After McClellan’s victory at Rich Mountain, Brig. Gen. Robert S. Garnett’s army fled Laurel Hill in a rain-soaked retreat through the mountains of western Virginia. At Corrick’s Ford, along Shavers Fork of the Cheat River, the pursuit caught up with them, ending in the collapse of Garnett’s command and the death of the first general officer killed in the Civil War.
For five days in early July 1861, Union forces under Brig. Gen. Thomas A. Morris skirmished with Brig. Gen. Robert S. Garnett’s Confederates around the small hamlet of Belington, in the foothills of Laurel Mountain in Barbour County, Virginia. The fighting formed part of a broader plan to create a diversion while Maj. Gen. George B. McClellan advanced against Rich Mountain with a separate force. What happened there would shape the fate of Garnett’s men on Laurel Hill and, ultimately, Garnett himself.
By mid-June, Garnett had established his headquarters and main camp at Laurel Hill, astride the Beverly–Fairmont Turnpike. He sent a smaller force to fortify Rich Mountain, which overlooked the Staunton–Parkersburg Turnpike. His primary supply base lay just east of Rich Mountain at Beverly. Behind his lines ran a road from Beverly north to St. George and on to Rowlesburg, where Union Brig. Gen. Charles W. Hill’s brigade guarded the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad.
If those Union troops slipped in behind Laurel Hill, Garnett’s position would be cut off with no clear avenue of escape. To guard against that threat, he posted Lt. Col. George W. Hansbrough’s four-company 9th Virginia Battalion and Capt. Robert B. Moorman’s Greenbrier Cavalry at the junction of the Beverly–Fairmont Turnpike and the road to St. George, near the community of Leedsville, or Leadsville (present-day Elkins, West Virginia). The detachment numbered fewer than 400 men fit for duty.
Garnett’s defense of the two main routes through the Alleghenies into the Shenandoah Valley rested on mutually supporting positions, each meant to reinforce the other if threatened. McClellan’s plan, however, pressed both at once, leaving Garnett’s forces exposed and divided. Morris’ role was to hold Garnett in place while McClellan struck across Rich Mountain toward Beverly, cutting off any retreat.
On July 1, Garnett wrote of his intention to have Hansbrough’s battalion switch positions with Heck’s 25th Virginia Infantry on Rich Mountain. He quickly reversed the order when McClellan’s main force occupied Buckhannon in Upshur County, about 23 miles west of the Confederate camp. Instead, he sent the 20th Virginia Infantry under Lt. Col. John Pegram to reinforce Heck.
McClellan reached Roaring Creek at the base of Rich Mountain by the evening of July 9. Two days later, on the 11th, Brig. Gen. William S. Rosecrans launched a successful flank attack at Hart’s Farm, in the rear of the Confederate position. The defenders escaped in several groups, the largest under Pegram, but over the next few days more than 660 men, including Heck and Pegram, surrendered.
When word arrived that McClellan had outmaneuvered and overwhelmed the garrison at Rich Mountain, Garnett prepared to abandon his fortifications. After nightfall, in a driving rainstorm, his small army withdrew along the Beverly–Fairmont Turnpike as it zigzagged across Laurel Mountain. They moved south toward Beverly, but acting on erroneous information that the road had been blockaded, reversed course. The 37th Virginia, which had been in the rear, now became the lead regiment, until Hansbrough’s battalion joined them and took the lead.
The next morning, Union pickets from Morris’ brigade cautiously probed toward the Confederate works and reported the enemy gone. Capt. Henry W. Benham, a civil engineer serving as a volunteer aide, rode forward with a small party to inspect the abandoned fortifications. He and the 9th Indiana Infantry soon set off in pursuit, but on the far side of Laurel Mountain, Morris ordered them to halt. Nightfall ended a day of indecision and delay.
Meanwhile, Garnett’s column moved slowly northeast along Shavers Fork of the Cheat River, its wagon train stretched in a thin line for more than two miles over rough, muddy roads. All the while, Garnett feared an attack from Hill’s brigade advancing out of Rowlesburg. That night, the lead elements bivouacked at Kaler’s Ford and did not get underway again until 8 a.m. on July 13.
Before sunrise that morning, Benham and an advance force from Morris’ brigade, consisting of the 7th and 9th Indiana Infantry, the 14th Ohio Infantry, and a section of the 1st Ohio Light Artillery, about 2,600 men in all, set off in earnest pursuit. Benham quarreled with Col. Ebenezer Dumont of the 7th Indiana over who was in command, Dumont claiming to be the senior officer on the field. Nevertheless, they reached Kaler’s Ford at noon after skirmishing with Garnett’s rearguard, which was protecting pioneers felling trees across the road.
With the enemy closing in, Garnett adopted an innovative defense. First, Col. James N. Ramsey’s Georgia regiment would stand fast, buying time for the wagons to move ahead. Then Col. William B. Taliaferro’s 23rd Virginia Infantry would take up a strong position and cover the Georgians’ withdrawal. By leapfrogging from one position to the next, Garnett hoped to keep his pursuers at bay while the column made its escape.
Garnett’s wagon train struggled to cross Corrick’s Ford, often misspelled Carrick’s Ford, just south of where Shavers and Black forks join to form the Cheat River, near present-day Parsons. The ford consisted of two crossings over an oxbow in the river. The first was broad, the river swollen by recent rains. Teamsters fought to get their wagons through. Some, mired in rocks and mud, had to be abandoned.
The ford’s one advantage was a high, brush-covered ridge overlooking the first crossing. As Benham later reported, “The enemy was found to have taken a strong position, with his infantry and artillery upon a precipitous bank of some fifty to eighty feet in height upon the opposite side of the river, while our own ground was upon the low land, nearly level with the river.”
Lt. James Elliott McPherson Washington, a distant relative of George Washington and one of Garnett’s aides assigned to the guns, gave a rousing cheer that opened the fight. Pelted by rain beneath a low, dreary sky, the 14th Ohio pushed forward, supported by two artillery pieces. It soon became clear the Confederate position could not be carried by a direct assault, and Benham ordered Dumont and the 7th Indiana to work around the flank.
Running low on ammunition and recognizing the threat, Col. Taliaferro ordered a withdrawal. His iron rifled 6-pounder had to be left behind, damaged and immobile. Washington spiked it to keep it from being used against them. Despite holding the high ground and commanding a clear field of fire, the Confederates suffered more than three times as many casualties in the brief, 30-minute fight.
As the Virginians fell back from the first crossing, Garnett rode up and ordered Taliaferro to post ten riflemen behind driftwood piled at the second crossing. He sat his horse midstream, bullets striking the water around him. A small party from the 7th Indiana worked its way forward through the wrecked wagon train and opened fire. As Garnett turned, he was struck in the back and fell. First Sergeant Benjamin F. Burlingame of Company E was credited with the fatal shot. Another man beside Garnett was killed.
The Confederate defense collapsed with their general’s fall, though the Federals pursued only a short distance. They captured dozens of wagons and took nearly 90 prisoners at a cost of just two killed and six wounded. Garnett’s body was carried to the nearby home of William and Deborah Corrick, which served as a makeshift hospital and prison. The house still stands.
Garnett’s army struggled on to the northeast toward the Maryland border. From Rowlesburg, Hill’s scattered command could do little to pursue. Aside from rounding up a few stragglers, they failed to interfere with the retreat. Six companies of Ramsey’s 1st Georgia became separated early in the fighting and wandered the wilderness for days before rejoining the army. In the weeks that followed, the remnants gathered at Monterey under Garnett’s replacement, Brig. Gen. Henry R. Jackson.
McClellan praised the conduct of his volunteers and trumpeted the victories at Rich Mountain and Corrick’s Ford, writing to his army on July 16, “I am proud to say that you have gained the highest reward that American troops can receive—the thanks of Congress and the applause of your fellow-citizens.” He would soon leave Rosecrans in command, however, after being called to Washington following the disaster at the First Battle of Bull Run.
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