By Stephen Smoot
One of the most difficult challenges in creating a regular “Citizen of the Month” feature comes in finding subjects to cover. Shinnston and Harrison County certainly have more than enough who contribute mightily to all that make the city and county shine. That said, almost everyone who has shown themselves worthy of such an honor declines it.
It just so happens that the qualities of those who serve and honor the community the most are the ones who seek attention for their work the least. Yet this column serves a vital purpose in providing examples of those who gave, sacrificed, and/or worked to make Shinnston, Harrison County, the State of West Virginia, or the Republic a better place.
Fortunately history provides an example of an individual who exemplifies these traits, Nathan Goff Jr.
According to historian G. Wayne Smith, Goff cut “ a glamorous figure” who later in life “appealed to the electorate.” The man who earned so many accolades as a Republican Party leader, federal Cabinet member, and elected official entered a life of service at a young age.
Born in 1843, almost 19 years later than Thomas “Stonewall” Jackson, Goff matriculated at Georgetown College in Washington DC, studying humanities in 1861 as war broke out. His Whig leaning father, Waldo, owned a successful business that relied heavily on the new Baltimore and Ohio Railroad for commerce.
His “Uncle Nathan, for whom he was named, was president of Clarksburg’s only bank, which was a branch of an institution headquartered in Wheeling, which was the only urban stronghold of the early Republican Party in the Commonwealth of Virginia.
With war coming and Harrison County in the turbulent border between Union and Confederate sympathies, Goff returned home from school. Although he initially enlisted as a private in the militia regiment forming at Clarksburg, Goff quickly earned election into the role of second lieutenant.
The first duties of the Union affiliated regiment lay in attempting to protect several counties’ worth of towns and smaller settlements from the expanding ravages of guerilla warfare. Rutherford B. Hayes’ expedition from Weston in the summer of 1861 started with encountering harmless pot shots from “squirrel rifles,” but by August encountered dogged and deadly resistance from both irregular and officially sanctioned Confederate and Commonwealth of Virginia units.
In May 1862, Goff faced his first encounter with the enemy, ironically against a force commanded by Stonewall Jackson. This opened a grueling summer of marches and martial action in the most remote and rugged terrain, mostly in current Pendleton, Grant, and Hardy counties. By June, “Goff was the only officer present for duty” and commanded Company G by default.
Almost a year and a half later, Goff received a major’s commission from Governor Arthur I. Boreman in the new Fourth West Virginia Volunteer Cavalry. Six months after that, Goff served as an officer accompanying a Union wagon train moving northeast from Petersburg along Patterson Creek. Confederate forces under Major General Jubal Early moved north from Moorefield, forced a mountain pass near where Corridor H cuts through the eastern ridge of Patterson Creek Valley.
There, they captured the wagons and 40 prisoners, including Goff.
Escorted by Confederate guards, Goff went first to Staunton, then to the notorious Libby Prison in Richmond. Neither the Union nor the Confederacy deserve plaudits for treatment of prisoners. Both sides had military prison camps that became bywords for suffering and cruelty. The difference between the two lay in the fact that the Confederacy’s ability to deed, clothe, and medically care for their prisoners diminished to nothing late in the war.
Libby served as both a first stop for captured enlisted soldiers and also the official officers’ prison. Officers, however, received no special treatment in the horridly overcrowded facility. According to the National Park Service’s description, “inmates suffered from cramped quarters, poor sanitation, outbreaks of disease, and extreme temperatures during winter and summer months.”
Exchanges happened periodically and Confederate authorities made it known that they would swap Goff for Harrison County native and Confederate Major Thomas D. Armsey. Union authorities sent Armsey to Fort McHenry in Maryland under a sentence of 15 years for hard labor.
By 1864, Union atrocities and a hardening of Northern attitudes made prisoner exchanges very rare. That said, a flurry of letters describing the dangerous conditions of Goff’s imprisonment, as well as the political and economic influence of his family, secured his release.
Abraham Lincoln himself urged that the swap of Goff for Armey be made and it was made so on Sept. 1, 1864.
Goff’s physical condition had deteriorated significantly in captivity, preventing him from returning to active service. Instead, he put his efforts into recovering his health and the study of law.
The privations suffered at Libby and his subsequent summertime imprisonment in Salisbury, North Carolina, earned Goff tremendous respect. Wayne wrote later that he “had established a bond with Union veterans that could not be broken.” Stories of his confinement were “told over and over again to evoke an emotional response among other veterans hardly obtainable in any other way.”
That sympathy and respect, along with the very effective “school” of leadership created by hard combat and military service, helped to elevate Goff into a Republican Party leader, a member of the United States House of Representatives, a federal judgeship, and selection to the United States Senate.