SCOUTS OF THE WILDERNESS
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Led by
Captain John Walker Amick
Also known as:
Amick's Partisan Rangers
Kanawha Scouts,
Amick's Company of Scouts,
44th Virginia Cavalry Battalion,
Thurmond's Partisan Ranger Battalion,
Hounshell's Battalion of Virginia Cavalry,
Amick's Independent Battalion
The Black Powder Rebels of the Confederate Nitre Works
and their
War in the Wilderness
General Wise arrived bragging, re-organized the mountain volunteer soldiers, and then beat a hasty retreat back to Lewisburg when Ohio yankees advanced up the Kanawha. Disorganized and wet from the non-stop rains, Amick volunteers were ordered to retreat past their homes as General Wise and his Legion fled back to Lewisburg.
While Confederate Generals Loring, Wise, and Floyd continued their fueds in these wild mountains of Virginia, Lt. Colonel Jackson and Lt. Colonel Finney were helping General Davis organize his secret nitre works. The local caves were bountiful with nitre essential for gun powder. Lt. Colonel Massie and Major Hounshell met at the Walker House, Cross Lanes, to discuss formation of a new regiment to protect the infant niter works of the Confederacy.
Although the mountain rangers were victorious at Carnifex and stopped the yankee advance, Floyd retreated to Lewisburg on the Lewisburg-Kanawha Turnpike, known since Jefferson as the "Old Saltpetre Route". The niter works and their bounty for black powder so desperately needed by the Confederacy were in risk of discovery and capture.
General Lee came to referee his generals, and General Davis, trusted cousin of Jefferson Davis, privately reported to Lee the progress being made at the nitre works.
Finney was down with typoid and Wise was sent back to Richmond. The invading yankee vagabonds arrested Perry Amick. Big John was shot. And in December, Henry and notorious bushwhacker Eli Amick were captured. The guardian soldiers, their fidelity unshaken even in the face of their foe's muskets, continued their secret assignment to protect the nitre works at Gun Powder Ridge, and in the confusion of the 1861 Wilderness Campaign, became forgotten regiments......
Sewell Mountain
Where Lee Met Traveller
General Floyd's "Third Regiment" and "First Battalion"
....later assigned to the forgotten Army of Western Virginia
when commanded by Major General John Breckenridge
Thank You, to those who shared Amick soldier stories.
UPDATED: Aug. 8, '07: Biographies: J. A. Brown; Memoirs of a Confederate Soldier (22nd Va. Inf)
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