Rebels at the Gate: Lee and McClellan on the Front Line of a Nation Divided Read Free

Iroquois and Cherokee reopened most of trans-Allegheny Virginia by 1770.
     
    Settlers again pushed across the mountains. In a move foreshadowing events of 1861, the Grand Ohio Company pressed claims in 1769 to make the western settlements part of a proposed fourteenth colony. The new colony—to be named Vandalia in honor of Queen Charlotte, who claimed descent from the Vandals—was to include all of trans-Allegheny Virginia and a portion of western Pennsylvania and Kentucky. Impending conflict between England and her American colonies doomed the plan. 7
     
    Trans-Allegheny colonists on the front lines in the French and Indian War now fought as rearguard in the American Revolution. British troops disbanded garrisons in the Ohio Valley, leaving the frontier defenseless. By 1777, the British had pressured many Native American tribes to action, enticing them with payment for scalps. The “bloody year of the three 7s” was a period of unprecedented violence on the Allegheny frontier. Indian war parties from as far away as Detroit were dispatched in a murderous reign of terror. 8
     
    Atrocities were committed by both sides in that bloody year of sevens. The venerated Shawnee chief Cornstalk bravely entered a Virginia garrison at Point Pleasant on the Ohio River that spring to make peace. Cornstalk was imposing, a magnificent orator who spoke impeccable English. But when a militiaman's scalped corpse was found outside the fort, enraged soldiers murdered the noble chief.
     
    The Revolutionary War ended with the British surrender at Yorktown in 1781, yet bloodshed in the west continued as most of the Indians were driven out. A new wave of European immigrants swept across the Alleghenies. They came for reasons monetary and political, and by 1790 some fifty-five thousand of them lived in Western Virginia. 9
     
    The seven decades between this surge of immigration and the outbreak of war at Fort Sumter brought significant economic growth to the trans-Allegheny region. Settlers followed well-worn Indian trails through the mountains to build cabins and farms. In autumn, pack-horse caravans laden with pelts, tallow, ginseng, and home-brewed whiskey headed back across the mountains to trade. Grist mills and saw mills sprang from the wilderness as settlements grew into communities.
     
    Fledgling industries in salt, iron, pottery, and glass required improved transportation. Goods could be floated to market on major rivers in the Ohio Valley, but trade across the mountains remained difficult. River communities such as Wheeling, Parkersburg, and Charleston grew in size and stature while isolated settlements within the interior changed slowly. 10
     
    Virginia's legislature addressed the problem in 1816 by creating a fund for internal improvements and a Board of Public Works. A surge of road building followed. Important routes were laid out by a talented French engineer named Claudius Crozet. These “turnpikes” were so named because a pike blocked the road at points for the collection of tolls and was “turned” upon payment.
     
    The James River and Kanawha Turnpike, completed by 1830, traversed the southern Alleghenies, bearing west from Covington in the Valley of Virginia through Lewisburg, Gauley Bridge, andCharleston to Guyandotte on the Ohio River. By 1838, the Northwestern Turnpike crossed the northern end of Virginia, connecting Winchester in the Shenandoah Valley with Parkersburg on the Ohio River. Its completion fostered the growth of towns such as Romney, Grafton, and Clarksburg. The Staunton-Parkersburg Turnpike, lying between the two earlier routes, was finished by 1847, winding over the mountains from Staunton in the Shenandoah Valley through Monterey, Beverly, and Weston to Parkersburg along the Ohio.
     
    Interlacing country roads, often impassible for much of the year, linked these three major east-west thoroughfares. One important north-south route was the Weston and Gauley Bridge Turnpike, joining the