Battle of Philippi (1861)

• 1. Introduction

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  The Battle of Philippi began before any Union officer gave the signal to attack. Just before dawn on the 3rd of June, 1861, Confederate sympathizer Mrs. Thomas Humphreys watched federal troops approach a sleeping camp at Philippi. The town lies in what is now West Virginia. She sent her young son on horseback to raise the alarm. When Union pickets captured the boy, she fired her own pistol at them. She missed, but her shots set off the fighting minutes ahead of schedule.

  Few soldiers on either side were hurt in the scramble that followed.

  What was a group of poorly trained recruits doing camped in that small Virginia town in the first place? Why would two armies converging from different directions end up fighting over a covered bridge nobody today has heard of? And what happened to the men whose injuries that morning would outlast the war itself?

• 2. A County Already Choosing Sides

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  Barbour County had already voted in favor of Virginia's secession ordinance by the time Confederate recruits arrived. A palmetto secession flag had flown above the Philippi courthouse since January of 1861. The town also controlled a covered bridge over the Tygart Valley River, a key link on the Beverly-Fairmont Turnpike.

  On the 4th of May, Confederate Col. George A. Porterfield took command of the state forces gathering in northwestern Virginia. He was ordered to Grafton to oversee local enlistments. As Union columns advanced toward him, Porterfield's poorly armed force of about 800 recruits fell back to Philippi, roughly 17 miles to the south. Philippi then served as the county seat of Barbour County.

  Porterfield's force was built from independent companies with names like the Letcher Guards, the Pocahontas Rescues, and the Barbour Lighthorse Cavalry. Recruits came mostly from Taylor, Pocahontas, Upshur, Hardy, Pendleton, Harrison, Barbour, and Marion counties, along with the Valley counties of Augusta, Bath, Rockbridge, and Highland. Other companies included the Upshur Grays, the Franklin Guards, the Hardy Blues, the Marion Guards, and the Harrison Rifles. More units included the Highland County Highlanders, the Barbour Grays, and the Potomac Guards. Rounding out the roster were the Bath Grays, the Second Rockbridge Dragoons, and the Churchville Cavalry. These companies eventually formed the 25th Virginia Infantry, the 31st Virginia Infantry, the 11th Virginia Cavalry, and the 14th Virginia Cavalry.

  The Barbour Lighthorse Cavalry, however, would not survive the fighting to come. It disbanded once the battle was over.

• 3. McClellan's Opening Moves

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  On the 13th of May, Maj. Gen. George B. McClellan took command of the Department of the Ohio, headquartered in Cincinnati. McClellan hoped an offensive into the northwestern counties of Virginia, the future West Virginia, could set up a later campaign against Richmond. His immediate goals were to protect the pro-Union population along the Ohio River and to keep the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad running.

  On the 26th of May, after Confederate sympathizers burned bridges on the Baltimore and Ohio near Farmington, McClellan ordered Col. Benjamin Franklin Kelley to respond. Kelley led his 1st West Virginia Infantry and Company A of the 2nd West Virginia Infantry out of Wheeling. Their mission was to guard the Monongahela River bridge at Fairmont, about 70 miles southeast. The 16th Ohio Infantry, under Col. James Irvine, backed them up. After securing Fairmont, the 1st West Virginia pushed on and seized the rail junction at Grafton, about 15 miles further, on the 30th of May.

  On the 4th of June, McClellan told Gen. Winfield Scott he had used western Virginia regiments to avoid claims of interfering in Virginia's affairs. He admitted that "comparatively few of the Virginia troops thus far raised" were really Virginians, adding that they were "mostly from Penna and Ohio." Meanwhile the 14th Ohio Infantry, under Col. James B. Steedman, was ordered to occupy Parkersburg before marching roughly 90 miles east to Grafton. By the 28th of May, McClellan had pushed about 3,000 troops into western Virginia. He placed them all under Brig. Gen. Thomas A. Morris, commander of the Indiana Volunteers.

  Kelley was already drafting a plan to catch Porterfield's men in a pincer from two directions at once.

• 4. Two Columns, One Trap

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  On the 1st of June, Gen. Morris arrived in Grafton and approved Col. Kelley's plan for a two-pronged attack on Philippi. Kelley's main column numbered 1,600 men, including six companies of his own regiment. Nine companies came from the 9th Indiana Infantry under Col. Robert H. Milroy, and six from the 16th Ohio. To fool the Confederates into expecting an advance on Harpers Ferry, this column left by train heading east. The soldiers disembarked at the small village of Thornton and marched south on a back road, aiming to reach Philippi from the rear.

  The 7th Indiana, under Col. Ebenezer Dumont, marched instead to Webster, about 3.5 miles southwest of Grafton. There it joined the 6th Indiana under Col. Thomas T. Crittenden and the 14th Ohio under Col. Steedman. This combined column of 1,400 men, led by Dumont with help from volunteer aide Col. Frederick W. Lander, marched south from Webster along the turnpike. Together the two columns were meant to execute a double envelopment, catching the outnumbered Confederates between them.

  On the 2nd of June, both Union columns set out through steady rain to converge on Philippi before dawn. Gen. Morris had planned a predawn assault, to be signaled by a single pistol shot.

  The green Confederate volunteers, worn down by the weather, had not even bothered to post picket lines around their camp.

• 5. The Philippi Races

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  Union gunners opened fire on the camp at dawn, and the blast of artillery tore the Confederates from their sleep. Those who had weapons managed only a few shots at the advancing Union troops before the Confederate line broke entirely. Soldiers ran south still dressed in their bed clothes, and the disorganized retreat prompted Union journalists to dub it the Races at Philippi.

  Dumont's soldiers entered the town across the covered bridge. Col. Lander's ride down a steep, brush-choked hillside was judged so impressive that Leslie's Weekly published an illustrated account of it soon after.

  Kelley's column, however, had arrived from the north on the wrong road and could not block the Confederate retreat. Kelley himself was shot while chasing fleeing Confederates, but Col. Lander ran down and captured the man who had fired at him.

  The defeated Confederates fell back to Huttonsville, roughly 45 miles to the south.

• 6. A Town Left Behind

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  In July, a month after the fighting, one report described Philippi as "almost deserted." Only three families had returned, among them Mr. Wilson, called "one of the most influential families in Barbour county."

  A correspondent for the Cincinnati Times wrote that the village showed "the ruinous effect of the war" more than any place he had seen. He described many houses as "sacked and maliciously damaged," noting that "not the half of them" were still occupied. He called it "a rabid secession town," adding that the women there still "lean strongly that way."

  A record book of soldier violations, discovered a few months after the battle, preserved a blunt complaint from Edward F. Grant. Grant accused men of Col. McCook's 9th Ohio Regiment of breaking into the houses of Haynes and Hovatter. The entry was dated the 25th of June, at one in the afternoon. Other entries recorded two privates jailed for stealing glassware and vegetables. Four more men were jailed for theft and later discharged, and ninety-six were held for breaking into homes.

  Many of Philippi's men had left before or after the battle, some not returning until after the war, leaving women to manage families and property.

• 7. Legs Made From Barrel Staves

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  Two Confederates suffered significant wounds in the battle, and both underwent battlefield amputations believed to be the first of the war. One was Fauntleroy Daingerfield, a cadet at the Virginia Military Institute.

  The other wounded man was James E. Hanger, an 18-year-old college student. After he recovered and was released, Hanger returned home to Virginia and built himself an artificial leg out of barrel staves, hinged at the knee. The design worked so well that the Virginia State Legislature commissioned him to manufacture the "Hanger Limb" for other wounded soldiers. After the war, Hanger patented his prosthetic device and founded what is now the Hanger Orthopedic Group, Inc.

  As of 2007, that company was the leading manufacturer of artificial limbs in the United States.

• 8. The First Battle, Recalled Wryly

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  Following the defeat, Confederate Col. Porterfield was replaced in command of western Virginia forces by Brig. Gen. Robert S. Garnett.

  Philippi counted as the first organized land action of the war. An earlier, impromptu clash at Fairfax Court House, two days before, did not qualify. Even so, historians generally class it as a skirmish rather than a full battle. The Union victory in this relatively bloodless fight thrust McClellan into the national spotlight. Northern newspapers, hungry for battle stories, presented it as an epic triumph, pushing politicians to demand a rapid advance on Richmond. That advance became the Battle of Bull Run in July, which ended in Union defeat.

  Philippi was also the first in a string of Union victories that pushed Confederate forces out of northwestern Virginia that summer. Those wins strengthened the Union government in exile there, the body that would go on to create the new state of West Virginia.

  Ambrose Bierce, born in 1842 and believed to have died around 1914, served as a Union recruit at Philippi. Twenty years later, he described the men's swagger in an autobiographical piece called On a Mountain. He wrote that they had "shot off a Confederate leg at Philippi, 'the first battle of the war.'" He noted that they later lost about a dozen men at Laurel Hill and Carrick's Ford.

  Those quotation marks were Bierce's private joke, a wink at how minor the fight looked once he had survived Laurel Hill and Carrick's Ford.