Though Mathews opposed secession, he chose to support the Confederate States of America when Virginia seceded.

[1] He additionally served as a justice of the peace for the city of Frankford, and again in Lewisburg, from about 1834 to 1850, at which point the state judicial system was overhauled by the Virginia Constitutional Convention of 1850.

[7] In 1859, Mathews was elected to the Virginia House of Delegates for Greenbrier County as a representative of the Whig Party.

[8] In the 1860 presidential election, Republican Abraham Lincoln won the presidency over Democrat John C. Breckinridge.

These included the Committee on Claims, which generally dealt with issues related to private bills and petitions, and the Joint Commission on Executive Expenditures, from which body he submitted legislation supporting the families of soldiers injured in the war, and advocated for improved infrastructure in western Virginia by means of an extended Covington and Ohio Railroad.

[2] On the outbreak of war, Mathews' sons volunteered for the Confederate States Army, where each ultimately received an officer commission.

The battle was a strategic win for the Union, causing the Confederates to withdraw from the northwestern Virginia region.

Generals Wise and Floyd each blamed the other for the loss, resulting in significant discord in the ranks and negative attention from newspapers.

[16] Mathews, to assess the urgency of the situation, spent several days in the camps of both Wise and Floyd, and 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.

"[21] 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.

Their son Mason Mathews Patrick[23] was the Chief of the US Air Service, AEF during World War I, and again during the Interwar period of 1921-1926.