Cove Mountain

On May 10, 1864, amid the American Civil War, fighting broke out in Wythe County, Virginia, in what became known as the Battle of Cove Mountain. Brigadier General William W. Averell led a Union cavalry division whose goal was to strike a lead mine close to Wytheville, but his advance was halted before he could reach it. The men who blocked him were Confederates under Brigadier General John Hunt Morgan, reinforced by a detachment drawn from a cavalry brigade under Brigadier General William E. "Grumble" Jones. This clash took place at Cove Gap, near Crockett's Cove and Cove Mountain.

This engagement fit into a broader Union scheme in which Averell's troops, alongside a larger contingent under Brigadier General George Crook, aimed to cripple the Virginia and Tennessee Railroad, a vital Confederate supply line that also protected valuable lead and salt mining operations. While Crook pursued other objectives, Averell had been tasked specifically with striking those mines, yet the fighting at the cove ended that effort short of its goal. Under cover of darkness, Averell's horsemen slipped away through the mountains, only to be chased by several Confederate units over the following five days. The pursuit ended when his division finally linked up with Crook's command at Union, West Virginia.

Modern assessments from the National Park Service label the battle's outcome as indecisive, though Confederate sources at the time claimed it as a clear win for Morgan. Indeed, southern forces succeeded in shielding both the lead mine and a nearby salt works from destruction, resources the Confederacy depended on for preserving meat and manufacturing ammunition. Yet this defensive success carried a cost: worry over Averell's next move kept most of Jones's and Morgan's troops occupied, leaving them unable to reinforce Confederate lines at the Battle of Cloyd's Mountain. There, Crook's force of 6,000 men achieved a notable triumph, going on to fulfill its mission of demolishing a major railroad bridge spanning the New River. The result was serious damage inflicted on the Confederacy's railroad network.

Background and plan

In March of 1864, Ulysses S. Grant took command over the whole of the Union's armed forces. His approach for the Virginia theater called for hitting Lee's Army of Northern Virginia, the most formidable Confederate force, from several directions at once. Rail lines figured prominently in this plan, particularly the Virginia and Tennessee Railroad and the Virginia Central Railroad, both of which supplied Lee's soldiers by hauling food eastward out of the Shenandoah Valley. Soldiers themselves traveled along these same lines when shifting between fronts. The Virginia and Tennessee line also linked Richmond, the Confederate capital, to Tennessee, and it carried essential minerals, salt and lead among them, to Knoxville and to manufacturing centers at Lynchburg, Petersburg, and Richmond.

Command of the effort against the Virginia and Tennessee Railroad fell to Brigadier General George Crook. He led three infantry brigades, dismounted cavalry, and two artillery batteries, amounting to 6,155 men, with another four hundred joining not long afterward. From this force, Crook detached a smaller column under Brigadier General William W. Averell and sent it westward to strike a salt mine. Meanwhile, in the Shenandoah Valley, Major General Franz Sigel received orders to push his army south toward Staunton, positioning it to threaten the Virginia Central line. The intent was for all three commands, Crook's, Averell's, and Sigel's, to converge eventually at Staunton.

It was in the course of Averell's advance toward his assigned objective that the fighting at Cove Mountain broke out. His destination was the salt works at Saltville, Virginia, a site that in 1864 accounted for roughly two thirds of all the salt the Confederacy consumed. Saltville sat on the boundary separating Washington and Smyth counties in the southeastern part of the state, linked to the main Virginia and Tennessee line by a spur track. Farther along that main line, heading east, lay a lead mine just south of Wytheville, close enough to the tracks to matter greatly, since it supplied much of the lead the Confederacy needed to manufacture ammunition. Continuing east still, the rail line passed near Dublin Depot, close to Newbern, where a regional Confederate headquarters stood. Adjacent to that headquarters ran a substantial railroad bridge spanning the New River, itself one of the objectives Crook had set his sights on.

Saltville to Wytheville

On May 5, 1864, Averell's column set out from the vicinity of the Logan County courthouse in West Virginia. The following day carried them south to Oceana, in Wyoming County, and by May 7 they had pushed across into Virginia, entering Tazewell County near Abb's Valley. A brush with enemy scouts there yielded the capture of an entire company from the 8th Virginia Cavalry. The march continued the next day toward Jeffersonville, also called Tazewell Courthouse, with Confederate troops from Kentucky harassing the column along the way.

Prisoners and deserters gave Averell unwelcome news: the Confederates already knew he was heading for Saltville, and knew roughly how many men rode with him. Worse still, a combined force of 4,500 Confederates under John Hunt Morgan and William "Grumble" Jones stood ready at Saltville to meet his roughly 2,000 troopers. Faced with those odds, Averell shifted his target eastward to the rail line at Wytheville, calculating that this would keep Morgan and Jones occupied and unable to move against Crook. Once Averell turned east, Morgan set off in pursuit.

At the point where the roads to Jeffersonville, Crab Orchard, and Wytheville met, Averell chose the mountainous path toward Crab Orchard, a route that was harsher but longer in reaching Wytheville. Had Morgan pursued him along this course, the rough ground might have let Averell delay him while a separate force struck at Wytheville itself. Morgan, however, recognized the danger of that terrain and instead cut southeast through Burke's Garden, taking the more direct road to Wytheville. He reached the town ahead of his own troops and immediately sent the Confederate soldiers stationed there north to hold the gap through Cove Mountain, the very passage Averell would need to reach Wytheville. His arrival brought relief to the townspeople, who still carried memories of the town's destruction the year before during Colonel John Toland's Wytheville Raid in 1863. Wytheville's defenses amounted to little more than an aging 6-pounder cannon and a stock of powder without any shot to fire. To make up the shortfall, a local blacksmith hammered apart horseshoes and scraps of iron to serve in place of canister.

Battle

Reaching Wytheville and the lead mine beyond it meant Averell had to move south through a narrow mountain gap close to Crockett's Cove. Upon his arrival, Confederate troops sent northward from Wytheville under Morgan's orders had already taken the position, and additional men were converging on the spot. Estimates placed Morgan's strength near 4,000, though some historians regard that number as inflated.

The engagement began when the 14th Pennsylvania and 1st West Virginia cavalries under Schoonmaker pushed back the Confederate outriders guarding the gap. As the Union horsemen pressed closer, dismounted Confederate troopers stationed on either side of the passage forced them into retreat. Nearby, Colonel Powell's 2nd West Virginia Cavalry sat ready with drawn sabers for an assault on the gap that Powell himself viewed as almost certain suicide. Before the charge could begin, a soldier from the regiment's Company H scaled a tree and spotted Confederate numbers swelling at the position. Word reached Duffié, and the planned attack was called off. Averell had no way of knowing it then, but Confederate reinforcements, Morgan

Aftermath

The National Park Service classifies the fighting at Cove Mountain as inconclusive. Averell offered praise for his troops, stating that they had engaged and pinned down a larger enemy force near Wytheville on the 10th, which allowed a separate column to complete its mission without facing overwhelming numbers. A piece in the New York Times described the cavalry raid led by the bold and daring Averell as among the war's most perilous and brilliant undertakings, adding that it had, moreover, achieved success. A Richmond newspaper offered the opposite view, calling the engagement a highly significant Confederate triumph. Colonel McCausland stated in his account that Morgan had defeated Averell near Wytheville. Yet another source claims Morgan intercepted Averell at Crockett's Cove near Wytheville and inflicted a severe beating on him.

The months following the fight brought considerable turnover among the officers who had commanded there. Duffié and Averell had clashed both before and after the engagement, and Duffié eventually transferred to a different division, taking the place of General Julius Stahel, who had been wounded on June 5 during the fighting at Piedmont. That October, Duffié was taken prisoner, prompting Major General Philip Sheridan to call for his removal from the army. Powell rose to brigade command and, on September 23, took over Averell's position leading the division. Decades afterward, Powell received the Medal of Honor for his part in the 1862 Sinking Creek Raid. Schoonmaker likewise earned the Medal of Honor after the war's end, his recognition stemming from his conduct on September 19, 1864, at the Third Battle of Winchester. Among Confederate officers, Jones lost his life in Virginia on June 5 at Piedmont, Graham was taken captive that August at Moorefield, and Morgan died on September 4 when caught by surprise in eastern Tennessee.

Grant's broader strategy for pressuring Lee's Army of Northern Virginia met with only limited early success. Crook secured a notable win at Cloyd's Mountain and succeeded in destroying the substantial New River bridge belonging to the Virginia and Tennessee Railroad. Averell, however, failed to inflict damage on either the salt works or the lead mines, and Sigel suffered defeat on May 15 at New Market. The planned rendezvous of Crook, Averell, and Sigel at Staunton never materialized. Whatever conclusions one draws about how the Cove Mountain engagement ended, it remains a fact that the lead mines of Wythe County at Austinville kept producing ammunition for Confederate forces afterward. Later that year, Sheridan achieved a series of triumphs in the Shenandoah Valley, laying waste to much of the farming infrastructure that had sustained Lee's forces. Crook, Averell, Powell, and Schoonmaker all served in leadership capacities within Sheridan's Army of the Shenandoah. In December 1864, Major General George Stoneman launched a raid moving east out of Tennessee that inflicted heavy damage on the Virginia and Tennessee Railroad's facilities across western Virginia. The lead mines in Wythe County were struck on December 17, and the saltworks at Saltville suffered extensive destruction following the Second Battle of Saltville on December 20.