For ten days after we occupied Gauley Bridge, all our information showed that General Wise was not likely to attempt the reconquest of the Kanawha valley voluntarily. His rapid retrograde march ended at White Sulphur Springs and he went into camp there. His destruction of bridges and abandonment of stores and munitions of war showed that he intended to take final leave of our region. [Footnote: My report to Rosecrans, Official Records, vol. li. pt. i. p. 40. Wise to Lee, _Id_., vol. ii. p. 1012; vol. v. p. 769.] The contrast between promise and performance in his case had been ludicrous. When we entered the valley, we heard of his proclamations and orders, which breathed the spirit of desperate hand-to-hand conflict. His soldiers had been told to despise long-range fire-arms, and to trust to bowie-knives, which our invading hordes would never dare to face. We found some of these knives among the arms we captured at the Gauley,--ferocious-looking weapons, made of broad files ground to a double edge, fitted with rough handles, and still bearing the cross-marking of the file on the flat sides. Such arms pointed many a sarcasm among our soldiers, who had found it hard in the latter part of our advance to get within even the longest musket-range of the enemy's column. It was not strange that ignorant men should think they might find use for weapons less serviceable than the ancient Roman short-sword; but that, in the existing condition of military science, officers could be found to share and to encourage the delusion was amusing enough! With the muskets we captured, we armed a regiment of loyal Virginians, and turned over the rest to Governor Peirpoint for similar use. [Footnote: In some documents which fell into our hands we found a series of resolutions passed at a meeting in the spring at which one of the companies now with Wise was organized. It shows the melodramatic truculence which was echoed in the exhortations of the general and of other men who should have had more judgment. The resolutions were these:-- "_Resolved:_ 1. That this company was formed for the defence of this Commonwealth against her enemies of the North, and for no other purpose. _Resolved:_ 2. That the so-called President of the United States by his war policy has deliberately insulted the people of this Commonwealth, and if blood he wants, blood he can have. _Resolved:_ 3. That we are ready to respond to the call of the Governor of this Commonwealth for resisting Abraham Lincoln and the New York stock-jobbers, and all who sympathize with them. _Resolved:_ 4. That we have not forgotten Harper's Ferry and John Brown."]