Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, May 7, 1995 TAG: 9505090016
SECTION: DISCOVER NRV PAGE: DNRV-25 EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY
SOURCE: ROBERT FREIS STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
In the process, not many buffs take note of their own region's stake in the war, or consider the military action that occurred in the New River Valley between 1861 and 65.
While it's true that the Civil War's heaviest hammerstrokes fell elsewhere, the New River Valley sustained blows of its own. Sons of the valley fought in the war's major engagements and became renowned by doing so. One major battle occurred in Pulaski County in the spring of 1864. In its aftermath, soldiers from both sides streamed through Dublin, Christiansburg, Blacksburg and Newport, cutting a destructive swath and terrorizing civilians as they went.
Although less influential to the war's outcome, the New River Valley's war tales were just as bitter, bloody and striking as better-known stories from other battlefields.
When the war began and Virginia seceded from the Union in 1861, the New River Valley was a prosperous land of many small and a few large farms, grist mills, stone quarries, iron forges and coal mines. A number of farmers owned blacks as slaves, most commonly occupying them in small numbers as household workers or field hands. A few large farms on the broad fields flanking the New River kept a substantial number of blacks in servitude. In the upland areas of the valley, slave-owning did not flourish - and neither did sympathy for the Southern cause.
Many young men answered the first call to arms by enlisting in the Confederate army. Four companies of Montgomery County men and one from Pulaski County joined the newly organized 4th Virginia Infantry. In their first battle at Manassas they were commanded by Thomas J. Jackson, a Virginia Military Institute instructor whose battle-won nickname would be shared by the brigade throughout the war - "Stonewall."
The 4th and its New River Valley men fought at the forefront of every major engagement of the Army of Northern Virginia. Eventually it would be commanded by Gen. James A. Walker, who resigned as Pulaski County's commonwealth's attorney and left the village of Newbern to fight.
A total of nearly 1,500 men served in the 4th Virginia during the Civil War. By the time of surrender at Appomattox, only 46 remained. The rest died of camp diseases, had been killed, wounded, captured or left for home.
Another local regiment, the 54th Virginia, had residents of Montgomery and Floyd counties among its ranks. One of few Virginia regiments to fight in the war's western theater, the 54th was engaged in battle at Chickamauga, during the Atlanta Campaign and at Missionary Ridge. About 1,800 men served in the regiment; 550 were killed, wounded or captured.
Members of the 54th were upland Southwest Virginia residents. Most didn't own slaves or feel sympathetic to the South's aristocratic power-brokers or loyal to their cause. Consequently, the regiment had its share of deserters, particularly during times when the home folks pleaded for their return during planting or harvesting seasons.
The New River Valley also gained a bit of fame in 1862, when coal from a Price Mountain mine was used to fire the boilers of the rebel ironclad ship Virginia (a reconditioned Union ship originally called Merrimac) during its famous duel in Hampton Roads with the Monitor. Today, the area of Montgomery County at the eastern end of Price Mountain is still called Merrimac.
A converted resort, Montgomery White Sulphur Springs, was used as a military hospital throughout the war. Located off present-day Den Hill Road, White Sulphur Springs housed as many as 700 soldiers convalescing from sickness or wounds. Both Union and Confederate boys were brought there by railroad to heal, but a graveyard close by holds 265 graves.
Now the resort is gone and the cemetery was nearly forgotten, too, except for the local United Daughters of the Confederacy chapter, which has maintained the obscure site for many years. Several memorial markers to the dead soldiers stand beside Den Hill Road today.
Armies passed through the New River Valley or nearby throughout the war. Their primary local military object was a 700-foot bridge over the New River at a hamlet called Central Depot (now Radford). Over the bridge passed vital supplies borne by the Virginia & Tennessee Railroad, the South's arterial link between the war's eastern and western theaters. Nearby at Dublin was the Confederate regional military headquarters and large supply depot.
A loud but relatively insignificant skirmish between opposing armies occurred at Pearisburg in 1862, the Southern forces commanded by Gen. Henry Heth, whose descendants developed the modern-day Hethwood complex near Blacksburg. But the largest battle in all of Southwest Virginia occurred at Cloyds Mountain in May 1864.
A comprehensive plan devised by the newly appointed Union general-in-chief, U.S. Grant, led Yankee armies to attack simultaneously on several widely scattered fronts. One of these forces was led toward the New River railroad bridge by Union Gen. George Crook.
Later, to achieve wider notoriety as a Western Indian fighter, Crook's force collided with a hastily assembled Confederate Army on the southern slope of Cloyds Mountain in Pulaski County along present-day Virginia 100.
Although the battle raged for little more than an hour, the fighting was fierce and hand-to-hand at several points. Overwhelmed, the Rebels skedaddled back to Dublin and across the New River to Central Depot, burning a highway bridge on the old Wilderness Road in the process. Killed during the retreat was a young Kentucky cavalryman, Capt. Christopher S. Cleburne. His grave sits where he fell along a stretch of Virginia 100 named in his honor.
Casualties began arriving in Christiansburg that afternoon. Soon, nearly every house in town was filled with agonized soldiers, nursed by women of the town. "I don't suppose three women in the 'Burg went to bed that night," wrote Jane Wade.
The Union army torched the military supplies at Dublin and ripped up railroad track toward the New River. From the bluffs above the railroad bridge they engaged the Confederates in an artillery duel, with fiery shots arching to-and-fro across the New River.
Among the Union army officers there was Rutherford B. Hayes, then the colonel of an Ohio regiment, later to be elected president of the United States. Also present in the invading army was another future president, Lt. William McKinley.
After his men torched the railroad bridge, Hayes watched while it "collapsed with a great hiss of steam [into] the river." Then the Union forces pulled back and spent a rainy night along the New River banks, camping on the grounds presently occupied by the Radford Army Ammunition Plant.
A crowd of black New River Valley residents joined them there in celebration of their delivery from bondage. One Union officer stood watching the liberated men and women as they danced around huge bonfires. He mused about the ex-slaves' fortitude, facing the uncertainties of the future after abandoning the security of the prosperous farms where they toiled. Above all, the officer concluded, they loved the thought of liberty.
Over the next few days, the Union army scoured the Montgomery County farms for provisions. Along Tom's Creek, at Prices Fork, in Christiansburg and Blacksburg they picked the area cleaner than a soupbone. "They took everything they could to eat and destroyed the rest," recalled young Lizzie Apperson. Feisty Jane Wade was approached by a Union soldier trying to buy food. "I told him his Yankee money was no use to me," she wrote.
Blue coated soldiers camped in Blacksburg in several areas, on the present-day site of Blacksburg Middle School and near North Main Street and Mount Tabor roads. They also set up headquarters in buildings of the Olin and Preston Institute, the forerunner of Virginia Tech. Harried by pursuing Rebels as they retreated toward West Virginia, Union forces fought rear guard skirmishes at the passes on Brush and Gap mountains and at the village of Newport.
Struggling up the steep road to Salt Pond Mountain toward the Mountain Lake resort, the Yankees discarded all unnecessary equipment. "Mud and roads horrible," Col. Hayes wrote. For years afterward, relic hunters feasted on the discarded munitions around what came to be known as Minie Ball Hill, after the bullet fired by Civil War rifles.
Crook hailed the battle of Cloyds Mountain and the New River Valley campaign as an unqualified success, having achieved his objective to disrupt the railroad and burn the bridge. Yet the Southerners rebuilt the bridge and reopened the rail line within six weeks.
The war ended less than a year later, and New River Valley residents resumed their commonplace lives. Memories of the war lived on in family stories told to succeeding generations. But as the reminiscences faded with passing years, the Civil War in the New River Valley was nearly forgotten.
Two books published in the past decade help to preserve and spread the story. "The United States Army Invades the New River Valley" by Patricia Givens Johnson of Prices Fork, and "The Battle of Cloyds Mountain" by Howard McManus of Roanoke are valuable reference guides and good reads, too.
The New River Valley has a United Daughters of the Confederacy chapter and several re-enactment groups that stage mock battles at events such as the annual Newbern festival in June. Nationally recognized historian and author James I. Robertson Jr. has conducted a popular Civil War history class at Virginia Tech for years.
Yet the area's Civil War resources have been easily overlooked. A new regional landfill will be built near the Cloyds Mountain battlefield, which otherwise retains much of its original character. The proposed path of a new highway from Blacksburg to Interstate 81 had to be relocated because of its proximity to the soldiers' graveyard at Montgomery White Sulphur Springs. Earthworks that shielded cannons above the New River railroad bridge are overgrown and neglected.
"To me, it's an epic story. And it occurred right here," said author Johnson. "We should have a pride of ownership."
by CNB