Union and Confederate forces in the Big Sandy Valley campaign were led by two sharply different figures. James A. Garfield, born in poverty on his father's thirty-acre Ohio farm in Cuyahoga County, was a self-educated citizen-soldier who graduated from Williams College in 1856, became Professor of Latin and Green at Hiram College, entered politics as an ardent abolitionist, and was elected to the Ohio Senate on the Republican ticket in 1859. After the war began, Governor Dennison gave him a colonel's commission and directed him to raise a regiment of volunteers. In December 1861, General Don Carlos Buell ordered Garfield to take the 42nd Ohio Volunteer Infantry to the Union base at Catlettsburg, then placed him in command of the newly formed 18th Brigade and charged him with driving Humphrey Marshall's Confederates from the Big Sandy Valley. After Garfield's widely reported victory at Middle Creek, he was promoted to brigadier general, established headquarters at Pikeville, and held the valley until early April 1862; on March 14, marching through deep snow, he led an expedition to Pound Gap on the Kentucky-Virginia State Line, broke up the Confederate outpost there, and drove 300 rebel soldiers back into Virginia. Humphrey Marshall came from one of Kentucky's most distinguished families: his grandfather was the historian and statesman Humphrey Marshall, and his father was John J. Marshall of Frankfort, a respected lawyer and jurist. A West Point graduate of 1832, he served with the U.S. mounted Rangers in the Black Hawk War, left the army to build a successful law practice in Louisville, then served in the Mexican War as colonel of the First Kentucky Cavalry, where he won distinction at Buena Vista. He later entered politics, winning election as representative of the Louisville district in 1849, serving as President Fillmore's commissioner to Chine in 1852, and then serving in the 34th and 35th Congresses on the American ticket. A moderate on slavery and a noted orator, he campaigned for John C. Breckinridge in 1860. After the southern states seceded, he raised volunteers for the Confederate Army, received a brigadier general's commission from Jefferson Davis on October 30, 1861, established headquarters at Wytheville, Virginia, and was assigned to protect the mountain passes on the Virginia border and gain control of Eastern Kentucky.