Free Terrible Swift Sword by Bruce Catton Page B

the Alleghenies was an impossible spot for a major offensive because
no army which made a really lengthy advance could supply itself. 2 Besides, in August the Confederates undertook a strong counteroffensive, and
Rosecrans found that simply to hold the line would keep him busy enough.
    This
counteroffensive was conducted by General Robert E. Lee.
    Lee
was already famous—General Scott had rated him the best man in the army, and
many of the Old Army crowd doubtless would have agreed—and he was on his way to
military immortality, but what happened in the Alleghenies gave no hint that
one of history's greatest soldiers was here commanding troops in action for
the first time. If he had disappeared from view at the end of 1861 he would
figure in today's footnotes as a promising officer who somehow did not live up
to expectations. His western Virginia campaign, in short, was a failure. Most
of the failure, to be sure, was due to circumstances over which Lee had no
control, but part of it was his own. In this, his first campaign, he was still
learning his trade.
    He had spent the spring and summer in
Richmond, most of the time as President Davis's principal military adviser—an
important post, which he filled creditably, but devoid of real authority and,
to a man with Lee's taste for action, woefully unexciting. Mr. Davis sent him
to the mountains in the hope that "he would be able to retrieve the
disaster we had suffered . . . and, by combining all our forces in western
Virginia on one plan of operations, give protection to that portion of our country." 8 It was probably the most thankless assignment of Lee's career.
    The Federals had about 11,000 soldiers in
western Virginia. Detachments held the Baltimore & Ohio line, in the north,
and some 2700 under Brigadier General Jacob Cox were off to the southwest in
the Kanawha Valley, apparently meditating an advance along the Lewisburg Pike
in the direction of Clifton Forge. The rest were in the center, in the general
vicinity of Cheat Mountain, on the road that led to Staunton, guarding the
country which McClellan's victories had won. The Confederates in western
Virginia could muster more men, but for a variety of reasons—ranging from the
bad health of the soldiers to the incompetence and jealousy of some of their
commanders—they would not be able to put all of them into action. 4
    The principal
Confederate force was a loosely knit army of perhaps 10,000 stationed at the
town of Huntersville in the valley of the Greenbrier, south of the Staunton
turnpike. It was led by Brigadier General W. W. Loring, stiff, touchy and
experienced, a competent officer who unfortunately could never forget that he
had ranked Lee in the Old Army. He was clearly vexed at Lee's arrival, and Lee
carefully refrained from assuming direct command of the army; his own charter
of authority was a little vague, and he contented himself with setting up his
headquarters tent near Loring's, assuming apparently that the man was soldier
enough to accept a superior's guidance if he were allowed to save a little
face. 5 Farther south, theoretically operating against the Federal
General Cox but actually contending furiously with each other for authority
and public favor, were two politicians who had become brigadiers—Henry A. Wise,
former Governor of Virginia, who had been sent here with his "legion"
in the belief that his popularity with western Virginians would be an asset to
the cause, and former Secretary of War John B. Floyd, whose military
incompetence had not yet been made manifest.
    Conditions for campaigning were bad. It
began to rain in mid-August and kept on raining for weeks, making the rough
mountain roads almost impassable; a supply wagon carrying six or eight barrels
of flour would be dragged along inches at a time, the wagon bed scraping the
ground, wheels axle-deep in mud. Typhoid fever, measles, and other diseases
went through the Confederate camps so that in a short time nearly a third of
the