The Civil War in Eastern Kentucky and Southwest Virginia

By Ray Ratliff 

Reckon it didn’t just stop all at once up along the Kentucky–Virginny line, not in places like Pike and Letcher. Folks might say the war was over in ’65, but up in them hills, it took a good while longer to die down.

Law, I recollect that scrap up yonder at Pound Gap, spring of ’62. Them Rebs had holed up on Pine Mountain, reckonin’ they’d keep the Yankees from spillin’ through. Major Thompson had near five hundred men, boys outta Letcher and Wise, dug in tight and guardin’ that pass like hounds on a bone.

But ol’ Jim Garfield—young feller from Ohio, sharp as a tack and mean when he had to be—he brung near eight hundred bluecoats marchin’ outta Pikeville. They come creepin’ up them ridges afore daylight, slippin’ through laurel and rock, quiet as ghosts.

When the shootin’ started, it cracked off them cliffs like thunder rollin’ through the gap. Smoke hung thick as fog, and the air smelt of powder and pine sap. Our boys give ’em a hard fight, held the line as long as powder and grit would last—but Garfield’s men kept on comin’, climbin’ steady and sure.

By noon, the order come to fall back, and the Confederates took to the Virginia side, leavin’ tents, powder, and vittles behind. Garfield burnt what was left and went back down the mountain, proud as a preacher on Sunday. Folks said he claimed victory—and maybe he did—but it warn’t no easy win. They paid dear for every foot of that ground.

Ain’t many big battles in these parts, but that one sure shook the mountains. Opened the door for Union men in them hills, and set a many hard feelin’s to simmerin’.

And when word come later on that the whole war was done, some laid down their guns… but plenty didn’t. You still had bushwhackers and home guards prowlin’ the hollers, settlin’ scores that war had stirred up. That went on for a spell—months, maybe a year or more—shootin’, ambushin’, old grudges comin’ due.

After that, it warn’t so much “war” no more, but it sure warn’t peace neither. Turned into feudin’. Neighbors against neighbors, kin against kin. Them hard feelin’s didn’t just wash away—they rooted in deep and held on.

By the late 1860s and on into the ’70s, folks was still fightin’, just callin’ it somethin’ else. Law was thin in them mountains, and a man mostly answered to his own people. What started in that war just kept on burnin’, slow and low, same as a coal banked under ash.

So truth be told, up in them parts, the war didn’t end in a day—it just kind of… faded off, leavin’ trouble behind it for many a year after.