Appalachian History Series
Strategic Context
By the icy winter of 1863-64, Cumberland Gap in Union hands formed a doorway into the Virginia-Tennessee-Kentucky corner. Acting on instructions from Brig. Gen. Orlando B. Willcox, Col. William C. Lemert ordered Maj. Charles H. Beeres to ride east with four companies of the 16th Illinois Cavalry and a section of the 22nd Independent Battery, Ohio Light Artillery (three guns under Lt. A. B. Alger). Their goals: sweep Lee County for forage, break up Confederate guerrillas, and remind mountain civilians who held the upper hand. Brig. Gen. William E. “Grumble” Jones, whose department shielded Southwest Virginia’s salt and lead works, recognized that permanent Federal control of Jonesville would unhinge his flank—and resolved to trap the raiders.
Though sparsely settled, Lee County sat astride the Wilderness Road and the Powell River Valley, a natural corridor that funneled men and wagons through the Appalachians. Whoever held Jonesville could slice supply lines or raid deep into either army’s rear. In late 1863 Union troopers had already burned the Lee County courthouse, and Richmond worried that the next thrust might seize the still-vital saltworks at Saltville. The impending clash therefore represented more than a skirmish in the hills; it was a struggle for the Confederacy’s industrial lifeline and for Federal leverage over East Tennessee’s delicate occupation.
Forces Converge
Jones scraped together nearly 2,000 mounted men—Lt. Col. Auburn L. Pridemore’s 64th Virginia Mounted Infantry, Capt. David J. Caudill’s 10th Kentucky Mounted Rifles, companies of the 8th Virginia Cavalry, and three small Virginia battalions—then marched them north through sub-zero nights, losing several troopers to exposure while fording the icy Powell River. Unaware, Beeres’s 450 Illinoisans rode into Jonesville on 2 January 1864, scattered Pridemore’s pickets, and bivouacked in the courthouse square and the sturdy brick Dickinson-Milbourn House at the town’s edge.
Dawn Attack
Before first light on 3 January Pridemore’s 230 dismounted men burst from the eastern timber with a Rebel yell, overrunning the Ohio battery. Beeres counter-charged amid clapboard storefronts and briefly retook his guns in brutal hand-to-hand fighting. Frost filmed the carbine barrels between shots, yet the struggle seesawed across Jonesville’s narrow streets while civilians huddled in cellars or fled to outlying farms.
Encirclement and Surrender
As Beeres grappled in the town center, Jones’s main body galloped in from the west and north, striking the Federals’ flank and rear almost simultaneously. The Illinois horsemen tried bolting north along the Harlan Road toward Cranks Gap, but Pridemore had already blocked it with riflemen. Out of ammunition, hemmed in on three sides, and counting a dozen dead with scores wounded, Beeres raised a makeshift white flag shortly before noon. Jones reported 383 prisoners, three captured guns, and twenty-seven laden wagons—all seized in barely two hours of combat so cold that a thin rime glazed the surrender documents as they were signed.
Aftermath and Civilian Impact
Jones lacked cartridges to storm the now-reinforced Cumberland Gap garrison and withdrew between 4 and 6 January 1864, leaving a frozen no-man’s-land just under thirty miles wide: Confederates commanded Jonesville; Federals clung to the Gap. For Lee County families the fight felt even closer. They had already watched Union troopers burn the courthouse the previous autumn; now gunfire rattled down their streets and turned the Dickinson-Milbourn House into a makeshift hospital whose scarred bricks still testify to the clash. Captured enlisted men—among them sixteen-year-old John McElroy, future author of Andersonville—were funneled to Richmond and then to Georgia’s infamous stockade; scarcely a third lived to see home.
The civilian price extended beyond blood. With the courthouse records already in ashes, legal deeds, marriages, and wills vanished, complicating land titles for decades. Families divided by wartime loyalties faced reprisals from neighbors and occupation troops alike. Even victory offered Confederates scant respite: guerrilla warfare flared, deserters prowled the ridges, and subsistence farmers struggled through a winter stripped of forage by competing armies. The Frozen Fight thus sowed seeds of enduring distrust that shaped post-war politics in Virginia’s far southwest.
Why It Matters
The Battle of Jonesville, though minuscule beside Gettysburg or Atlanta, captures how the Civil War’s fate hinged on obscure mountain passes and on civilians who lived beside them. It froze a strategic stalemate—Confederates protecting Virginia’s resources, Federals holding the Gap’s corridor—while exposing ordinary people to burning courthouses, parlor hospitals, and sons who never returned from distant prisons. Today state markers, a cemetery obelisk, and Civil War Trails panels let visitors trace the snowy dawn when mountain cavalry snapped a Federal battalion shut in a deadly vise—and ponder how remote places could shape the wider war.
Sources & Further Reading
The War of the Rebellion: Official Records (Ser. I, Vol. 32, Pt. 1, pp. 57–64) — contemporary battle reports.
Richmond Daily Dispatch, 8 Jan 1864 — newspaper account of Jones’s victory.
National Park Service, service records of the 16th Illinois Cavalry — prisoner outcomes and unit strength.
Virginia Department of Historic Resources, Dickinson-Milbourn House National Register nomination — architectural and battle-damage details.
Library of Virginia, William E. Jones correspondence and Lee County soldier letters — strategic intentions and campaign logistics.
The National Tribune, 10 Feb 1910 — veteran recollections including John McElroy’s memoir fragments.
Virginia Center for Civil War Studies, “Jonesville: The Frozen Fight” — modern scholarly synthesis.
mylonghunters.info, Lee County genealogical compilations — local casualty lists and civilian perspectives.
Author Note: [Blank]