During the Civil War, most of Wardensville's two hundred residents supported the Confederacy, and Southern guerrillas found friends there. On May 7, 1862, Union Col. Stephen W. Downey arrived with a mixed force of infantry and cavalry searching for guerrilla leader Capt. Umbaugh, who was found and killed. On May 30-31, 1862, nearly 20,000 men under Gen. John C. Frémont, the largest number of troops to enter Wardensville during the war, marched through in a steady rain as they returned to the Shenandoah Valley after Confederate Gen. Thomas J. "Stonewall" Jackson had driven them from it earlier that month; Jackson defeated them again at Cross Keys and Port Republic on June 8-9. On December 22, 1862, Confederate Gen. John D. Imboden's men unsuccessfully attacked a Union supply train passing through on its way to Winchester with provisions for Gen. Gustave P. Culseret after Federal forces had destroyed Imboden's camp near Moorefield and while he was gathering provisions for the winter. On August 5, 1863, Union Gen. William W. Averell led cavalry and artillery through town at the start of a raid against gunpowder and salt works in Pocahontas and Greenbrier Counties. Several times during the war, Confederate Capt. John Hansen McNeill led his Rangers through Wardensville to attack Union forces in the Shenandoah Valley to the east. Across the road, Wardensville Cemetery holds at least twenty-eight Confederate soldiers and one Union soldier.