s, August 29.] The men then began to
feel some of their natural respect for their commander, and yielded
probably the more readily because they noticed that I was unarmed. I
thought it wise to be content with quelling the disturbance, and did
not seek out for punishment the men who had met me at the gap. Their
excitement had been natural under the circumstances, which were
reported with exaggeration as a wilful murder. If I had been in
command of a larger force, it would have been easy to turn out
another regiment to enforce order and arrest any mutineers; but the
Second Kentucky was itself the only regiment on the spot. The First
Kentucky was a mile below, and the Eleventh Ohio was the
advance-guard up New River. Surrounded as we were by so superior a
force of the enemy with which we were constantly skirmishing, I
could not do otherwise than meet the difficulty instantly without
regard to personal risk.

The sequel of the affair was not reached till some weeks later when
General Rosecrans assembled a court-martial at my request.
Lieutenant Gibbs was tried and acquitted on the plain evidence that
the man killed was in the act of mutiny at the time. The court was a
notable one, as its judge advocate was Major R. B. Hayes of the
Twenty-third Ohio, afterwards President of the United States, and
one of its members was Lieutenant-Colonel Stanley Matthews of the
same regiment, afterwards one of the Justices of the Supreme Court.
[Footnote: Some twenty years later a bill passed the House of
Representatives pensioning the mother of the man killed, under the
law giving pensions to dependent relatives of those who died in the
line of duty! It could only have been smuggled through by
concealment and falsification of facts, and was stopped in the
Senate.]

The constant skirmishing with the enemy on all sides continued till
the 10th of September, when General Rosecrans with his column
reached Cross Lanes and had the action at Carnifex Ferry which I
shall describe in the next chapter. I had sent forward half a
regiment from my little command to open communication with him as
soon as possible. On September 9th a party from this detachment had
reached Cross Lanes and learned that Floyd was keeping close within
his lines on the cliffs of Gauley above Carnifex Ferry. They,
however, heard nothing of Rosecrans, and the principal body of their
troops heard no sound of the engagement on the 10th, though within a
very few miles. [Footnote