Free Rebels at the Gate: Lee and McClellan on the Front Line of a Nation Divided by W Hunter Lesser Page B

Confederate President Jefferson Davis. The dignified president, a longtime friend, supported him with “unqualified confidence.” 206
     
    Something had to be done for Western Virginia before the entire region was lost. In that spirit, Lee turned to his adjutant, Robert Garnett, the only qualified officer not already in the field, and one of the most capable in the Confederacy.
     
    Robert Selden Garnett was forty-one years old, just under six feet tall, trim, and stern. His hair was nearly coal black, worn long on the neck in a style popular with Virginia's elite. His closely cropped beard was slightly grizzled with white. His forehead was high and arching, his darkly handsome features “almost classic in their regularity and mingled delicacy.” 207
     
    Garnett's pedigree was rich in arms and aristocracy. His ancestors included a French general, a countess, and a major general in the War of 1812. His father was a five-term Virginia Congressman, his cousin the personal physician of Jefferson Davis.
     
    Garnett's résumé was stellar. He had graduated at West Point, class of 1841, and served as an instructor of tactics. As an aide to General Zachary Taylor in the Mexican War, he had been twice brevetted for gallantry. In 1849, while shipwrecked during an important mission to California, he designed the state's Great Seal. Garnett returned to West Point as commandant of cadets under Robert E. Lee. In 1857, he married a fair-haired New York socialite named Marianna Nelson and escorted her to Fort Simcoe, Washington Territory.
     
    But Garnett's happiness was short-lived. Returning from an expedition the next year, he found Marianna and an infant son dead of “bilious fever.” Described as proud, reserved, and “cold as an icicle,” Garnett became “more frozen and stern and isolated than ever.” He buried his family, took extended leave, and returned to duty in a Confederate uniform—as adjutant general of Virginia forces. 208
     
    The army became his life. “In every one else,” a fellow officer remarked, “I have seen some mere human traits, but in Garnett every trait was purely military.” A future general described him as “brave, intelligent, impartial…truthful and full of energy.” That talent was badly needed in Western Virginia—Garnett received a brigadier's star and was sent into the mountains. But he remained a “dreary-hearted man.” The night before Garnett left Richmond, a staff officer heard him utter, “They have not given me an adequate force. I can do nothing. They have sent me to my death.” 209
     
    The scene at Huttonsville must have mortified the spit-and-polish Garnett. There he found twenty-three Confederate companies “in a most miserable condition as to arms, clothing, equipment and discipline.” From them he formed two regiments—the Twenty-fifth Virginia Infantry, led by Lt. Colonel Jonathan Heck, a Morgantown attorney, and the Thirty-first Virginia Infantry, headed by Lt. Colonel William L. Jackson, a former lieutenant governor of Virginia, with the remainder filling Lt. Colonel George Hansbrough's Ninth Virginia Battalion. 210
     
    Garnett's directive was to halt the Federal advance into Virginia. He hoped as well to strike the B&O Railroad, an important east-west Union supply line. General Lee's desire had been succinct: “The rupture of the railroad at Cheat River would be worth to us an army.”
     
    Two mountain passes were the keys to Garnett's defense—one on the Staunton-Parkersburg Turnpike over Rich Mountain, another sixteen miles north on the Beverly-Fairmont Road at Laurel Hill. He called them the “gates to the northwestern country.”
     
    On June 15, Garnett marched north. Lt. Colonel Heck's Twenty-fifth Virginia Infantry, two guns, and a squad of cavalry seized the pass over Rich Mountain. The next day Garnett occupied Laurel Hill with the Thirty-first Virginia Infantry, a company of cavalry and six pieces of artillery. His first impression was