Averell’s 1863 Salem Winter Raid Across West Virginia

From One of Averrel’s Jessie Scouts:

“I was with Averill on what was known as the Central Salem Raid. We left Charleston, Kanawha Valley, went to Salem and destroyed part of the railroad. At Witville [Wytheville] we ran into Morgan’s men, too heavy for us to tackle, and we got back. The Confederates got my horse; they shot him from under me. Averill was wounded that day with a bullet on the top of his head which disabled him for a little while.” …. Arch Rowand, correspondence with Harpers reporter

The Union army made many errors in both planning and execution of plans during the first two years of the Civil War, and few victories came their way. Perhaps it was due solely to an unknown source of inner courage that the soldiers remained in the field and the Northern population continued to support their efforts. The Confederacy had done well with their limited resources up to this point in the war, but the Union army was rapidly sorting out poorly qualified officers and replacing them with men who knew how and were willing to fight. 

Ambrose E. Burnside, into siege conditions inside the city of Knoxville. The federal garrison was hard-pressed and in danger of being forced to surrender.

Longstreet was receiving much of his supply requirements over the Virginia and Tennessee Railroad that wound through the hills of southwest Virginia before entering Tennessee, and federal planners felt that a raid against this vital supply artery could result in a general weakening of the Confederate besiegers of Knoxville and relieve some of the pressure on Burnside before he collapsed. All of this was occurring at a time when the Union army was beginning to shift over to the offensive operations planned for 1864, and any loss in Tennessee could easily have tilted the military initiative back in favor of the Confederacy to prolong the war.

Brigadier General William W. Averell was positioned in northwestern West Virginia at a position providing some additional security to the exposed Baltimore and Ohio Railroad. He had recently completed the training and refitting of three West Virginia mounted infantry regiments and formed the Fourth Separate Brigade. Having inherited his command from General Robert H. Milroy, Averell drilled his new corps until he was satisfied with its performance.

Averell and his troops were directed to cut the Virginia and Tennessee Railroad at some vulnerable point and interrupt the delivery of troops and supplies between Richmond and Knoxville. Averell was ordered to accomplish his assignment regardless of the possible losses to his command. The situation in Knoxville was judged to be sufficiently critical to require a midwinter raiding party against the Confederate railroad. William T. Sherman was able to raise the siege on December 3, 1863, but Averell’s raid was allowed to go forward.

With a single brigade of mounted infantry available for the perilous winter raid, Averell met with the department commander, Brigadier General Benjamin F. Kelley, at his headquarters in Cumberland, Maryland, where Averell devised an excellent plan that called for deception at every turn. First, E.P. Scammon’s brigade in the Kanawha Valley would move eastward to occupy Lewisburg on December 12. Scammon would remain in his position until December 18, but he was instructed to press in the direction of the Confederate base of Brigadier General John Echols at the nearby town of Union. Colonel Moor would be sent south to Marling’s Bottom by December 11 and push forward to threaten Lewisburg but remain in the vicinity of Frankford until December 18. General Sullivan would be positioned in Woodstock within the Shenandoah Valley on December 11, and he would move to threaten Staunton on December 20 and 21. Colonel Thoburn would move on to the Parkersburg pike once he reached Monterey. His command would head for Staunton as well, to hold the attention of the Confederate defenders on Staunton as the goal of the combined attack.

targets and it appeared that Staunton and its large store of supplies could be the intended point of these unusual midwinter moves.

Averell traveled over seldom used back roads during a severe rainstorm that lasted two days, but the Union column made good progress and was able to penetrate deeply into Confederate territory without being detected. Travel was very difficult for the mounted men as most of the streams they had to cross had no bridges. The majority of Averell’s supply train, which was composed of wagons and ambulances, was sent along with Colonel Thoburn’s infantry, and the soldiers were without the sparse comforts that would have normally been available to them. 

in his report: “The head of my column was preceded by vigilant scouts, armed with repeating rifles, who permitted no one to go before them….My scouts thrown out kept me informed of the enemy’s movements and positions.”

Disguised in Confederate uniforms, the scouts were often able to approach and capture enemy couriers, and their dispatches were soon in Averell’s hands. At least one message on Confederate plans and troop movements, written by Major General Sam Jones, was captured and taken directly to Averell. Jones’ dispatch had special instructions with the captured message: “The operator at Jackson’s River will use every effort to get the above to General Early and a copy to Colonel Jackson. Colonel Jackson must have a copy of it.”

Obviously, the message was not delivered to the local telegraph operator and both General Jubal Early and Colonel William Jackson were deprived of the advantageous early warning of Averell’s movement. Confederate pursuit remained confused as to the actual target of all the federal maneuvering.

It was through the actions of his scouts that Averell was able to approach Salem, Virginia, and the target, the Virginia and Tennessee Railroad, before being detected. Four miles from Salem, a Confederate patrol met the lead elements of Averell’s column. Without providing any details of the encounter, Averell reported that he learned from them that General Fitzhugh Lee had left Lynchburg with the intention of intercepting the “Yankees” and that a train filled with troops was expected momentarily to guard the supplies accumulated at Salem for Longstreet’s use in Tennessee. The Jessie Scouts had probably been able to intercept the Confederate patrol and engage them in conversation to gain this information. Based on this knowledge, a 350-man forward element rode into Salem on December 16 just before the arrival of the train filled the reinforcements from Lynchburg. Averell wrote in his report:

“I hastened my advance, consisting of about 350 men and two three inch guns, through the town to the depot. The telegraph wires were cut first — the operator was not to be found, the railroad track torn up in the vicinity of the depot, one gun placed in battery, and the advance dismounted and placed in readiness for the expected train of troops.

“A train from Lynchburg, loaded with troops, soon approached. My main body was not yet in sight, and it was necessary to stop the train; a shot was fired at it from one of the guns, which missed; a second went through the train diagonally, whch caused it to retire, and a third and last hastened its movements.”

Averell was reinforced with the arrival of the rest of his column, and parties were sent along the tracks in both directions to destroy as much of the railroad as possible in the short time before additional Confederates arrived. Depots and their contents were burned and cars on the track, the “water-station,” the “turn-table,” and five railroad bridges were destroyed by the raiders. Averell reported that private property was left untouched by his men and the citizens “received us with politeness.”

After approximately six hours of destruction, the entire Fourth Separate Brigade rode out of Salem to a position about seven miles (11km) from the town where they stopped to rest for the night. They had covered the last eighty miles (129km) to the doomed Confederate depot in an impressive thirty hours, and rest was needed by all. Averell’s men told a few of the “polite” locals that they were planning to retreat from the area by way of the town of Buchanan, which was several miles to the east. Fitzhugh Lee, after hearing of this lapse in security on the part of some of the Union cavalrymen, led his men to the east and permitted Averell to escape from the noose that was being drawn tightly around him.

The Union commander was beginning to manage a near-miraculous escape from deep within a fully aroused and angry Confederate region. The earlier feints in the direction of Lewisburg and Staunton as well as a false advance by his men toward the town of Fincastle had confused the pursuit and spread them widely apart. Soon, his Jessie Scouts were able to secure the services of a local guide who would take them through obscure country roads to safety. 

Leaving the campfires burning in the night, Averell was able to escape once more from the closely drawn Confederate traps that had been set for him. His corps reached the bridges over Jackson River near Covington and crossed at a gallop as the bridges had been filled with combustible materials and were set for destruction. One of Averell’s regiments remained on the south side of the river to provide security as their wagons and ambulances crossed, but these were trapped when the Union commander ordered the bridges burned. Averell ordered the trapped regiment to swim their horses across the freezing, ice-filled river after destroying the wagons; four men drowned. A night attack against the regiment had cost the lives of five officers and had lost 119 men as it prepared to move.

Due to confused orders from General Kelley, the regiments placed earlier into positions from which they would be able to support Averell’s retreat were no longer there. Nearly trapped, the Union column was able to ride over obscure roads and trails to the Greenbrier River Valley, just inside the eastern boundary of West Virginia, as they continued north toward the safety of their base areas.

Averell’s report illustrates best the conditions faced by his men:

“On the way to Edray my rear guard experienced some trifling attacks on the 22nd. The road thence to Beverly was a glacier, which was traversed with great difficulty and peril. The artillery was drawn almost entirely by dismounted men during the 23rd and 24th. Couriers had been sent forward to Beverly to bring out subsistence and forage, which we succeeded, after extreme hardships, in meeting on the 24th.

“The officers and men undertook all that was required of them, and endured all the sufferings from fatigue, hunger, and cold with extraordinary fortitude, even with cheerfulness. The march of 400 miles, which was concluded at Beverly, was the most difficult I have ever seen performed.” 

The raid across the entire length of the new Union state, West Virginia, by twenty-five hundred Union soldiers had been more successful than anyone had ever hoped when the excursion into Confederate territory was ordered. Averell, through skillful planning and the careful deployment of his scouts, had managed to ride deeply into hostile territory for two weeks to destroy a major Confederate depot and disrupt a primary railroad communications route between Virginia and Tennessee. He lost only a few men on the freezing trip, and his men were soon to receive the thanks of a grateful government. Secretary of War Edwin M. Stanton ordered that all the men on the raid be provided new suits, gratis, to replace those ruined by the rigors of the long trip.

The Union army had come a long way since Andrews suggested a raid on a similar railroad target early in the previous year.