CHAPTER XII.-Continued.
The other fugitives were pursued by General Morris, accompanied by Captain H. W. Benham (McClellan's chief engineer), and were overtaken at Carricksford, on a branch of the Cheat River. There a sharp engagement occurred, when Garnett was killed and his forces were dispersed. Another portion of Garnett's troops had fled toward Staunton, pursued to the summit of the Cheat Range, where an Indiana regiment established an outpost. Meanwhile Cox had driven Wise out of the Kanawha region, and at the middle of July (1861) the war in Western Virginia seemed to be at an end. On the 19th, McClellan said, in a dispatch to the War Department, "We have completely annihilated the enemy in Western Virginia. Our loss is about thirteen killed and not more than forty wounded; while the enemy's loss is not far from two hundred killed; and the number of prisoners we have taken will amount to at least one thousand. We have captured seven of the guns of the enemy, in all."
The Confederates were not disposed to abandon the granary that would supply Eastern Virginia, without another struggle. General Robert E. Lee succeeded Garnett in the chief command in that region. John B. Floyd, the treacherous National Secretary of War, had succeeded Wise as a leader; but he, too, was now superseded by a better man, and after a while the war in the mountain region of Virginia was renewed. McClellan had been called to the command of the Army of the Potomac, and was succeeded in Western Virginia by General Rosecrans.
At the beginning of June, it was manifest that a powerful combination of Secessionists in Baltimore were preparing to act with the armed insurgents in Virginia, in efforts to seize the National capital. The Legislature of the State were in sympathy with the Confederates, and a committee of that body assured Jefferson Davis that the people of Maryland were with him in sentiment. The National Government took energetic measures to avert the evil. General N. P. Banks was appointed to the command of the Department of Annapolis, with his headquarters in Baltimore; and he was so satisfied of a conspiracy ripening there, that he sent a force of armed men into the city, who arrested Chief of Police Kane and put him into Fort McHenry. At the same time Banks proclaimed that he had appointed Colonel (afterward General) John R. Kenly, of the First Regiment of Maryland Volunteers, provost-marshal. Kenly was a well-known and highly respected citizen of Baltimore, and acted with wisdom and energy. He was put at the head of the Police Department; but the old Board of Police Commissioners, who were Secessionists, refused to acknowledge him and defied the Government. They were arrested and sent as prisoners of State to Fort Warren in Boston Harbor, and very soon afterward the Unionists of Maryland were encouraged to assert their loyalty. Banks withdrew the troops, and thereafter Maryland was justly counted one of the loyal States of the Union; yet for three years the Confederates were deceived by a belief that the people were Secessionists at heart. But the delusion was dispelled when, in 1863, General Lee invaded the State, set up his standard, and expected thousands would rally around it. On the contrary, he lost manifold more men by desertion than he gained by recruiting,
We have observed that Jefferson Davis issued commissions to
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