The Rebel government had many political appointees, without prior military experience, who served as Confederate military officers during the American Civil War. Most of them did a fair job, but Floyd was a disaster wherever he went...The Rebels LOST!
R.E. Lee, A Biography
Chapter XXXIV
Politics in WAR: A Sorry Story
Henry A. Wise, Governor of Virginia at the time of John Brown raid, had dreamed in 1861 of organizing "an independent partizan command, subject only to the general laws and orders of the service,"1 but when the disaffection of western Virginia became apparent, just before Garnett was sent to the Alleghenies, Wise was summoned to Richmond by President Davis, was given a commission as a brigadier general, and was hurried off to the valley of the Kanawha. He had been the champion of the interests of that section in the great battle over representation in the Virginia convention of 1850‑51, and it was believed that his presence in that quarter, as the spokesman of Southern rights, would rally the wavering.2 With only a few untrained staff officers and a handful of troops from eastern Virginia, he went into the disputed territory early in June. By eloquence and personal appeals, he contrived to raise his force during the next seven weeks to some 2850 men, infantry, cavalry, and artillery, whom he organized as a "Legion" and mustered into the Confederate service. Simultaneously, 1800 state volunteers were enlisted or brought from nearby counties to co-operate with him. Most of these men were wretchedly equipped and many of the state volunteers considered that they had entered the ranks solely to protect their own homes against invaders. Undependable as was this force, and inexperienced as were the commander and most of his officers, Wise advanced boldly down the valley of the Kanawha to Charleston. "Every step," he subsequently reported, "was amid the rattlesnakes of treason to the South or petty serpents of jealousy in the disaffection of my own camp." He went so far that first Adjutant General Cooper and then General Lee had to warn him of the danger of being cut off.3 On July 17 p580 Wise had a successful brush with a Federal force at Scarey Creek, near Charleston, but a week later he began to fall back in the face of what he believed to be great odds. As some of the state volunteers passed the homes they had enlisted to defend, they began to drop out of ranks, until nearly 500 of them had disappeared. The rest of the command held together until it halted, about August 3, ragged and exhausted, to refit at White Sulphur Springs, beyond the reach of the enemy.4 It had been an unhappy venture, far less the fault of Wise, who had done his best, than of the administration, which had entirely misjudged conditions in the Kanawha Valley. Wise lost none of his confidence or ambition because of this campaign. Regarding his Legion as essentially an independent command, he cherished hopes of faring forth again, as soon as his men were rested and freshly equipped, to fight new battles and win new laurels. His lack of technical knowledge of war did not deter him in the slightest.
While Wise was in the Kanawha Valley, Brigadier General John B. Floyd was completing the enlistment of the "brigade of riflemen" that President Davis had imprudently authorized him to raise, to the great impairment of regular recruiting in southwest Virginia, where Floyd resided.5 Floyd was as ambitious as Wise. He had been a lawyer, a politician, a member of the Virginia legislature, and, like Wise, Governor of Virginia. Serving as Secretary of War during most of Buchanan's administration, he had been accused of favoring the South by scattering the regular army and by piling up arms of late models in Federal arsenals located in the disaffected states. A darker charge, inspired by politics, of abstracting government bonds, he had, in January, 1861, successfully met. Floyd was not altogether devoid of native military talent. He possessed no little energy and a world of self-reliance, but he was rash and was to disclose a temperament readily confused in action. While Wise hoped to fire the imagination of the country by leading a partizan corps, Floyd believed his immediate destiny was to carry the war triumphantly down the Kanawha Valley and into Ohio. His troops, on the whole, were p581 much better equipped than those of General Wise, but they lacked good muskets, artillery, and cavalry.6
Just at the time Wise was retreating from the Kanawha Valley, Floyd was sending the last of his troops to the western terminus of the Virginia Central Railroad.7 Floyd himself soon followed his men, prepared for glory and well equipped for publicity, with not less than three newspaper editors on his staff.8 He was satisfied that Wise's forces had made a failure of their campaign, though, he wrote, "they will not allow it to be a retreat,"9 and he was equally sure that he could redeem the evil hour.10 "We will," said he, "have stirring work in the West before a great while, I think."11
On August 6, at White Sulphur Springs, the two ex-governors met for their first council of war. Each came in the memory of ancient political differences, each in a determination to yield nothing to the other. Floyd was the senior and was intent on asserting his authority over his rival. Wise was resolved, at any cost, to retain the independence of his command, with which he claimed the President had vested him. The two clashed as soon as they began consultation. Floyd was anxious for Wise to move forward in co-operation with the advance he was about to make in the direction of the Kanawha Valley;12 Wise immediately protested that his tired soldiers would require at least a fortnight in which to refit. The two parted without a final decision. Foreseeing what was certain to follow, Wise appealed to General Lee to separate his command from Floyd's, but Lee was apprehensive of a Federal advance against the Virginia and Tennessee Railroad, and as he could not afford to divide the few regiments covering that line, he rejected Wise's appeal and directed Floyd to assume command of all the troops in that territory unless he had orders to the contrary from Richmond.13 Floyd had already renewed his call on Wise to advance, without budging him from White p582 Sulphur,14 and he promptly availed himself of his new authority from Lee to issue an order assuming command of all the forces intended to operate in the Kanawha Valley.MORE...
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