e National Road as well as the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal. The
Baltimore and Ohio Railroad also follows this natural highway, which
is thus indicated as the most important line of communication
between Washington and the Ohio valley, though a high mountain
summit must be passed, even by this route, before the tributaries of
the Ohio can be reached. Half-way across the State to the southward,
is a high watershed connecting the mountain ridges and separating
the streams tributary to the Potomac on the north from those falling
into the James and New rivers on the south. The Staunton and
Parkersburg turnpike follows the line of this high "divide" looking
down from among the clouds into the long and nearly straight defiles
on either hand, which separate the Alleghany Mountains proper from
the Blue Ridge on the east and from Cheat Mountain and other ranges
on the west. Still further to the southwest the James River and the
New River interlace their headwaters among the mountains, and break
out on east and west, making the third natural pass through which
the James River and Kanawha turnpike and canal find their way. These
three routes across the mountains were the only ones on which
military operations were at all feasible. The northern one was
usually in the hands of the National forces, and the other two were
those by which the Confederates attempted the invasion of West
Virginia. Beverly, a hundred miles from Staunton, was near the gate
through which the Staunton road passes on its way northwestward to
Parkersburg and Wheeling, whilst Gauley Bridge was the key-point of
the Kanawha route on the westerly slope of the mountains.

General Lee determined to send columns upon both these lines.
General Henry A. Wise (formerly Governor of Virginia) took the
Kanawha route, and General Robert S. Garnett (lately Lee's own
adjutant-general) marched to Beverly. [Footnote: Official Records,
vol. ii. pp. 908, 915.] Upon Porterfield's retreat to Beverly,
Garnett, who had also been an officer in the United States Army, was
ordered to assume command there and to stimulate the recruiting and
organization of regiments from the secession element of the
population. Some Virginia regiments raised on the eastern slope of
the mountains were sent with him, and to these was soon added the
First Georgia. On the 1st of July he reported his force as 4500 men,
but declared that his efforts to recruit had proven a complete
failure, only 23 having joined.