Summary:
Staunton, VA, served as an important Confederate base of supply during summer,
1861, campaigning in western Virginia. In this dispatch, Confederate General
Henry R. Jackson asks Michael G. Harman, quartermaster at Staunton, to send all
available troops in the area west to reinforce Confederates attempting to stop a
Union advance through West Virginia.
HEADQUARTERS NORTHWESTERN ARMY,
Maj. HARMAN:
Monterey, Va.,
July 22, 1861.
If there be any command whatsoever, and especially of artillery, now at Staunton, and designed for this quarter, send it at once to the Millborough Station, with the necessary means and agency to provide for its transportation upon the Huntersville and Elk Mountain, or Huttonsville, turnpike. Send in the same direction all other available forces, with full supplies of ammunition. If the enemy should intend to attempt to take possession of the railroad, he will descend by that route, and, if all our energies be not at once thrown out, he will effect it.
I have sent Col. Lee upon that line. He will be in Huntersville to-day, and must be supported, or all in that direction is lost. It is unfortunate that my idea of sending in that direction at a least one of the regiments now on the road to this point had not been adopted. But it may not be too late, if any reliance whatever can be placed upon the people of the country and we can act with sufficient promptness.
I send Capt. Cole to-day to Huntersville to look to the transportation and provisioning of the column which should move on that line; but the prospect of obtaining an adequate supply is slight indeed.
Send a courier back to me at once, with a statement of what can be done and upon what I can rely in the premises; and you had best direct energetic attention to Millborough as a grand base of operations.
Very respectfully,
HENRY R. JACKSON,
Brig.-Gen., Commanding.
Bibliographic Information : Letter Reproduced from The War of The Rebellion: Official Records of the Union and Confederate Armies, Series 1, Volume 2, Serial No. 2, Pages 989-990, Broadfoot Publishing Company, Wilmington, NC, 1997.
