It
is safe to say that in the wild defile which we had threaded for the
last twenty miles there were as many positions as there were miles
in which he could easily have delayed my advance a day or two,
forcing me to turn his flank by the most difficult mountain
climbing, and where indeed, with forces so nearly equal, my progress
should have been permanently barred. At Gauley Bridge he burned the
structure which gave name to the place, and which had been a series
of substantial wooden trusses resting upon heavy stone piers. My
orders definitively limited me to the point we had now reached in my
advance, and I therefore sent forward only a detachment to follow
the enemy and keep up his precipitate retreat. Wise did not stop
till he reached Greenbrier and the White Sulphur Springs, and there
was abundant evidence that he regarded his movement as a final
abandonment of this part of West Virginia. [Footnote: Floyd's
Dispatches, Official Records, vol. li. pt. ii. pp. 208, 213.] A few
weeks later General Lee came in person with reinforcements over the
mountains and began a new campaign; but until the 20th of August we
were undisturbed except by a petty guerilla warfare.
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