This Month in West Virginia Civil War History 

West Virginia came closer to statehood on April 3, 1862 when voters approved the West Virginia Constitution. Many counties at the same time took informal votes on the gradual emancipation of slaves.

As the cause for statehood advanced, Union troops also continued to make progress throughout the state. U.S. Maj. Gen. John C. Frémont pushed south along the New River Valley, leading Federal troops into Fayetteville and Raleigh Court House, now Beckley.

“He thinks he can move an army in these mountains as easily as he and Kit Carson would march a mule train in California; but if he don’t look sharp he’ll strike a snag,” warned a Confederate sergeant.

Union troops would reach as far as Monroe County. “The Pierpont Government having included Monroe, Greenbrier, Pocahontas, and Mercer, in their new State, it is said the Yankees are to send a force sufficient to subjugate us,” a southern sympathizer wrote to the Richmond Daily Dispatch on April 14.

He worried residents would be forced to vote in favor of joining the new state. “Of course the vote will be taken, if taken at all, by the voters being compelled by the force of arms to go to the polls.”

High in the mountains, troops under U.S. Brig. Gen. Robert H. Milroy marched from Cheat Summit Fort in Randolph County to the recently abandoned Confederate Camp Allegheny in neighboring Pocahontas County on April 6. Brig. Gen. Edward Johnson and his Confederates had received orders to leave the fort just three days earlier.

Federals not only took the abandoned fort, but took refuge in its cabins as an ice storm descended on the mountain. Milroy and his men would leave the mountain top to pursue Confederate Gen. Thomas J. “Stonewall” Jackson in the Shenandoah Valley.

Increasingly constricted, secessionists in the state resorted to irregular warfare. Guerrilla forces were active in Braxton and Webster Counties, leading to prolonged engagements along the Holly River. Frémont ordered commanders and troops not engaged in the field to “use their utmost exertions to destroy the various bands of guerrillas now beginning to infest the department.”   

In response to attacks, anti-guerrilla meetings were held in Marion and Upshur Counties. Confederate terrorists Daniel Dusky and Jacob Varner of the notorious Moccasin Rangers were brought before federal court in Wheeling April 11.

On April 4, Frémont had ordered the arrest of Brig. Gen. Alfred Beckley of the Virginia Militia at his Raleigh County home. Beckley had been serving in the militia when the Civil War broke out. Following the first year of combat, he had returned to Raleigh Court House and alerted Federal authorities of his location.

Frémont acknowledged that Beckley intended “to remain there quietly and not again to join his command in the Confederate Army.” Nonetheless, the general wrote, “He has been arrested and I will cause him to be committed to the military prison at Camp Chase, there to remain in custody to await the orders of the War Department.”

Beckley was sent from Atheneum Prison in Wheeling to Camp Chase in Columbus, Ohio on April 25.

Beckley founded Raleigh Court House in 1838. The town was later renamed Beckley in honor of his father, John Beckley. The elder Beckley had served as the first clerk of the U.S. House of Representatives and the first Librarian of Congress. He was a strong supporter of Thomas Jefferson and responsible for numerous writings about the third president.

Like many men of his generation, Beckley sought to make a fortune in land speculation.  His death in 1807 left the future of his only child, Alfred, uncertain. With the assistance of family friend James Monroe, Alfred Beckley graduated from West Point.

He resigned from the army in 1836 and won legal title to more than 56,500 acres around what is now Raleigh County. There Beckley and his family settled on 30 acres. Their new home, Wildwood, would become the foundation around which the community of Beckley would grow.

            Civil War Journal is produced by the Rich Mountain Battlefield Foundation and Historic Beverly Preservation in commemoration of the 150th anniversary of the Civil War. For more information, please visit www.richmountain.org.