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THE MEN BEHIND THE BATTLE
OF MIDDLE CREEK
The Union and Confederate forces were led by two very
different men. Humphrey Marshall was a Kentucky blueblood and a
representative of one of its leading families. James A. Garfield was a
self-made man born in a log cabin on his father's thirty-acre Ohio farm.
A native of Cuyahoga County, Ohio, Garfield was a self-educated
citizen-soldier and a self-made man. Born in poverty on his father's
thirty-acre farm, he graduated from Williams College in 1856 and pursued a
teaching career, becoming Professor of Latin and Greek at Hiram College in
Hiram, Ohio. An ardent abolitionist, he was elected to the Ohio Senate on
the Republican ticket in 1859. When the war came, Governor Dennison gave
him a colonel's commission and asked him to raise a regiment of volunteers.
In December, 1861, Union General Don Carlos Buell ordered Garfield to
transport his regiment, the 42nd Ohio Volunteer Infantry, to the new Union
base at Catlettsburg, where he had begun stockpiling military supplies.
Reporting to Buell in Louisville, Garfield was placed in charge of the
newly-formed 18th Brigade and given the job of driving Marshall's
Confederates out of the Big Sandy Valley. . Click Here For Map
Following his victory at Middle Creek, which was widely reported in the
Eastern press, Garfield was promoted to Brigadier General. Establishing
his headquarters at Pikeville, he and his soldiers occupied the valley
until early April, 1862. On March 14th, marching through deep snow, he led
an expedition to Pound Gap on the Kentucky-Virginia State Line and broke
up the Confederate outpost at that location, driving 300 rebel soldiers
down the mountain and back into Virginia.
Marshall was the proud representative of one of Kentucky's most
distinguished families. His grandfather was Humphrey Marshall, the
historian and statesman, and his father was John J. Marshall of Frankfort,
a highly-respected lawyer and jurist. After graduating from West Point in
1832, Marshall served with the U. S. Mounted Rangers during the Black Hawk
War and then left the service to establish a successful law practice in
Louisville. In the Mexican War he served as Colonel of the First Kentucky
Cavalry and won distinction by leading a gallant cavalry charge during the
Battle of Buena Vista.
Returning to civilian life, Marshall ran for Congress and was elected
Representative of the Louisville district in 1849. He served as President
Fillmore's Commissioner to China in 1852, and after his return, he was
elected to the 34th and 35th Congress on the American ticket. A moderate
on the slavery question, Marshall was a good orator and canvassed the
state for Democratic Party presidential nominee John C. Breckenridge in
1860. Upon the secession of the southern states, he raised a large number
of volunteers for the Confederate Army and was commissioned Brigadier
General by President Jefferson Davis on October 30th, 1861. Establishing
his headquarters at Wytheville, Virginia, Marshall was given the
assignment of protecting the mountain passes on the Virginia border and
gaining control of Eastern Kentucky.
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