Appalachian Figures Series – The Story of Humphrey Marshall of Frankfort, Kentucky
On January 10, 1862, the hills around Middle Creek in Floyd County became the place where Humphrey Marshall’s Appalachian command reached its test. His men were cold, poorly supplied, and drawn into a difficult mountain position west of Prestonsburg. Across the creek came the force of James A. Garfield, an Ohio colonel who had been sent into the Big Sandy Valley to push Marshall’s Confederates back toward Virginia.
Marshall was not simply another officer passing through the mountains. He was a Kentucky lawyer, politician, West Point graduate, Mexican War veteran, former congressman, former diplomat, and Confederate brigadier general. By the time he entered eastern Kentucky in the winter of 1861 and 1862, he carried a name already known in Kentucky history. Yet in the Appalachian counties along the Big Sandy, his reputation met a harder reality. The roads were poor, the loyalties were divided, supplies were scarce, and the Confederate hope for a friendly mountain population proved much weaker than Marshall and other Southern leaders expected.
His story belongs in Appalachian history because it shows how national war entered the valleys of eastern Kentucky and southwestern Virginia. Through Marshall’s command, the Civil War in the mountains became a struggle over recruitment, loyalty, geography, food, river routes, and the hard question of whether either army could truly hold the Big Sandy country.
A Kentucky Name Before the War
Humphrey Marshall was born in Frankfort, Kentucky, on January 13, 1812. He was the grandson of another Humphrey Marshall, the early Kentucky politician and historian whose name was already part of the state’s public life. The younger Marshall grew up in a world where law, politics, and military service often overlapped.
He graduated from the United States Military Academy at West Point in 1832, but his first regular army career was brief. He resigned in 1833, studied law, and began practicing in Frankfort before moving his practice to Louisville. Like many ambitious Kentucky men of his generation, he moved between military standing, public office, and legal work.
The Mexican War brought him back into uniform. Marshall served as colonel of the First Kentucky Cavalry and was connected with the Battle of Buena Vista, one of the engagements that gave several Kentucky officers a public reputation. That war mattered to his later career because it gave him military credibility before the Civil War, even though his later Confederate service would expose the limits of that reputation.
Marshall also built a political career. He served in the United States House of Representatives as a Whig, resigned in 1852, and then served as United States minister to China. He later returned to Congress as a member of the American Party. By the late 1850s, he was known as a Kentucky public man whose career had crossed law, diplomacy, Congress, and the army.
Neutrality, Secession, and the Confederate Army
Kentucky’s early Civil War position was complicated. The state tried to remain neutral in 1861, even as Unionists and secessionists fought for influence. Marshall supported Kentucky neutrality at first, but when the state’s position collapsed and Union authority strengthened, he attached himself to the Confederacy.
In October 1861, Marshall became a Confederate brigadier general. His assignment placed him in the mountain borderland between southwestern Virginia and eastern Kentucky. That region mattered to both sides. It guarded approaches through Pound Gap, linked Virginia with the Kentucky mountains, and opened toward the Big Sandy Valley. It was also a region where loyalty could not be measured by a simple map. Some families were strongly Unionist, some favored the Confederacy, and many people acted according to survival, kinship, local pressure, and the likely presence of one army or the other.
Confederate leaders hoped eastern Kentucky might supply recruits and support. Marshall believed he could raise men there and perhaps build a larger independent command. The mountains offered opportunity, but they also exposed every weakness of his campaign. The same ridges and gaps that helped shield a force also made supply and movement slow. The same communities that Confederate leaders hoped would welcome them often proved cautious, divided, or openly hostile.
Into the Big Sandy Valley
Marshall’s most important Appalachian campaign began when Confederate forces moved back into eastern Kentucky after the earlier fighting around Ivy Mountain. He entered through the mountain approaches and advanced into the Big Sandy country. By early January 1862, he had established himself around Paintsville and the surrounding area, with Confederate camps and positions reaching toward Hager Hill, Jenny’s Creek, Prestonsburg, and the road back toward Virginia.
Paintsville mattered because of its place in the Big Sandy system. The Levisa Fork and the roads along the valley helped shape military movement in a region where the weather, mud, and hills could be as important as the enemy. Whoever controlled the valley could move men and supplies more effectively than a force trapped in the mountains.
Marshall recruited men and gathered a force of more than two thousand, but many of them were only partly armed and poorly supplied. This became one of the defining problems of his command. He could appear threatening on paper, but in the mountain winter, numbers alone did not solve hunger, cold, weapons shortages, or uncertain civilian support.
Union leaders recognized the danger of leaving a Confederate force in the Big Sandy Valley. Don Carlos Buell directed James A. Garfield to move against Marshall and force him back toward Virginia. Garfield took command of the 18th Brigade and advanced southward from the Ohio River side of the valley. His march was slowed by winter roads, water crossings, and rough ground, but the pressure worked. Marshall abandoned Paintsville and fell back toward Prestonsburg and Middle Creek.
Middle Creek and the Test of Marshall’s Command
Middle Creek gave Marshall ground he could defend. He placed his men along ridges near the forks of the creek and used the hills to protect his line of retreat. His artillery could cover the approaches, and his infantry and cavalry could use the broken terrain to slow Garfield’s advance. For a poorly supplied Confederate force, it was a sensible place to make a stand.
Garfield reached the area on January 9 and moved toward Marshall the next day. On January 10, Union troops encountered Confederate cavalry and then discovered Marshall’s larger position. Fighting began around midday and continued for much of the afternoon. Garfield’s men attacked in pieces, pushing through difficult ground and across the creek while Marshall’s men held the ridges.
The battle was not large by later Civil War standards, but its consequences were important. Marshall’s command did not collapse in the first exchange. His men fought from strong positions and used the terrain well. Yet the pressure, the lack of supplies, the condition of his men, and the danger of being trapped forced him to withdraw. By evening, he began pulling away. His men burned supplies that could not be carried and retreated back toward Virginia.
The casualty figures were small compared with the great battles that would come later, but the meaning of Middle Creek was larger than its numbers. Garfield’s victory became a Northern success story at a time when the Union badly needed one. It helped launch Garfield’s military reputation and later political rise. For Marshall, it damaged his standing and showed that Confederate control of eastern Kentucky was fragile.
More important for Appalachian Kentucky, Middle Creek helped secure the Big Sandy Valley for the Union for a time. Confederate forces would return in raids and temporary movements, but the battle showed how difficult it would be for the Confederacy to hold the region permanently.
The Mountains Did Not Answer as Expected
One of the clearest lessons of Marshall’s eastern Kentucky service was that the Confederacy had misunderstood the mountain counties. Confederate leaders hoped that men in the region would rally in large numbers once a Kentucky general entered with an army. Marshall hoped the same. He saw recruitment as central to his mission and to his own future as a commander.
The expected flood of volunteers did not come.
That does not mean eastern Kentucky was uniformly Unionist or simple in its loyalties. The region was complicated. Some men did enlist for the Confederacy. Others joined Union units. Some families tried to avoid both armies when they could. Local grudges, older political ties, poverty, kinship, and fear all shaped decisions. But Marshall’s campaigns made clear that Confederate assumptions about the mountain population were too optimistic.
Brian McKnight’s work on Marshall and the eastern Kentucky campaign is especially useful here. He argues that the Confederacy’s failure in the region was not only a military failure. It was also a failure to understand the people of the Appalachian borderland. Marshall’s flaws as a commander mattered, but so did the larger Confederate mistake of assuming that eastern Kentucky would respond as a dependable Confederate base.
Pound Gap, Southwestern Virginia, and the 1862 Campaign
Marshall’s Appalachian war did not end with Middle Creek. In 1862, Confederate strategy again turned toward Kentucky. Braxton Bragg and Edmund Kirby Smith moved as part of a broader Confederate offensive into the state. Marshall’s role was smaller and more detached, but he again moved from southwestern Virginia toward the Kentucky mountains.
Pound Gap remained an important passage in this story. The gap linked southwestern Virginia and eastern Kentucky and made it one of the key routes through which armies, scouts, raiders, and refugees moved during the war. For Marshall, it was both an entrance and an escape route. It connected his command to Confederate bases in Virginia, but it also showed the weakness of any campaign that depended on long supply lines over rough mountain roads.
During the 1862 Kentucky Campaign, Marshall again focused heavily on recruitment and building his force. His superiors wanted cooperation with the larger Confederate movement. Marshall wanted men, supplies, and a stronger independent role. The result was tension. His column did not become the decisive Appalachian wing of the invasion. Instead, it became another sign of the Confederacy’s difficulty turning eastern Kentucky into a secure base.
Edward O. Guerrant, who served on Marshall’s staff, left one of the most valuable Confederate-side records of this world. His diary gives a close view of headquarters life, mountain campaigning, civilian encounters, shortages, hopes, and disappointments. Through Guerrant’s eyes, the reader sees not only Marshall the general, but also the hard conditions surrounding his command.
From General to Confederate Congressman
Marshall’s Confederate military career was uneven. Middle Creek hurt his reputation. Later service in western Virginia and eastern Kentucky restored it only partly. He had moments of success, including Confederate action at Princeton Court House in present-day West Virginia, but his relationship with command authority remained troubled.
He resigned from the Confederate Army in 1863. After leaving military service, he moved to Richmond and returned to law and politics. He represented Kentucky in the Confederate Congress, carrying his political career into the final years of the Confederacy.
When Richmond fell in April 1865, Marshall fled with the Confederate government. His papers preserve the story of that flight and his travels after the fall of the capital. After the war, he lived for a time in New Orleans, later returned to Louisville, and resumed the practice of law. His civil disabilities were removed by President Andrew Johnson in 1867. Marshall died in Louisville on March 28, 1872, and was buried in Frankfort.
Why Humphrey Marshall Matters to Appalachian History
Humphrey Marshall’s life stretched far beyond Appalachia. He belonged to Frankfort, Louisville, Congress, Mexico, China, Richmond, and New Orleans. But the mountain chapter of his life is the one that explains why he belongs among Appalachian Civil War figures.
In eastern Kentucky and southwestern Virginia, Marshall became a test case for Confederate hopes in the mountains. He entered the Big Sandy Valley expecting recruits, loyalty, and strategic opportunity. Instead, he found divided communities, poor roads, weak supply lines, and a Union response that pushed him back through the mountains.
His defeat at Middle Creek was not simply the story of one general losing to James A. Garfield. It was a turning point in the struggle for the Big Sandy Valley. It helped secure Union control in eastern Kentucky and showed that Confederate power in the mountains would often be temporary, contested, and dependent on raids rather than permanent occupation.
Marshall also reveals the limits of reputation. He had a famous Kentucky name, a West Point education, Mexican War service, national political experience, and a general’s commission. Yet the Appalachian borderland demanded more than credentials. It demanded supply, local understanding, careful cooperation, and the ability to read a divided people. Those were the tests Marshall failed most often.
His story is therefore not only about rank or battlefield command. It is about what happened when the Civil War reached the ridges and valleys of eastern Kentucky. Humphrey Marshall entered the mountains as a Confederate general hoping to build strength. He left them as evidence that Appalachia would not be easily claimed by either side.
Sources & Further Reading
Filson Historical Society. “Marshall, Humphrey (1812–1872) Papers, 1827–1921.” Filson Historical Society. https://filsonhistorical.org/research-doc/marshallhumphrey/
Library of Congress, Manuscript Division. “Humphrey Marshall Papers: A Finding Aid to the Collection in the Library of Congress.” Library of Congress, 2009. https://findingaids.loc.gov/repositories/19/resources/3893
National Park Service. “Humphrey Marshall.” U.S. National Park Service. https://www.nps.gov/people/humphrey-marshall.htm
U.S. House of Representatives: History, Art & Archives. “Marshall, Humphrey.” Biographical Directory of the United States Congress. https://history.house.gov/People/Listing/M/MARSHALL%2C-Humphrey-%28M000154%29/
United States War Department. The War of the Rebellion: A Compilation of the Official Records of the Union and Confederate Armies. Series I, Volume VII. Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1882. https://archive.org/details/cu31924079609545
United States War Department. The War of the Rebellion: A Compilation of the Official Records of the Union and Confederate Armies. Series I, Volume XVI, Part II. Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1886. https://collections.library.cornell.edu/moa/browse.monographs/waro.html
United States War Department. The War of the Rebellion: A Compilation of the Official Records of the Union and Confederate Armies. Series I, Volume XX, Part II. Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1887. https://archive.org/details/in.ernet.dli.2015.171315
Middle Creek Battlefield Foundation. “Battle of Middle Creek.” National Register of Historic Places Registration Form. National Park Service, 1992. https://npgallery.nps.gov/GetAsset/fd84d47d-5383-473a-b332-f80942f0c0e0
American Battlefield Trust. “Middle Creek Battle Facts and Summary.” American Battlefield Trust. https://www.battlefields.org/learn/civil-war/battles/middle-creek
American Battlefield Trust. “Humphrey Marshall.” American Battlefield Trust. https://www.battlefields.org/learn/biographies/humphrey-marshall
Kentucky Historical Society. “James A. Garfield and the Battle of Middle Creek.” Kentucky Historical Society. https://history.ky.gov/stories-and-blogs/from-the-mouth-of-a-volcano-james-a-garfield-and-the-battle-of-middle-creek
Kentucky Historical Society. “Battle of Middle Creek.” Historical Marker Database. Kentucky Historical Society. https://history.ky.gov/markers/battle-of-middle-creek
McKnight, Brian D. “Hope and Humiliation: Humphrey Marshall, the Mountaineers, and the Confederacy’s Last Chance in Eastern Kentucky.” Ohio Valley History 5, no. 3 (Fall 2005). https://filsonhistorical.org/archive/ovhpdfs/OVH_V5N3_McKnight.pdf
McKnight, Brian D. Contested Borderland: The Civil War in Appalachian Kentucky and Virginia. Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 2006. https://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt130jtph
Carr, Joseph D. “Garfield and Marshall in the Big Sandy Valley, 1861–1862.” Filson Club History Quarterly 64, no. 2 (1990): 247–263. https://filsonhistorical.org/wp-content/uploads/FCHQ_index.pdf
Peskin, Allan. “The Hero of the Sandy Valley: James A. Garfield’s Kentucky Campaign of 1861–1862.” Ohio History 72 (1963): 3–24, 83–85. https://resources.ohiohistory.org/ohj/browse/volumeresult.php?vol=72
Preston, John David. The Civil War in the Big Sandy Valley of Kentucky. Baltimore: Gateway Press, 1984. https://www.abebooks.com/CIVIL-BIG-SANDY-VALLEY-KENTUCKY-John/32419421625/bd
Guerrant, Edward O. Bluegrass Confederate: The Headquarters Diary of Edward O. Guerrant. Edited by William C. Davis and Meredith L. Swentor. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1999. https://lsupress.org/9780807130582/bluegrass-confederate/
Filson Historical Society. “Guerrant, Edward Owings (1838–1916) Papers, 1858–1915.” Filson Historical Society. https://filsonhistorical.org/research-doc/guerrant-edward-owings-1838-1916-papers-1858-1915/
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Wilson Special Collections Library. “Edward O. Guerrant Papers, 1856–1917.” Southern Historical Collection. https://finding-aids.lib.unc.edu/catalog/02826
Guerrant, Edward O. “Marshall and Garfield in Eastern Kentucky.” In Battles and Leaders of the Civil War, edited by Robert Underwood Johnson and Clarence Clough Buel. New York: Century, 1887. https://www.e-rara.ch/download/pdf/28957433.pdf
Garfield, James A. The Wild Life of the Army: Civil War Letters of James A. Garfield. Edited by Frederick D. Williams. East Lansing: Michigan State University Press, 1964. https://archive.org/details/wildlifeofarmy00garf
Library of Congress. “James A. Garfield: Print Resources.” Library of Congress Research Guides. https://guides.loc.gov/james-garfield/print-resources
Kentucky Adjutant-General’s Office. Report of the Adjutant General of the State of Kentucky: Confederate Kentucky Volunteers, War 1861–65. Frankfort, KY: State Journal Company, 1915. https://archive.org/details/reportofadjuta00kent
National Archives and Records Administration. “War Department Collection of Confederate Records.” Record Group 109. https://www.archives.gov/research/guide-fed-records/groups/109.html
National Archives and Records Administration. “Civil War Records: Basic Research Sources.” National Archives. https://www.archives.gov/research/military/civil-war/resources
National Archives and Records Administration. “Compiled Military Service Records.” National Archives. https://www.archives.gov/research/military/army/compiled-military-service-records
Confederate States of America. Journal of the Congress of the Confederate States of America, 1861–1865. Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1904. https://archive.org/details/journalofcongres00conf
Library of Congress. Journal of the Congress of the Confederate States of America, 1861–1865. Volume I. Library of Congress. https://www.loc.gov/item/2024863241/
Digital Library of Georgia. “Confederate General and Politician Humphrey Marshall.” Civil War Collection. https://dlg.usg.edu/record/geusc_139x0k6f6s-cor_631cjsxmx2-cor
Virginia Center for Civil War Studies. “Pound Gap.” Virginia Tech. https://civilwar.vt.edu/programs/drivingtour/poundgap.html
Essential Civil War Curriculum. “Kentucky in the Civil War, 1861–1862.” Virginia Center for Civil War Studies. https://www.essentialcivilwarcurriculum.com/kentucky-in-the-civil-war-1861-1862.html
Essential Civil War Curriculum. “The Civil War Era in Southern Appalachia.” Virginia Center for Civil War Studies. https://www.essentialcivilwarcurriculum.com/the-civil-war-era-in-southern-appalachia.html
Harrison, Lowell H. The Civil War in Kentucky. Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1975. https://www.kentuckypress.com/9780813159553/the-civil-war-in-kentucky/
Noe, Kenneth W., and Shannon H. Wilson, eds. The Civil War in Appalachia: Collected Essays. Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1997. https://utpress.org/title/the-civil-war-in-appalachia/
Inscoe, John C., and Gordon B. McKinney. The Heart of Confederate Appalachia: Western North Carolina in the Civil War. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2000. https://uncpress.org/book/9780807855034/the-heart-of-confederate-appalachia/
Freehling, William W. The South vs. the South: How Anti-Confederate Southerners Shaped the Course of the Civil War. New York: Oxford University Press, 2001. https://global.oup.com/academic/product/the-south-vs-the-south-9780195156294
Eicher, John H., and David J. Eicher. Civil War High Commands. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2001. https://www.sup.org/books/history/civil-war-high-commands
Warner, Ezra J. Generals in Gray: Lives of the Confederate Commanders. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1959. https://lsupress.org/9780807108239/generals-in-gray/
Author Note: Humphrey Marshall’s story is one of those Appalachian Civil War stories where a famous name met the hard geography and divided loyalties of the mountains. I wrote this piece because Middle Creek and the Big Sandy Valley show how deeply the war reached into eastern Kentucky, even when the battle names were smaller than the national ones.