CHAPTER IV.
THE KANAWHA VALLEY Orders for the Kanawha expedition--The troops and their quality--Lack of artillery and cavalry--Assembling at Gallipolis--District of the Kanawha--Numbers of the opposing forces--Method of advance--Use of steamboats--Advance guards on river banks--Camp at Thirteen-mile Creek--Night alarm--The river chutes--Sunken obstructions--Pocotaligo--Affair at Barboursville--Affair at Scary Creek--Wise's position at Tyler Mountain--His precipitate retreat--Occupation of Charleston--Rosecrans succeeds McClellan--Advance toward Gauley Bridge--Insubordination--The Newspaper Correspondent--Occupation of Gauley Bridge.
When McClellan reached Buckhannon, on the 2d of July, the rumors he heard of Garnett's strength, and the news of the presence of General Wise with a considerable force in the Great Kanawha valley, made him conclude to order a brigade to that region for the purpose of holding the lower part of the valley defensively till he might try to cut off Wise's army after Garnett should be disposed of.

This duty was assigned to me.

On the 22d of June I had received my appointment as Brigadier-General, U.S.Volunteers, superseding my state commission.

I had seen the regiments of my brigade going one by one, as fast as they were reorganized for the three years' service, and I had hoped to be ordered to follow them to McClellan's own column.

The only one left in camp was the Eleventh Ohio, of which only five companies were present, though two more companies were soon added.
McClellan's letter directed me to assume command of the First and Second Kentucky regiments with the Twelfth Ohio, and to call upon the governor for a troop of cavalry and a six-gun battery: to expedite the equipment of the whole and move them to Gallipolis _via_ Hampden and Portland, stations on the Marietta Railroad, from which a march of twenty-five miles by country roads would take us to our destination.