WEST VIRGINIA OPERATIONS UNDER FREMONT.
By Jacob D. Cox, Major-General, U.S.V.

THE campaign of the spring of 1862 was an interesting one in its details, but as it became subordinate to that against Jackson in the Shenandoah and was never completed as Frémont had planned, a very brief sketch of it must suffice. On the 29th of March Frémont assumed command of the "Mountain Department," including West Virginia, eastern Kentucky, and East Tennessee as far as Knoxville. There was a little too much sentiment and too little practical war in the construction of a department out of five hundred miles of mountain ranges, and the appointment of the "path-finder" to command it was consistent with the romantic character of the whole. The mountains formed an admirable barrier at which comparatively small bodies of troops could cover and protect the Ohio Valley behind them, but extensive military operations across and beyond the Alleghanies from west or east were impracticable, because a wilderness a hundred miles wide, crossed by few and most difficult roads, rendered it impossible to supply troops from depots on either side. The country was so wild that not even forage for mules could be found in it, and the teams could hardly haul their own provender for the double trip. Quick "raids" were therefore all that ever proved feasible.

Frémont had formed a plan of campaign which consisted in starting with Blenker's division (which had been taken from the Army of the Potomac and given to him) from Romney in the valley of the south branch of the Potomac, ascending this valley toward the south, picking up Schenck's and Milroy's brigades in turn, the latter joining the column at Monterey, on the great watershed by way of the Cheat Mountain Pass. From Monterey Frémont intended to move upon Staunton and thence, following the south-western trend of the valleys, to the New River near Christiansburg. Here he would come into communication with me, whose task it would have been to advance from Gauley Bridge on two lines, the principal one by Fayette and Raleigh Court House over Flat-top Mountain to Princeton and the Narrows of New River, and a subordinate one on the turnpike to Lewisburg. The plan looked to continuing the march to the south-west with the whole column till Knoxville should be reached, the last additions to the force to be from the troops in the Big Sandy Valley of eastern Kentucky.

The plan would probably have failed, first, from the impossibility of supplying the army on the route, as it would have been without any reliable or safe base; and second, because the railroads east of the mountains ran on routes specially well adapted to enable the enemy quickly to concentrate any needed force at Staunton, at Lynchburg, at Christiansburg, or at Wytheville to overpower the column. The Union army would be committed to a whole season of marching in the mountains, while the Confederates could concentrate the needed force and quickly return it to Richmond when its work was done, making but a brief episode in a larger campaign. But the plan was not

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^ A continuation of "McClellan in West Virginia."
See Vol. I., p. 126.--EDITORS.
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