During the Civil War, Hardy County and Petersburg stood at the center of a fiercely contested region of western Virginia, valued by both sides for its crops, livestock, salt, recruiting potential, and especially for access to the B&O Railroad and the road network linking New Creek, Cumberland, Grafton, Winchester, the Shenandoah Valley, Franklin, and Staunton. The area shifted repeatedly between Union and Confederate control, from early Confederate occupation in 1861, to skirmishes around Petersburg, to Major General John C. Fremont’s use of Petersburg as a base in 1862, and later to continued raids, convoy attacks, scouting actions, and evacuations. Union officer James A. Mulligan, an Irish-American who had organized the 23rd Illinois Volunteer Infantry known as the Irish Brigade, was sent to Petersburg in the summer of 1863 to fortify and hold this vital point, where he built a formidable fort on the highest nearby hill and commanded a substantial garrison before leaving in November; he was later mortally wounded at Kernstown in 1864 after ordering his men to save the brigade’s flag. Confederate leader John H. McNeill, born near Moorefield, returned to Hardy County after earlier service, capture, and escape, and led the McNeill Rangers, a highly effective partisan force based in Hardy County that harried Federal troops, disrupted railroad traffic and communications, and seized supplies and cattle for the Confederate armies. McNeill was mortally wounded in an October 1863 action after his men captured a bridge and prisoners near Harrisonburg, and the Rangers continued under his son Jesse. Throughout the war, the region saw constant small-scale but determined fighting, including battles, skirmishes, raids, and supply train attacks near Petersburg, Greenland Gap, Moorefield, and surrounding roads and river crossings, and although the Shenandoah Valley came under complete Federal control by November 1864, the area remained dangerous for Federal troops until the war ended.
