This alone proved the impracticability of the plan
McClellan first conceived, of making the Kanawha valley the line of
an important movement into eastern Virginia. It pointed very
plainly, also, to the true theory of operations in that country.
Gauley Bridge should have been held with a good brigade which could
have had outposts several miles forward in three directions, and,
assisted by a small body of horse to scour the country fifty miles
or more to the front, the garrison could have protected all the
country which we ever occupied permanently. A similar post at
Huttonsville with detachments at the Cheat Mountain pass and
Elkwater pass north of Huntersville would have covered the only
other practicable routes through the mountains south of the line of
the Baltimore and Ohio Railway. These would have been small
intrenched camps, defensive in character, but keeping detachments
constantly active in patrolling the front, going as far as could be
done without wagons. All that ever was accomplished in that region
of any value would thus have been attained at the smallest expense,
and the resources that were for three years wasted in those
mountains might have been applied to the legitimate lines of great
operations from the valley of the Potomac southward.
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