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The early life, campaigns, and public services of Robert E. Lee
The early life campaigns and public services of Robert E Lee Author:Edward Alfred Pollard Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER IV. Gen. Lee sent to Northwestern Virginia.—Description of the theatre of the war.— Unfortunate military councils in Richmond.—Proclamation of Governo... more »r I/etcher.— A caricature of secession.—Disaster of Rich Mountain.—Gen. Lee's plans thereafter.—Ho is foiled at Cheat Mountain.—Marches to the Kanawha Valley.— Escape of Rosecrans.—Failure of Lee's Campaign.—He is abused and twitted in Richmond.—Scofis of the Richmond " Examiner."—He is assigned to "the coast service."—Recalled to Richmond, and made " Commanding General."—This post unimportant, and scarcely honourable. What is known as Northwestern Virginia includes all that part of the State between the Ohio River and the Alleghany Mountains. It has sometimes been called the " highland region " of Virginia. But this comparative term is weak and insufficient to describe the mountainous character of the region and the extreme abruptness and intricacies of its features. The towering ridge of the Alle- ghanies separates it from the famous Valley of Virginia; and the county of Randolph, which holds the practicable lines of communication between the two, is cut by a series of lofty mountain ridges known as the Sewell, Rich, Cheat, Slaughter's, and Middle Mountains, which fill more than half of the county, and leave a belt of table, or plain lauds, hardly ten miles broad, on its western border. There are passes through Cheat and Greenbrier Mountains (the latter being properly part of the Alleghany ridge); but it needed but an ordinary eye to see that the entire extent of this country was but little practicable for artillery and cavalry. It offered to the movements of light-armed infantry only narrow and rough roads, winding along the edges of chasms, through rugged valleys, over mountain-tops, and across the beds of streams a...« less