Rebels at the Gate: Lee and McClellan on the Front Line of a Nation Divided (12 page)

Lander swept the hills with a spyglass as Mrs. Humphreys's echoing pistol shot reached his ears. It wasn't the long-awaited signal, but it was close enough. Lander snapped erect and roared the order for which those anxious cannoneers had been waiting—“Fire!”
¹⁶⁷

A young immigrant named Lewis Fahrion discharged the first bronze gun, landing a ball squarely among the white tents five hundred yards below. As the cannons opened, Colonel Dumont's infantry stormed down a winding road toward the covered bridge. “Close up, boys! Close up!” Dumont squealed as they ran. “If the enemy were to shoot now, they couldn't hit one of you!” Colonel Kelley's men could be seen on a hillside just across the river—fifteen minutes behind, and on the wrong end of town. As the six-pounders boomed, Kelley's men dashed forward, “yelling like fiends incarnate.”
¹⁶⁸

The Confederates were taken completely by surprise—jolted from bed by the novel sound of artillery. Some thought it was musketry from their own pickets. “There's a man who's not afraid to burn powder,” marveled one Southerner as the cannons roared.
¹⁶⁹

Confederate soldiers rushed into the streets. Balls dropped among the tents as cavalrymen tumbled out, scrambling to catch loose horses. “Out they swarmed, like bees from a molested hive,” wrote an Ohio gunner. “This way and that the chivalry flew, and yet scarcely knew which way to run.” Men and horses bolted up Main Street, “almost trampling each other in their efforts to get away.” It was a “genuine shirt-tail retreat.”
¹⁷⁰

“I never saw such a sight before in my life,” marveled a Federal soldier. They fled “pell-mell helter skelter without boots, hats, coats or pants.” One poor fellow was seen hopping along with one leg in his breeches. Trying to dress on the fly, he lost his balance and
ended up face down in the street. Teamsters cut horses loose from the wagons and galloped off “for dear life.”
¹⁷¹

As the Confederates stampeded out of Philippi, Kelley's Virginians poured in. Their entry was symbolic—“loyal” Virginians in pursuit of their “traitorous” brothers. All the commotion finally aroused Colonel Porterfield, who gamely tried to rally his men. “Where are those soldiers fleeing to?” he cried in vain as the street emptied. “Halt them!”
¹⁷²

Atop Talbott Hill, Colonel Lander watched the drama unfold. He chafed in the saddle as Dumont's men surged through the covered bridge below. The winding road into town was jammed with troops, but Lander could not stand idle. Putting spurs to his horse, the intrepid Lander plunged down the steep hillside “at a breakneck gallop.” Wide-mouthed cannoneers peered over the brink as he leaped a fence and thundered into the bridge, hard on the heels of charging Federal infantry. “Lander's ride” was declared a singular feat of daring and horsemanship.
¹⁷³

Colonel Ben Kelley joined Lander in the charge through Philippi. Riding at a full gallop, Kelley pulled a pistol and shot at the fleeing Rebels—until he toppled from his horse with a bullet through the breast. A crowd of Federal soldiers rushed to Kelley's aid, surrounding a burly Confederate quartermaster named William Sims as he cowered behind a wagon, still clutching an old-fashioned horse pistol. “This is the man who shot our Colonel!” cried one as they prepared to spit him with bayonets.

Colonel Lander rode up and ordered them to desist. “This man is a prisoner of war, and to kill him is murder,” Lander shouted. “Go after the enemy.” He directed the soldiers to carry their badly wounded colonel into a nearby house. Just about then, Colonel Milroy's Ninth Indiana Regiment appeared on a hill overlooking Philippi, too late to cut off the last Confederates streaming down the road to Beverly, thirty miles southeast.
¹⁷⁴

Of the retreat—775 Confederates fleeing before Kelley's force of nearly three thousand men—Virginian John Cammack wrote, “[T]here was nothing left for us to do but to get out of town
quickly. We would all have been captured that day were it not for the fact that the flanking columns missed their way and the attack on our flank and rear was not made.”
¹⁷⁵

Most of the Confederates regained their composure and retreated in good order. A few never looked back. Citizens along the way testified that “brave cavaliers came up to their doors begging for pairs of breeches to cover their nakedness.” Captain Stofer escaped in the bed of a wagon, deathly pale and vomiting. The rest of Colonel Porterfield's band spilled into Beverly that evening, jaded from the long retreat.
¹⁷⁶

Colonel Kelley's men were too exhausted from their all-night march to pursue them. Without cavalry, the Federals were content to halt at Philippi and claim victory. “I must confess that I never saw a flight…executed with more despatch,” Colonel Dumont offered in tribute to the departed Rebels. “They're not much for fight, but the devil on a run!” A new term was coined; those panic-stricken Confederates had not just bolted out of town—they had “skedaddled
.
” Kelley's troops dubbed it “The Philippi Races.”
¹⁷⁷

Dumont wistfully added that the Rebels had scampered off so fast, “but little execution could be done.” The artillery hurled only about six rounds. A scattered volley and some random shots of musketry were thrown in for good measure. Nobody was killed, save an Indiana volunteer who slipped on a log and accidentally shot himself during the night march.
¹⁷⁸

That didn't stop the extravagant body counts. General Morris estimated “from fifteen to forty” Confederate dead. Not to be outdone, a Confederate reported that the Yankees had cannonaded their own men by mistake—nearly one hundred new graves covered the ground in Philippi! “It is very certain that somebody was hurt, and right badly too,” a Wheeling reporter weighed in. “A leg, which had been torn off by a cannonball, was picked up in the camp. There was a great deal of blood upon the ground, and all along the road in the direction of the flight.”

In fact, there were a grand total of five wounded Federals, two crippled Confederates, and a handful of prisoners at Philippi.
Members of the First Virginia Infantry accounted for all the Union wounded. Most notable was Colonel Kelley himself.
¹⁷⁹

A large pistol ball felled Kelley. Indiana private Ambrose Bierce described the wound as “spang through the breast, a hole that you could have put two fingers in. And, bless my soul! how it bled!” Dr. George New of the Seventh Indiana Infantry gravely pronounced the wound a mortal one. “I expect I shall have to die,” Kelley replied stoically. General McClellan fired off a telegram from Cincinnati upon learning the news: “Say to Colonel Kelley that I cannot believe it possible that one who has opened his course so brilliantly can be mortally wounded…. If it can cheer him in his last moments tell him I cannot repair his loss and I only regret that I cannot be by his side to thank him in person. God bless him.”

Even as newspapers reported his death, Ben Kelley was making a dramatic recovery. McClellan happily recommended a promotion. Sixty days after his wounding, Kelley would be back on duty with a new brigadier general's star.
¹⁸⁰

Unlike Kelley, two Confederate cavalrymen were shot down in relative obscurity. The unclaimed leg reported at Philippi must have belonged to James E. Hanger, an eighteen-year-old member of the Churchville Cavalry. Billeted in the hayloft of the Garrett Johnson barn, Hanger was awakened by the first blasts of Federal cannon fire. At the third fire, a six-pound solid shot crashed through the barn, struck a post, and ricocheted upward, shattering his left leg. The horrified youth pulled himself back into the loft and lay there until discovered.

Hanger was carried to the Philippi Methodist Episcopal Church, where Dr. James Robison of the Sixteenth Ohio Infantry cut off his mangled limb about seven inches below the hip—without benefit of anesthesia. It was the first amputation of the war.
¹⁸¹

Captain Fauntleroy Daingerfield was “honored” with the second. Although badly wounded in the knee by a musket ball, he managed to escape. At the Logan house in Beverly, Dr. John Huff removed Daingerfield's splintered leg with a butcher knife and carpenter's saw, the only instruments on hand. While both victims
recuperated, the inventive James Hanger used a penknife and barrel staves to devise an artificial leg. It worked so splendidly that Hanger would later make wooden limbs for Captain Daingerfield and other Confederate amputees.
¹⁸²

At Philippi, gleeful Federals rounded up the spoils of war. Kelley's men proudly displayed Colonel Porterfield's large headquarters flag. Another captured banner had been trampled in the retreat—dirty boot marks upon it were pointed out with great amusement. Philippi, long a hotbed of secession, was to be punished. Federal soldiers occupied fine abandoned homes. Furnishings were wrecked, shutters and railings burned. The Stars and Stripes now floated over that former “Secession hole.”
¹⁸³

Soldiers raided the Bank of Philippi and blew a safe, but found it empty. Another target was the office of
The Barbour Jeffersonian
, a secessionist tabloid. Unable to find the publisher, the Federals smashed his printing press and cast the type into a well. They did find Colonel William J. Willey at Philippi, sick in bed with typhoid fever. Willey masqueraded as his Unionist half-brother Waitman—until a Confederate commission and some incriminating letters were uncovered regarding the “bridge-burning business.” He was then placed under arrest.
¹⁸⁴

From headquarters more than three hundred miles west in Cincinnati, General McClellan labeled Philippi a “decisive engagement,” the “most brilliant episode of the war thus far.” Newspaper columns fueled the drama—Philippi was deemed the first “land battle” of the war. Word of the little skirmish created a “lively sensation” in Washington. Ignored was the fact that Colonel Porterfield's Confederates had escaped to fight another day.
¹⁸⁵

A reporter named Whitelaw Reid thought the Philippi affair had impact beyond numbers. Tall, longhaired, graceful, and intelligent, the twenty-four-year-old Reid was a crack journalist. The
Cincinnati Daily Gazette
hired him to follow Ohio troops into Western Virginia. There were as yet no provisions for war correspondents, but Reid used connections to secure a position with General Morris, a former printer himself. Reid was designated a
volunteer aide and given a sword, fatigue cap, and a tent at head-quarters.
¹⁸⁶

“It is impossible to convey any adequate idea of the spirit which animates our soldiers here,” penned Reid. Raw recruits strutted around Philippi like veterans. “Only ninety six hours before, we had left Indianapolis.…Now, we were in rebeldom,” boasted a veteran of the affair. “I feel all right, and have come to the conclusion that I can stand almost anything, and go through any privation. I have seen the elephant!”

Newsman Reid believed they had determined the fate of Western Virginia. “The people had been deceived and inflamed by the grossest exaggerations and positive falsehoods,” he wrote. “A single success of the rebel army would have fanned to an instant flame all the concealed sparks of disunion…and we would have had to fight [all of] Western Virginia…. A majority was with us before, but their faith has been strengthened, the doubtful have been confirmed, and almost hopeless reprobates have been converted into loyal citizens since we ‘met them at Philippi.'”
¹⁸⁷

“
There is no man within the limits of this State that is more thoroughly convinced than I am…of the necessity of this separation. There is no power on earth that can prevent it.”

—John Carlile, Virginia Unionist

Steamboats chugged across the Ohio River. Packed aboard were Federal soldiers of Indiana and Ohio, in bright new uniforms of wool and burnished brass. They were bound for Western Virginia—the seat of war.

Loyal Virginians mustered into service to join them. Many would guard the vital Baltimore and Ohio Railroad—General McClellan's lifeline into Western Virginia. A scarcity of wagons and teams made it difficult to move far beyond the rails. The troops remained idle at Philippi for more than a month. Bemoaned Whitelaw Reid, “[I]t is certain that had the reinforcements and supplies…been sent forward…at the proper time, our forces, instead of lying at Philippi…would have driven every rebel in arms [out of] Northwestern Virginia.”
¹⁸⁸

Meanwhile, Federal soldiers picked wild strawberries and roamed the hills in quest of the elusive secessionists—now known derisively as “secesh.” They viewed the land, if not its people, with
favor. “We are in the midst of a most splendid country,” marveled an Ohio soldier. “The Tygart's is indeed a beautiful valley,” wrote another, “nestling under the shelter of the Alleghenies, and hemmed in by crested mountains covered with rich forests of oak, chestnut, pine, beech, and a score of other varieties.”
¹⁸⁹

The scenery intoxicated a young private named Ambrose Bierce. One of ten children—all with names beginning with the letter “A”—the nineteen-year-old Bierce possessed a tall, muscular frame, squarish jaw, deep-set blue eyes, and undulating golden hair. To escape work as an Elkhart, Indiana, grocery and restaurant clerk, he had joined the Ninth Indiana Infantry. Bierce had a keen eye and a gifted pen—traits that would become his calling. “Nine in ten of us had never seen a mountain, nor a hill as high as a church spire, until we had crossed the Ohio River,” he later wrote. “In power upon the emotions nothing, I think, is comparable to a first sight of mountains.”
¹⁹⁰