page_title: Mason Mathews
section_title: Civil War
hierarchical_section_title: Mason Mathews / Civil War
caption_attribution_description: English: After the Battle of Carnifex Ferry, Confederate troops under John B. Floyd retreat across the Gauley River
context_page_description: Mason Mathews was an American merchant and politician in the U.S. State of Virginia. He served seven years in the Virginia House of Delegates, representing Greenbrier County from 1859–1865 as a Whig. This period included the secession of Virginia and the resulting American Civil War of 1861–1865. During wartime, Mathews made field visits to the camps of Confederate generals Henry A. Wise and John B. Floyd to arbitrate a public feud between the two men regarding the Confederate loss at the Battle of Carnifex Ferry in the Western Virginia Campaign. When Mathews' home of Greenbrier County was taken into the new State of West Virginia in 1863, Mathews continued to travel to Richmond, Virginia to represent Greenbrier County in the state's Confederate legislature until war's end. He was a member of the Mathews political family from Virginia and the American South.
context_section_description: On the outbreak of war, Mathews' sons volunteered for the Confederate States Army, where each received an officer commissions and was assigned to the brigade of General Henry A. Wise in the Western Virginia Campaign. The brigade saw action at the Battle of Carnifex Ferry, where Wise and his co-commander, general John B. Floyd, engaged Union troops under General William S. Rosecrans in the late summer of 1861. The battle was a strategic win for the Union, causing the Confederates to withdraw from the northwestern Virginia region. Generals Wise and Floyd each blamedthe other for the loss, resulting in significant discord in the ranks and negative attention from newspapers.
  Mathews, to assess the urgency of the situation, spent several days in the camps of both Wise and Floyd. He then wrote to Confederate President Jefferson Davis, urging that both men be deposed, stating, "They are as inimical to each other as men could be, and from their course of actions I am fully satisfied that each of them would be highly gratified to see the other annihilated." Mathews' letter, as well as the correspondence from the generals themselves, moved Davis to address the rift between the generals, which at this point had spread throughout their respective camps.  Davis subsequently removed Wise from his command.
  On May 23, 1862. Union soldiers attacked Lewisburg, and the ensuing Battle of Lewisburg, lasting only 23 minutes, resulted in over three hundred Confederate casualties and a loss of positioning in the region. Union occupations and raiding of Lewisburg followed, including the raiding of one of Mathews' properties during the fall of 1863 while he was in Richmond for the legislature. In a letter to a son, Mathews recalled, "[t]hey appropriated everything they wished when they went, many fared worse than I did. I think we ought to be thankful that they treated us no worse." He cited the loss of farming equipment, a vehicle, a horse, livestock, material goods, and a formerly enslaved person named Ned, who likely left with the Union troops.
caption: General Floyd's retreat after Carnifex Ferry. The Confederate loss led to a public feud between him and fellow general Henry A. Wise, which Mason Mathews arbitrated.
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