The population was nearly all loyal below Gauley Bridge, but above they were mostly Secessionists, a small minority of the wealthier slaveholders being the nucleus of all aggressive secession movements.

These, by their wealth and social leadership, overawed or controlled a great many who did not at heart sympathize with them, and between parties thus formed a guerilla warfare became chronic.
In our scouting expeditions we found little farms in secluded nooks among the mountains, where grown men assured us that they had never before seen the American flag, and whole families had never been further from home than a church and country store a few miles away.
From these mountain people several regiments of Union troops were recruited in West Virginia, two of them being organized in rear of my own lines, and becoming part of the garrison of the district in the following season.
I had been joined before reaching Gauley Bridge by Chaplain Brown of the Seventh Ohio, who had obtained permission to make an adventurous journey across the country from Sutton to bring me information as to the position and character of the outposts that were stretching from the railway southward toward our line of operations.

Disguised as a mountaineer in homespun clothing, his fine features shaded by a slouched felt hat, he reported himself to me in anything but a clerical garb.

Full of enterprise as a partisan leader of scouts could be, he was yet a man of high attainments in his profession, of noble character and real learning.

When he reached me, I had as my guest another chaplain who had accepted a commission at my suggestion, the Rev.Mr.Dubois, son-in-law of Bishop McIlvaine of Ohio, who had been leader of the good people at Chillicothe in providing a supper for the Eleventh Ohio as we were on our way from Camp Dennison to Gallipolis.