The inclusion of Pendleton in the new state was a war measure, and was never submitted to a vote of the people. Even the vote on the constitution of 1862, represented only about two-fifths of the whole voting population belonging to the western counties.

In the spring of 1862 Pendleton came within the theater of war in earnest. The first collision within its borders of Federal and Confederate troops seemed to have taken place at Riverton on the opening day of March, 1862. Lieutenant Weaver with 40 men of the Eighth Ohio advanced from Seneca, and had a skirmish in the Riverton gap with a confederate force composed of "Dixie Boys," a band of Pendleton infantry, and a troop of Rockbridge cavalry. It was expected that the Dixie Boys from behind the cover of the rocks would repulse or at least check the Federals, and that the cavalry would then charge down upon them. The cavalry retired without putting up any fight at all, and it was claimed that it made no pause until it reached Franklin. The infantry squad had to fall back, losing two of its number killed and several prisoners.

In the third year of the war the loss of its foreign commerce through the rigorous blockade of the seaports was already causing great hardship throughout the South. In 1864 the stagnation of industry and commerce had made the distress of the South very severe. Prices were soaring skyward.

In 1864 there were several raids into the county. In May the county seat being threatened the court adjourned to the Kiser schoolhouse. On the 18th of August, the 8th West Virginia moved up the North Fork and a battalion up the South Fork.

February 9, 1865, the sheriff was "notified to have the courthouse windows returned and replaced, the house cleaned, and if Imboden's wagon train be not removed from the courthouse yard, it will be moved by him. Soldiers who will pledge their honor that they will not in any way deface the property belonging to the courthouse will be allowed the privileges heretofore granted them."

April 6th a settlement with the sheriff was reported. It was the last session of the county court under the laws of Virginia. As the war proceeded the terms had grown infrequent, and in the territory controlled by the Home Guards the county government was little heeded. Three days later came the surrender at Appomattox. Fighting now ceased, and Pendleton emerged from the cyclone of war as one of the counties of West Virginia.

The earnestness and the sacrificing spirit of the Pendleton people in these four years of trial may be read in the very large number of soldiers it sent into the Confederate army, even allowing for that share of its people who joined the Home Guard movement. There were few men and grown boys who did not choose one side or the other. Boys too young at the outset of the war were enrolled at its close in the Franklin Reserves, although the old soldiers with their rough and ready wit dubbed them by a rather coarse epithet. The gray bearded reserves were known by them as the groundhog battery.

In general the Pendletonian was true to the convictions formed during the spring of 1861, yet there was an occasional instance where the individual abandoned the first choice and transferred his allegiance to the other side.   |  View or Add Comments (0 Comments)   |   Receive updates ( subscribers)  |   Unsubscribe

---