on of all mountainous
regions. In the mountains of North Carolina, where men are noted for
their hardihood and courage, and who, once in the field, made the very
best and bravest of soldiers, they held to the Union, and looked with
suspicion upon the heresy of Secession. The same can be said of South
Carolina, Tennessee, Georgia, and Alabama. These men would often go
into hiding in the caves and gorges of the mountains, and defy all the
tact and strategy of the conscript officers for months, and sometimes
for years. It was not for want of courage, for they had that
in abundance, but born and reared in an atmosphere of personal
independence, they felt as free as the mountains they inhabited, and
they scorned a law that forced them to do that which was repugnant to
their ideas of personal liberty. Living in the dark recesses of the
mountains, far from the changing sentiments of their more enlightened
neighbors of the lowland, they drank in, as by inspiration with their
mother's milk, a loyalty to the general government as it had come down
to them from the days of their forefathers of the Revolution. As to
the question of slavery, they had neither kith nor kin in interest or
sentiment with that institution. As to State's rights, as long as
they were allowed to roam at will over the mountain sides, distill the
product of their valleys and mountain patches, and live undisturbed
in their glens and mountain homes, they looked upon any changes that
would effect their surroundings as innovations to be resisted to the
death. So the part that West Virginia and the mountainous regions of
the South took in the war was neither surprising to nor resented by
the people of the Confederacy.

By the middle of June Lee began to turn his eyes again to the tempting
fields of grain and army supplies of Pennsylvania and Maryland. The
Valley had been laid waste, West Virginia given up, the South was now
put to her utmost resources to furnish supplies for her vast armies.
All heavy baggage was sent to the rear, and Lee's troops began
moving by various routes up and across the river in the direction of
Culpepper Court House. But before the march began, General Lee renewed
the whole of Longstreet's Corps, and the sight of this magnificent
body of troops was both inspiring and encouraging. The corps was
formed in two columns, in a very large and level old field. The
artillery was formed on the right, and as General Lee with his staff
rode into the