Waiting for the Battle
Company G was from Ravenna, Ohio. On August 25,1861, this Company (approximately 100 men) found themselves camped at a little hamlet known as Kessler’s Cross Lanes in the western part of the state of Virginia. The leader of the 7th OVI (Ohio Volunteer Infantry) of which they were a part was from Ravenna as well. He was Colonel Erastus Tyler, and on August 25 he was a man about as confused as the troops of the regiment he led.
The 7th was a part of General Cox’s Theatre of Operations for this part of Virginia, and by the 25th, General Cox was well aware of the threatening movements of the Confederate’s brigades in his region. Cox’s responsibilities were to secure and hold the crossings of the local river, and to that end he had spread his regiments along the ferry crossings and bridges as best he could.
Company G found themselves along a roadway (mud way) at Kessler’s Cross Lanes on the night of the 25th. They had been marched back and forth along this road for the last ten days or so as General Cox tried to impede the Confederates based on factual or fictional information supplied principally by the local population. On occasion, they had exchanged long range shots with the Rebels, but for the most part they were still fairly green around the gills as to the fighting that was to be done. On the 25th though, they were back at the place known for its cross roads, and they were well aware that tomorrow would bring them battle. Extra cartridges (slug and powder in a paper sleeve) and caps (ignition agents for the powder) had been issued, and up ahead lay a Confederate force of unknown size.
The men of Company G knew it was coming, and as the coldness of an August night spent in the mountains of Virginia set in, they found little sleep. Colonel Tyler had forbidden fires on this night and as the boys lay along the roadway, they must have felt a long way from the warmth of Ravenna.
Colonel Tyler, quite unaware as to which direction the Confederates would come from, had disbursed parts of his regiment in different directions to counter any Rebel advance on Kessler’s. Company G found itself still along the roadway in the early morning as the boys rose from their non-slumber and began to build fires in the light of dawn. But unknown to these farm boys from Portage County, not a bite of breakfast would be eaten.
7000 vs. 100
The Confederate forces under General Floyd began amassing before dawn on the 26th, and by the time the light of day began falling on Kessler’s Cross Lanes, their fire was being answered by the advanced elements of the 7th. The long roll would have brought the Companies of the 7th into battle line, and on that parcel of land they began returning fire as best they could while the Confederates formed. What the men of Company G didn’t know was that the Confederate force was of brigade strength (roughly 7,000 men) complete with artillery and cavalry. There was almost no chance the 7th was going to stop the force approaching, and when new elements of the Confederate brigade began appearing to the left and right of the 7th’s position, it became quite a heated spot on the battlefield.
As the initial rounds of Confederate artillery began to fall on the 7th, the order to retreat was issued. The boys from Ravenna didn’t need to be told twice that the position they had been trying to hold had gone by the way, and with the feet of an Olympic sprinter, they took flight with the rest of the 7th back to the encampments of General Cox and the rest of the Union Army.
This was the Battle of Kessler’s Cross Lanes. It lasted around forty-five minutes, and it was a complete Confederate victory. In the annals of Civil War battles, it merits a place as a large skirmish, but at the time it was seen as a severe setback. But the boys of the 7th, the soldiers of Company G, didn’t see it that way. They didn’t see themselves as cowards who had run at the first sign of battle. They perceived themselves as soldiers who had been routed while in retreat by a force ten times their size. They regrouped, they trained, and they waited for the opportunity to come where they would have the chance to prove their valor again in a field of battle where the odds were substantially better for victory. Our boys from Ravenna licked their wounds in the mountains of West Virginia and waited…