Campfire and Battlefield. John Clark Ridpath

CULINARY DEPARTMENT.

      That portion of the Old Dominion which lay west of the Alleghany Mountains held in 1860 but one-twelfth as many slaves in proportion to its white population as the remainder of the State. And when Virginia passed her ordinance of secession, all but nine of the fifty-five votes against it were cast by delegates from the mountainous western counties. The people of these counties, having little interest in slavery and its products, and great interests in iron, coal and lumber, the market for which was in the free States, while their streams flowed into the Ohio, naturally objected to being dragged into the Confederacy. Like the people of East Tennessee, they wanted to secede from secession, and one of their delegates actually proposed it in the convention. In less than a month (May 13) after the passage of the ordinance, a Union convention was held at Wheeling, in which twenty-five of the western counties were represented; and ten days later, when the election was held, these people voted against seceding. The State authorities sent recruiting officers over the mountains, but they had little success. Some forces were gathered, under the direction of Gen. Robert E. Lee and under the immediate command of Colonel Porterfield, who began burning the bridges on the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad. Meanwhile Capt. George B. McClellan had been made a general and placed in command of Ohio troops. With four regiments he crossed the Ohio on the 26th and went in pursuit of the enemy. His movement at first was retarded by the burned bridges; but these were repaired, large reinforcements were brought over, and in small but brilliant engagements—at Philippi and at Rich Mountain—he completely routed the Confederates.

      At Philippi the Confederates were completely surprised by Colonels Kelley and Dumont, and beat so hasty a retreat that the affair received the local name of the "Philippi races." The victory at Rich Mountain was the first instance of the capture by either side of a military position regularly approached and defended. A pass over this mountain was regarded as so important that all the Confederate troops that could be spared were sent to defend it, under command of Gen. Robert S. Garnett with Colonel Pegram to assist him. The position was so strong that a front attack was avoided, and its speedy capture resulted from a flank attack skilfully planned and successfully executed by Gen. W. S. Rosecrans. On the retreat up the Cheat River Valley General Garnett was killed, and Pegram, with a considerable number of his men, surrendered to McClellan.

      The importance of this affair at Rich Mountain was really slight, notwithstanding it was successful in securing to the Union army a footing on this frontier that was not afterward seriously disturbed. But the significance of the action of July 11, and the campaign which it terminated, lies in the instant popularity and prominence it gave to General McClellan. He reported the victory in a Napoleonic despatch, announcing the annihilation of "two armies, commanded by educated and experienced soldiers, intrenched in mountain fastnesses fortified at their leisure;" and concluding, "Our success is complete, and secession is killed in this country." McClellan's failure to accomplish more in this campaign has been indicated by military critics, but at the time nothing obscured the brilliancy of the victory. The people took his own estimate of it, and "Little Mac," the young Napoleon, became a popular hero. The Government also took his view of it; and after the defeat at Bull Run, a few days later, he was given the command of the Army of the Potomac, and in the autumn succeeded to the command of the Armies of the United States.

      Delegates from the counties west of the Alleghanies met at Wheeling (June 11), pronounced the acts of the Richmond convention null and void, declared all the State offices vacant, and reorganized the Government, with Francis H. Pierpont as governor. A legislature, consisting of members that had been chosen on the 23d of May, met at Wheeling on the 1st of July, and on the 9th it elected two United States senators. The new State of Kanawha was formally declared created in August. Its constitution was ratified by the people in May, 1862, and in December of that year it was admitted into the Union. But, meanwhile, its original and appropriate name had been exchanged for that of West Virginia.

      The victory at Rich Mountain, announced in McClellan's triumphant and resounding words, came in good time to arrest the depression caused by an unfortunate affair of a few weeks before, at Big Bethel, on June 10th; though the popular clamor for aggressive warfare did not cease, but was even now driving the army into a premature advance on Manassas and the battle of Bull Run, for which the preparations were inadequate.

GENERAL BEN McCULLOCH, C. S. A.	GENERAL J. B. MAGRUDER, C. S. A.	GENERAL STERLING PRICE, C. S. A.

      

BATTLE OF BIG BETHEL, VIRGINIA, JUNE 10, 1861.

      Big Bethel has been called the first battle of the war, though it was subsequent to the affair of the "Philippi races," and at a later day would not have been called a battle at all. But among its few casualties there were numbered the deaths of Major Theodore Winthrop and the youthful Lieut. John T. Greble, and the painful impression caused by these losses converted the affair into a tragic national calamity. The movement was a conception of Gen. B. F. Butler's, who commanded at Fortress Monroe. Annoyed by the aggressions of a body of Confederates, under General Magruder, encamped at Little Bethel, eight miles north of Newport News, he sent an expedition to capture them. It consisted of Col. Abram Duryea's Fifth New York Zouaves, with Lieut.-Col. (afterward General) Gouverneur K. Warren second in command (the Confederates greatly feared these "red-legged devils," as they dubbed them), Col. Frederick Townsend's Third New York, Colonel Bendix's Seventh New York Volunteers, the First and Second New York, and detachments from other regiments, with two field-pieces worked by regulars under Lieutenant Greble; Gen. E. W. Pierce in command. Duryea's Zouaves were sent forward to attack from the rear; but a dreadful mistake of identity led Bendix's men to fire into Townsend's regiment, as these commands approached each other, which brought Duryea back to participate in the supposed engagement in his rear, and destroyed the chance of surprising the rebel camp. The Confederates abandoned Little Bethel, and took a strong position at Big Bethel, where they easily repulsed the attack that was made, and pursued the retreating Unionists until checked by the Second New York Regiment.

      An important preliminary to the battle of Bull Run was the operations about Harper's Ferry in June and July, resulting, as they did, in the release from that point of a strong Confederate reinforcement, which joined Beauregard at Bull Run at a critical time, and turned the fortunes of the day against the Union army.

      Harper's Ferry, as we have seen, had been occupied by a Confederate force under Stonewall Jackson, who became subordinate to the superior rank of Gen. Joseph E. Johnston when that officer arrived on the scene. On both sides a sentimental importance was given to the occupation of Harper's Ferry, which was not warranted by its significance as a military stronghold. It did, indeed, afford a control of the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad, so long as the position could be maintained. But it derived its importance in the public mind from the fact that it had been chosen by John Brown as the scene of his projected negro uprising in 1859, and was presumed from that to be a natural fortress, a sort of Gibraltar, which, once gained, could be held forever by a small though determined body of men. The Confederate Government and military staff at Richmond so regarded it, and they warned General Johnston that he must realize, in defending it, that its abandonment would be depressing to the cause of the South. General Patterson, whose army gathered in Pennsylvania was to attack it, impressed on the War Department