to retreat back down the mountain without signaling the attack. At Elkwater, Reynolds's brigade faced three more Confederate brigades but refused to budge from well-prepared entrenchments. The Confederates did not press an attack after Col. John A. Washington, a member of Lee's staff, the great-grandnephew of George Washington and the last civilian owner of the first president's Mount Vernon estate, was killed during a reconnaissance of the Union right. Reynolds was so confident in the face of such timidity that he dispatched two of his own regiments from Elk Water up the mountain road to relieve the supposedly besieged fortress garrison, but the arriving Union reinforcements were unnecessary. Lee called off the attack and, after maneuvering in the vicinity, withdrew to Valley Mountain on September 17. Reynolds, meanwhile, planned an offensive against the Confederate forces stationed at the Greenbrier River. Aftermath Reynolds's forces lost a total of 88 casualties (10 killed, 14 wounded, and 64 captured); Confederate casualties were unreported, but Reynolds and Kimball claimed 100 Confederates were killed and twenty were captured. The battle had little effect on either the campaign or the war; both forces after the battle were in positions similar to their positions before the battle. In October, Lee left Cheat Mountain for Sewell Mountain (West Virginia) in the Kanawha River valley with the troops of John B. Floyd and Henry Wise, but he was forced to cancel the offensive operations he had planned because of low supplies and bad weather. Lee was recalled to Richmond on October 30 after achieving little in western Virginia. See also White Top, site of Cheat Summit Fort (Fort Milroy) Cheat Mountain, site of the battle Notes References National Park Service battle description Lesser, W. Hunter. Rebels at the Gate: Lee and McClellan on the Front Line of a Nation Divided. Naperville, Illinois: Sourcebooks, Inc., 2004. . Newell, Clayton R. Lee Vs. McClellan: The First Campaign. Washington, D.C.: Regnery Publishing Inc., 1996. . Further reading Freeman, Douglas Southall. R. E. Lee: A Biography, Vol. 1 (pp. 554–75). New York and London: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1934. . U.S. War Department. War of the Rebellion: The Official Records of the Union and Confederate Armies, Vol. 5, pp. 184–93. Zinn, Jack. R. E. Lee's Cheat Mountain Campaign. Parsons, WV: McClain Printing Company, 1974. . Horn, Jonathan. The Man Who Would Not Be Washington: Robert E. Lee's Civil War and His Decision That Changed