On June 20, West Virginia celebrates the day it became a state in 1863, a moment born directly from the Civil War and shaped by the divided loyalties of the old Commonwealth of Virginia. The new state’s creation was advanced through the Unionist government at Wheeling, where West Virginia Independence Hall stands today as a museum of statehood and Civil War history.
West Virginia’s Civil War story is often told through major battlefields and famous names, but it can also be found in places like Morgan County’s small communities. The region was strategically important because of the county’s proximity to the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad and the dividing line of the North and South. Divided loyalties meant the area felt the strain of war in both military and civilian life. Historians estimate that more than 32,000 men from West Virginia fought for the Union, while roughly 18,000 fought for the Confederacy, a reminder that the conflict here split families and neighbors.
General Barstow
Paw Paw, strategically located on the Potomac River, the B&O Railroad, and the C&O Canal, became Camp Chase during the war, where more than 16,000 Union soldiers were stationed to guard the railroad. Today, the site is Camp Hill Cemetery.
Morgan County’s Civil War legacy also runs through Berkeley Springs, where the winter campaign of 1862 brought fighting to the doorstep of the nation’s oldest resort town. On January 1, 1862, Confederate Gen. Thomas J. “Stonewall” Jackson led four brigades west from Winchester during the Bath-Romney Campaign, briefly occupying Bath. The Confederacy would take over the historic Berkeley Springs Hotel on the same grounds as The Country Inn now stands. A historical marker notes that three companies of the 39th Illinois Infantry joined the action, and accounts of the campaign describe the Union troops breaking contact and retreating.
Many of the retreating Union soldiers went west of town, to Sir Johns Run. The Skirmish at Sir Johns Run is commemorated by a Civil War Trails marker near Berkeley Springs, tying the landscape itself to the movement of troops along the Northwestern Turnpike and the Potomac corridor. They again retreated this time to Great Cacapon; from Sir Johns Run. Confederate Colonel Albert Rust led 600 men down this mountain destroying the railroad bridge but not before the Indiana infantrymen retreated by railroad to Cumberland. Jackson’s men had pushed the Union fully into Maryland before the Confederacy would too retreat south.
Among the military figures connected to Civil War-era Morgan County was a Civil War Union Brevet Brigadier General named Simon Barstow. On March 13, 1865, he was brevetted Brigadier General, US Volunteers, for “faithful and meritorious services.” He is buried at Greenway Cemetery on the south end of The Town of Bath.
West Virginia Day is a fitting time to remember that the Mountain State was shaped also on roadsides, rail lines, and riverbanks like the borders of Morgan County. If you are making your way to West Virginia to explore the vast Civil War History for America’s 250 Anniversary; Berkeley Springs is a great first stop. If you are thinking of visiting Harper’s Ferry to commemorate John Brown’s Raid, a longer trip through the Panhandle is the best way to explore the war in deeper context, visit Martinsburg, Berkeley Springs, Paw Paw, and Romney to round out the history of this strategically important location,
