Free The Battle of White Sulphur Springs by Eric J. Wittenberg

Preface
    In February 2010, my wife Susan and I were traveling west on I-64, headed for our home in Columbus, Ohio, after I spoke at a conference at Longwood University in Farmville, Virginia. We’d been on the road for a while and decided to stop. We got off I-64 at the White Sulphur Springs exit, which is the first westbound exit in West Virginia. After coming down the exit ramp and stopping at a convenience store there, I was stunned to find a West Virginia state historical marker that discussed the Battle of Dry Creek, fought on August 26–27, 1863. I eagerly read the marker and realized I had never heard of this battle, even though I had spent a fair amount of time studying the career and life of Brigadier General William Woods Averell, the Union commander in this engagement. I was intrigued, and I wanted to learn more about it. Later in the trip, we made a stop on the West Virginia Turnpike, and in the gift shop there, I found a book on Greenbrier County, West Virginia, in the Civil War and saw that it had a chapter on the battle, so I bought it.
    When we got home, I eagerly tore into my new book, hoping to learn more about this mysterious battle that I had stumbled upon that day. The brief narrative of the battle contained in that book intrigued me further, so that night, I decided to tackle researching and writing about this battle because I realized that doing so was the only way I would really come to understand what happened there. The book you hold in your hands is the product of that research and writing.
    I soon learned that the bulk of the battlefield was destroyed in the 1980s to build a strip shopping center. I also learned that there were three monuments just outside a fast-food restaurant that had been built on an out lot to the shopping center, so we made a point of visiting again a few weeks later when I returned to Virginia for another conference, this time at Liberty University in Lynchburg. I saw the monuments and became intrigued by the question of why there is a handsome granite monument with a bronze plaque to a German baron, Captain Paul von König, and decided to try to learn the baron’s story. Researching him and his life proved to be a real challenge, and I hope that I have done his story justice.
    A few notes are necessary to understand my interpretation of this battle. First, this engagement has at least five different names. Union veterans tended to call it the Battle of Rocky Gap. Confederate veterans usually referred to it as the Battle of Dry Creek, for the settlement located there. Others call it the Battle of Howard’s Creek, and yet others call it the Battle of the Law Books. More modern treatments have called it the Battle of White Sulphur Springs, and I have elected to use the more modern name in this book. Hence, unless I am quoting from a source, all references to the battle will be to the Battle of White Sulphur Springs. However, the reader should understand that references to the Battle of Dry Creek or to the Battle of Rocky Gap in the primary source material all refer to the same engagement.
    Second, the overwhelming majority of the soldiers who fought at White Sulphur Springs came from what we now know as the state of West Virginia. However, at the beginning of the Civil War, the area that constitutes West Virginia was still part of the commonwealth of Virginia. The state of West Virginia only came into being on June 20, 1863, and many residents of the new state remained loyal to the commonwealth and fought for the Confederacy. But many also fought for the Union, and most of the Federal regiments were only redesignated as being from West Virginia and not from Virginia at Bridgeport, West Virginia, on May 20, 1863. For many people, and especially for the Confederates, these units still carried a designation of being from Virginia in the summer of 1863. In order to avoid confusion, I refer to them as West Virginia units here. Further, the West Virginia regiments