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....continued from page 162)...himself a leading Democrat. His staunch support of the Buchanan - Breckinridge presidential ticket earned him an appointment as minister to Spain, where he became entangled in ongoing attempts to purchase Cuba." When the war began, Preston, a strong supporter of Southern rights and defender of the institution of slavery, resigned his diplomatic position and joined the Confederacy." He assumed command at a crisis point in East Tennessee and southwestern Virginia's Civil War. During the summer of 1863, numerous small conflicts exploded throughout the region, threatening the Confederate presence along the Virginia and Tennessee Railroad.

In 1862, Colonel Benjamin Caudill of Letcher County raised the unit that would become the Tenth Kentucky Mounted Rifles (C.S.A.)." During the summer of 1863, Caudill and his men were camped in the vicinity of Gladeville to watch Pound Gap. Being the only force between the gap and the valuable saltworks near Abingdon, Caudill's Tenth Kentucky sounded an alarm in late June that a sizable Federal force had moved into Virginia and was en route to the saltworks. Caudill estimated the enemy at twenty-two hundred men in two regiments of infantry and two of cavalry.

Brigadier General Julius White, a veteran of the battle at Pea Ridge, Arkansas, during the second year of the war, Harper's Ferry, Virginia, in 1862, and Marshall's aborted advance on Louisa in early 1862, commanded the District of Eastern Kentucky from Beaver Creek in Floyd County that summer. On 6 July, Colonel Daniel Cameron, who had served with General White during the Maryland campaign and commanded the First Brigade, moved up the Levisa Fork of the Sandy River to meet the force of Colonel Andrew Jackson May. After several hours of lively action, the men of the Thirty-ninth Kentucky Mounted Infantry (U.S.A.) and the Sixty-fifth Illinois Infantry charged the elevated Confederate position and took it without a single loss of life.

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The next day, White's force passed through Pound Gap and "reached Gladeville ... completely surprising and carrying the place by storm." Caudill, although he knew the Union column was nearby and advancing on his position, apparently made inadequate preparations to receive it. Additionally, the Federals arrived so quickly that they "[beat] in the doors and windows, from which the enemy were firing, with axes" and forced Caudill to surrender after an engagement of only fifteen minutes. The loss proved devastating. In this brief skirmish, the Federals captured 117 Confederates, including Caudill and "Devil" John Wright, the future ...

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....legendary feudist and likely model for John Fox Jr.'s Devil Judd Tolliver in Trail of the Lonesome Pine. In addition to those taken prisoner, General White estimated his men killed twenty and wounded, and six pickets captured. By the time the reports were written, the two experienced Federal officers had accomplished the most significant military feat in the region since James Garfield's victory at Middle Creek more than a year earlier. More importantly, they opened the way to the still operating Virginia section of the Virginia and Tennessee Railroad and the important salt and lead deposits in the upper Holston Valley.

On 26 July, a small Confederate cavalry force assigned to guard the gaps into Virginia from Kentucky met a squad of "about 400 renegade East Tennesseans on their way to Kentucky." As the first contact came at the point of near darkness, what would have probably been a serious rout of the poorly equipped pro-Union East Tennesseans resulted in a decisive yet incomplete victory for the Confederate cavalrymen. Several of the Tennesseans escaped after the spirited skirmish, but the leader of their squad, Colonel A J. Lane, was killed during the fight. While not conclusively known, it was reported that Lane, a native of East Tennessee near Bull's Gap, had taken more than fifty regiments to Kentucky since the beginning of the war. William Sage, a resident of Lee County who had likely drawn suspicion from his neighbors for pro-Union sentiment, wrote a letter to the Abingdon Virginian assuring its readers that he did not guide Lane's men into Virginia. In the Central Appalachian Divide, the perception of specific loyalty could easily escalate into open conflict and death.

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Other altercations took place throughout the region. Aside from a pitched battle between deserters and enrolling officers in Carroll County in late June, in Abbs Valley a small squad of Union soldiers, estimated at thirty-one men, entered Virginia through a mountain pass on 11 September 1863. Confederates in the area surmised that this group intended to strike the railroad near the town of Marion. After notifying home guard units, local men from Rich Valley sprang into action and scoured the area, attempting to locate the invaders. Finally finding them in a hollow making breakfast the next morning, the Confederates flanked them left and right and succeeded in capturing several. After a busy day of rounding up the Union men, the home guards estimated that only twelve escaped capture while nineteen became prisoners.

On Saturday, 19 September, the largest raid since Samuel Carter's expedition took place in the region. After skirmishing with Union forces

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at Cumberland Gap for a large part of early September, two Confederate cavalry companies had moved to the vicinity of Kingsport to rest and recuperate on Netherland's Island. While there, they were attacked by a Union force and witnessed a large body of men attempting to flank them. Most of the Confederates scattered upon retreat. By midday, the Federals reached Bristol, where they burned "the Commissary house with some say 100 and others 300 barrels of flour,. rifled Guggenheimer's store, and despoiled the houses of a few citizens." However, their work was not yet complete. They burned a railroad bridge east of Bristol, which threw Abingdon into hysterics, and quickly departed via the Jonesboro Road through Blountville.

Near Abingdon in early September 1865, Ned Guerrant recorded that "one Dr. Legg & Mr Anderson came in breathless haste to inform us how they chased, shot at & came near catching a dozen runaway Negroes & two white men." Legg and Anderson alerted the neighbors and formed a small posse of men to search out the runaways and their assistants, but to no avail. Although no further details of the event exist, a similar party robbed a man of a considerable sum of money on the night following the chase.

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Violence in the normally peaceful and isolated Lee County continued late into the summer. On 5 September 1863, Francis Bishop and his brother-in-law, a Mr McPherson, were traveling on the main road from Cumberland Gap to Jonesville when they were stopped by a Confederate soldier. After verifying that the two men were unarmed, the soldier detained Bishop, who was carrying a sizable amount of money in his belt, while ordering McPherson on his way. Feeling something amiss, Bishop attempted to mount his horse and escape, but the soldier shot him through the chest. As Bishop fell from the horse, he grabbed the sentry's pistol and handed it to McPherson before falling dead. McPherson emptied the weapon in the direction of the soldier without doing serious damage, then picked up a rock and proceeded to beat the man nearly to death. The soldier, hoping to rob Bishop, had secured nothing for himself save a terrible beating, while he took from Bishop's wife and twelve children a husband and father."

Like the Bishop shooting, contact between Confederate soldiers and their loyal citizens sometimes turned ugly. Captain Albert Jenkins and a Mr. Roberts got into an argument about soldiers' horses crossing his fence and eating his corn. The heavy-handedness of the armies in the region was evident when, in front of his family, "Mr. Roberts got his face slapped for using his tongue too loosely."

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(continued from page 190 which we currently don't have) Ransom." He continued, "The cars are busy running on Flag of Truce errands while our 800 horses are dying for corn now at Zollicoffer."

By now in exile in Atlanta, the Memphis Appeal reported that Southern soldiers in the vicinity of Bristol, Tennessee and Goodson, Virginia were "positively suffering for clothing," and "many of the men are about naked." The correspondent noted that their level of destitution, particularly in the mountain and valley area, exceeded anything previously seen in the war. Since the quartermaster had not supplied the men with garments for quite some time, many had returned from furlough better dressed than when they left with their "cast-off garments...much in demand."

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Further dissatisfaction came from within. Thomas Johnson Wrote from Floyd County, Kentucky, complaining about his fellow Confederates. He complained that Kentuckians had to fight because their homes lay within occupied territory, but the Virginians in his regiment "will be satisfied to stay at home in peace as long as we will keep between them and the enemy and we stay and feed in Ky." Complaining that on recent expeditions few of the Virginians came along. Johnson hoped "we can get along without them if they are afraid to come and help us."

In the mountain counties of southwestern Virginia, conditions were also bad. Since the first days of the war, the mountaineers, expecting that the conflict would not touch them because of their geographic isolation, found themselves the victims of a cruel joke. For them, no single army committed the crimes - both armies were responsible, along with countless groups of bandits who hid in the hills.

Stephen Ash's work has introduced students of the Civil War to new perspectives on the borderland conflict. Particularly valuable in his geographic divisions of garrisoned towns, Confederate frontier, and no-man's land. Because of the extremely mountainous terrain between Virginia's valley and the Kentucky flatland, garrisoned towns and the Confederate frontier were often separated by vast expanses of Ash's no-man's-land. Although both armies moved within the Virginia mountains, proved difficult. Much of the problem lay in logistics. Food and supplies had to be carried in, for the local agriculture could not support the needs of the citizenry and the demands of the army."

What the armies called procurement, the citizens called theft. As a teenager in Letcher County, Kentucky, David Austin grew up with a boy who would become the infamous "Devil" John Wright. One day, as he

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and John plowed together, Wright's mother called from the house, "The Yankees are coming." Austin and Wright hurriedly unhitched their horses and led them out of the open field and up the mountainside, where they could hide them from confiscation. Austin, eager to see that his mother was safe, "slipped back and saw the soldier turning over the bee-gums and making a general mess of things about the house." The war's impact on the mountain people cannot be overestimated. Shortly after this incident, John Wright joined the Confederate army, where his unforgiving nature and penchant for brutality found its manifest expression.

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In Johnson County, Kentucky, a large "band of marauders and guerillas" operated within their own community. Particularly active in 1863 and 1864, this group of approximately twenty men robbed and plundered their neighbors. From James J Davis they only got a horse saddle, bridle, and cash, but they took much more from William Davis, a storekeeper in Johnson County. When the band rode up in July 1863, it left with "Drygoods, Calicos, factory, Hats and Shoes" along with various groceries. Later that year, they returned to the roads, this time stealing horses from a number of local residents. As became the case in the region, after the war ended, the lawsuits began. Most often, these suits were filed and settled as soon as possible mainly because of the need for economic relief, although the Davis case was not filed and settled until 1868.

Across Pound Gap, other hardships existed, "Little" Rube Potter had been fighting for the South but had deserted and returned home when "he had heard his family was starving and had no shoes to wear." When the squad sent to retrieve Potter came into view, he was in the act of making shoes for his children. Potter dropped his shoe leather and needles and ran. John Wright, being a part of that small force, shot and killed him as he jumped a fence near the house. Austin believed that "John killed a lot of other men, but I don't think he was ever punished for any of the killings.

Aside from turning farmers into cold-blooded killers, the tenuous nature of life during the war caused mountaineers to question all things no matter how innocent, very often with good reason. When a friend mentioned to Patsy Keel Boggs's father at dinner that owls were calling up on the hill in front of his house, he stepped outside with a pistol in his belt, suspicious of the noises. As Keel and his friend stood on the front porch of the house, gunfire erupted from the hillside. With his friend shot in both arms, Keel attempted to run around the house for protection. However, as he made his way toward the rear of the building, Harrison "Hare"

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Bowman, a man known to the family, ran down the hill and shot him in the side. The bullet did not kill Keel, but it did lodge close to his spine, and he carried it for the remainder of his life. While explanations of such violence are elusive, it seems that Keel had taken to task several men who had joined predatory bands rather than enlisting in the Confederate army. Keel considered these men, who chose independent service, to be little more than bushwhackers and guerillas. Apparently, these outlaws did not like being called such, and they chose to add attempted murder to their list of activities. Ultimately, the gang that attacked Keel at his home became such a nuisance that the Confederacy sent a squad of men to break it up. When the Confederates charged the camp, they killed three of the men, including Hare Bowman. Hiding along with the guerrillas was a deserter from the Union army, whom they pulled from his hiding place and shot."

Further evidence of the paranoia of the mountaineers can be seen in Patsy keel Bogg's account of the day the Confederates killed Hare Bowman. She remembered "a Yankee deserter names "Benny" ...came to Grandpa's" Benny "had been hanging around the neighborhood for some few days and while he pretended to be our friend, Grandpa had heard he was coming to kill him or some of the family." Fearful that the rumors were true and suspicious that Benny did indeed plan to kill them, the grandfather offered Benny some whiskey, then rather than retrieving the drink, came back with a gun and "shot the deserter" where he waited in the front room of his house.

Ezekiel Counts led a company of men primarily recruited from Buchanan County's Sandy Basin. In forming Company E of the Twenty-first Virginia Cavalry Regiment, Counts, like many of his regional contemporaries, earned the moniker "Devil" for his zeal in prosecuting his cause. In one case, Counts met brothers Jim and Isaac Hale on their way back from West Virginia and pressed them to join the Confederacy. Both men refused, and Counts ordered their arrest. For three days Counts kept the brothers in a small cell that offered little defense against the elements and only fed them parched corn. In order to end their imprisonment, the men joined Counts and the Confederacy, "but they did not stay with it long."

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Counts did not stand alone in his use of forceful methods. Other commanders used rough tactics to fill their ranks. Soldiers tied Sam Sutherland up and whipped him nearly to death when he chose not to join the Confederate army. J. C. Swindall remembered that "some rebel soldiers under Colonel Witcher whipped Pa...and he had to leave." Swindall...

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...moved to Kentucky, where he spent part of the war in Federal service, and after a year his family joined him.

Although popular, strong-armed recruiting was not exclusive to the Confederates. Alf Killen, a Unionist who had started his military career in the pro-Confederate Virginia State Line, "picked up recruits anywhere they could find any." As most people feared him, Killen's instructions of "You got to come and go with us" sufficiently motivated men to join his cause until an appropriate opportunity for escape presented itself.

For those men who refused to join either cause, there two alternatives. They could take their chances by remaining in their war-torn neighborhoods or they could move away to safety. Generally speaking, the border region separating Virginia and Kentucky meant more strife and social upheaval, while men and women loyal to one cause or another generally moved deeper into their chosen state in an attempt to ensure safety and security.

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Hiram Hogg, who owned a farm in Letcher County, Kentucky, on the border with Virginia, was forced to move deeper into Kentucky, to Owsley County, where he thought he would be safe. Hogg had raised a fair crop the year before, but Confederate colonel Ben Caudill came to Letcher that summer and confiscated everything he could get his hands on. Leaving Letcher that fall, Hogg expressed hope that his family could make a living by farming in Owsley "if the rebles (sic) will let them alone."

At Jonesville, in Lee County, Virginia, John P Sheffey, while sitting on a staggering number of court-martial proceedings, did so from "the house of a Union man names Marks who ran off to Kentucky, but it is now the home of a Southern soldier named McDonald." Additionally, Sheffey expected more people would join the exodus out of Virginia. He wrote on 7 April, "The scarcity of this Country is alarming." He added, "Some people are moving towards Abingdon and others I think to save themselves from Starvation will go to Kentucky."

Many men joined armed bands intent on either robbing the populace or keeping out of the war. David Washington Austin remembered that when his family moved to Wise County, Virginia, during the earliest days of the war, they did so expecting that the conflict would pass them by in such a remote location. Nothing could have been more wrong. Austin recalled, "We moved into the midst of theiving (sic) bands who went about the country pillaging and destroying ours and our neighbors means." He recognized Alf Killen as one of the local guerilla leaders with "no love of country or loyalty to either North or the South."

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Some of the crimes perpetrated were much more vicious than looting and robbing, James Sage wrote from Lee County that during July 1863 a group of "Rogues" took several men from Jonesville, some of whom were residents of county jail, to Scott County. A few days later the men were marched back to Lee County, and the top of Powell's Mountain, near Stickleyville, the group decided to kill their prisoners. In a saddle of the mountain, they hanged two of the men. The next day, Sage helped bury the victims. Farther across the mountain, his party found "Lewis Berry's body with the head off." Because of the steep terrain, the men could only attempt to cover him up where he lay, "but did so in so slight a manner the dog took him up and ate his carcass. So in a month his bones could not be found."

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On 27 September 1864, W. P. Dungan wrote the governor of Virginia complaining of the heavy-handedness of the Confederate soldiers encamped around Marion, Virginia. He relayed a story that occurred in the middle of May of that year in which a captain accosted a poor man from his neighborhood. Dungan recalled that Mr. Wolf was returning home with several squirrels when the captain demanded the man turn them over to him. Wolf contended that he needed the squirrels to feed his family, which was at home sick. At that point, the captain "commenced cursing the Virginians saying that they would all go to Hell." Disturbed by the captain's mistreatment of his neighbor, Dungan told him that "Mr. Wolf was a poor man --- that his sons were all in the army, and that he needed the squirrels for his family." With that, the officer exploded, turning his curses on Dungan. When Dungan suggested the captain move on, the officer began striking him with his fist. Dungan, who was fifty years old, knew he was in no shape to fight the much younger man but was forced to catch his arms to stop the violence. With that, both Dungan and the captain began to dismount. Still hoping he would not have to fight, Dungan soon realized the seriousness of the conflict when the officer drew his pistol. At first, the older man expected to be shot, but the captain began beating him in the head with the weapon rather than firing it. By the time the men parted, Dungan had been brutally beaten. He informed the local commanders of the crime, but nothing came of his complaints."

The guerilla bands that formed out of the ashes of military units terrified the citizenry. Having been armed by the warring parties, these men often hid out in the mountains, lived in small groups, and turned their weapons on the relatively defenseless civilians. Ephraim Dunbar remembered one such small group who hid in Wise County and occupied them...(end of pages 191 through 195)

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...continued from page 227)...his recollections of the era sixty years later, could still
remember a litany of names of men who either took their families away during the war or joined the enemy army, leaving their wives and children behind.

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Not long after Lee surrendered his Army of Northern Virginia at Appomattox, two Russell County, Virginia communities came together for a celebration. The celebrants were Unionists who, in the face of opposition, had supported the cause throughout the war. Whole families turned out for a barbecue signaling the Union victory. As "Everybody in the community went to this dinner," several late Confederates were in attendance. The mixture of former enemies from such a recent conflict resulted in a disturbance. Daniel Sutherland, an elder leader in the community and an avowed supporter of the Union attended with his two pro-Confederate sons. As the dinner progressed and some of the men "got too much tea," verbal barbs flew back and forth across the tables between Unionists and Confederates. One of Sutherland's sons, Elijah, attempted to step in as peacemaker when Andy Kiser, a former Union man, became too rowdy, but he could not stop the impending violence. Despite Elijah Sutherland's attempts, Kiser kept talking "and insulting the rebels so much that Mose Wolf...thrashed him." The former Confederate and peacemaker, Elijah Sutherland, had had enough of Wolf as well, and so "whipped him, too."

After such excitement, the festivities and fights continued. The old Unionist Daniel
Sutherland "put up a Union flag on a poplar pole" only to have the pole cut down by his own son, Elijah. Elijah Sutherland's grandson wrote years later that the competition between father and son was not serious. "They said they were just tantalizing one another." With-in the Sutherland family, this explanation appears logical. The immediate family members suffered no estrangement from each other after the war. If anything, the division of sympathies within the family might be interpreted as a survival tactic. By having a father who supported the Union and two Confederate sons, the family had a connection with both the victor and the vanquished. Whichever side won the war, the Sutherland family was assured a representative. Although not typical of all central Appalachian families during the era, the Sutherlands and their communality bore serious scars from the war, some of which would prove difficult to heal.

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Typical of the troubles that beset mountain society in the years that followed the war, "Devil" Zeke Counts, a former local leader of the Confederate cause, kept the violence going by killing a man who had served ....

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....under him during the war shortly after peace was struck. The number of men "Devil" John Wright killed will never be known. His friends and enemies before, during and after the war could not even venture a guess. With such a reputation, Wright found employment within local law enforcement, although his dual penchants for violence and women hardly qualified him for such a position. The violence that the Civil War legitimized within the mountain society combined with the influx of modern weapons into the hands of locals to usher in a period of social strife and citizen-led violence that still remains part of the American concept of Appalachian life.

The postwar condition of Harlan County, Kentucky, is indicative of the general
difficulties met by most of the Cumberland Divide counties. On 23 May 1865, an unknown citizen wrote to W. H. Hays, inspector general of Kentucky, in an attempt to restore law and order in Harlan. Asking the inspector general to authorize the recruiting of a state militia for that purpose, the writer informed Hays, "We have not had a Circuit Court here in this country for three years" and that "the court house has been burnt by Gurillas (sic) [and] the jail destroyed." Claiming that the "Gurillas (sic) has nearly laid waste to the county by pillaging, plundering, and robbing," the anonymous author added that these men "are all well armed and men of the worst character and the Civil Authorities cannot apprehend them." Aside from the difficulties these bandits caused, the writer relayed to Frankfort that the sheriff was powerless against these men and that in a large part of Harlan County he could not "collect the State Revenue." He added that it had been more than two years since taxes on liquor had been collected. Later that year, in the nearby counties of Wolfe, Floyd, and Morgan, former Confederates under a man named Williams organized and forced the U. S. revenue collector to stop his work. Armed men, likely state militia troops, were sent to ambush the gang, and scattered them after a brief fight.

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Farther to the north, Metcalfe County requested similar assistance. James Cassidy wrote Governor Bramlette to "call forth upon your aid to protect us from the Guerillas of our state." Cassidy warned that "we or at least some of us will be ruined if we are not spedily (sic) relieved of the desperation of the out laws." Noting that the recent militia recruiting efforts had failed, he urged the governor to dispatch a militia unit to his section to ensure stability. Although Cassidy offered few specifics about the
depredations committed in the community, he did inform Bramlette that he had lost ten horses to the thieves.