An Encyclopedia of Early Civil War Virginia
In 1861, Trans-Allegheny Virginia was a landscape of hills and mountains cut by rivers like the Kanawha, Little Kanawha, Tygart, Cheat, and Greenbrier. The region consisted largely of small towns and subsistence farms, with limited industry beyond coal mining, salt works, and a nascent iron trade. The first oil wells were drilled on the eve…
Continue reading ➞ Revised Map and Overview of the Ohio Front
As the first general officer killed in the Civil War, the death of Brig. Gen. Robert S. Garnett at Corrick’s Ford on July 13, 1861 has remained a subject of discussion for over 160 years. As veterans of the conflict aged, a controversy emerged not only over who fired the fatal shot, but also regarding…
Union forces captured several flags at Philippi on June 3, 1861, but accounts vary regarding how many were taken, who they belonged to, what they looked like, and where they are now. One often-overlooked flag belonged to the Bath Cavalry, also known as the Bath Grays, a company raised in the mountainous region of Bath…
In 1905, Congress passed a resolution directing the War Department to return captured Confederate flags to their respective states. The United Confederate Veterans published a record of these flags called The Flags of the Confederate Armies, containing colorized photographs and short descriptions of the units that bore them in battle. Among them was the regimental…
Continue reading ➞ Flag of the First Georgia Regiment (Ramsey’s)
The following account of the death of Brig. Gen. Robert S. Garnett at Corrick's Ford on July 13, 1861 was written by Henry Clay Wheeler (1841-1924), Company E, 7th Indiana, who claimed to be among the party who fired at the general on that fateful day. It appeared in The National Tribune, a veterans' newspaper,…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n_-ygaZqJ6I I recently stumbled upon this amateur video taken at a reenactment of the July 11, 1861 Battle of Rich Mountain in what is today Randolph County, West Virginia. The video features an interview with Phyllis Baxter of the Rich Mountain Battlefield Foundation and some of the reenactors, as well as footage of the skirmish.…
Continue reading ➞ The Battle of Rich Mountain, Part 1 (1999 Reenactment Video)
Appearing in the Spring 2025 issue of Ohio Valley History, "'A Kind of Dreamland': Upshur County, WV at the Dawn of Civil War" by M.A. Kleen is the first academic article to emerge from our work here at Spirit of '61. This website strives to be a hub for research and scholarship of this interesting…
Stories of Appalachia is an interesting podcast started in 2015. Hosts Steve Gilly and Rod Mullins discuss a variety of topics, including history and folklore from across the Eastern United States Appalachian region. A few weeks ago, they posted an episode about the Battle of Philippi. The action took place on June 3, 1861 and…
Continue reading ➞ Stories of Appalachia: Philippi, West Virginia
Accidental deaths of soldiers often receive less attention than battlefield casualties. However, for these soldiers of the First Virginia Regiment, sworn to fight for the Union, their fates marked some of the earliest losses of the Civil War. Were it not for a handful of brief newspaper articles and a sparse pension file, their stories…
Portrait of John C. Higginbotham of Buchkannon. West Virginia & Regional History Center, Morgantown, WV Soon after Virginia voted to secede, John Carleton Higginbotham (1842-1864), an 18-year-old student at Lynchburg College, returned home to fight for the Confederacy. His father, William Thomas Higginbotham (1821-1892), was a prominent landowner in Upshur County and owned nearly 10…
Continue reading ➞ “No Meat Hurt”: Letter from John C. Higginbotham
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