At dawn on 3 June 1861 two Union columns surprised Colonel George A. Porterfield's Confederates at Philippi, in what is now West Virginia, and drove them out of the town in a flight remembered as the "Philippi Races". In 1864 the main Union assault at Cold Harbor, Virginia, was repulsed with heavy losses.
A railroad worth a fight
In the first weeks of the war Major General George B. McClellan, commanding the Union Department of the Ohio, sent troops into western Virginia to protect the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad. According to Lang, Union troops occupied the railroad junction at Grafton without firing a shot, and the Confederates under Colonel George A. Porterfield gathered at Philippi, in Barbour County, to the south.1
The American Battlefield Trust and the West Virginia Encyclopedia both put the attackers at about 3,000 men and the Confederates at about 800. The Trust adds that most of Porterfield's men were green and not yet organized into regiments. Union reports at the time put the enemy at about 2,000. A Confederate court of inquiry later found that Porterfield had some 600 effective infantry and 175 cavalry, "sufficiently well armed, but badly and insufficiently supplied with the necessary accouterments and ammunition".2
Two columns in the dark
According to his own report, Brigadier General Thomas A. Morris of the Indiana volunteers reached Grafton on the evening of 1 June and found that Colonel Benjamin F. Kelley of the First Virginia Volunteers, a Union regiment, had already planned an attack on Philippi. He put the attack off by a night. He added a second column under Colonel Ebenezer Dumont of the 7th Indiana.3
Morris reported that he was "in the midst of spies" and tried to give a false impression of his plans. According to Morris, Kelley's column, companies of his own regiment, the 9th Indiana and the 16th Ohio, left by train eastward at 9 a.m. on 2 June, as if heading for Harpers Ferry, then left the cars and marched on Philippi. Under Morris's orders, Dumont's column, with two field guns, went by train to Webster after dark and marched south from there. The Trust puts the two columns at about 1,600 and 1,400 men; Lang gives each about 1,500 infantry. Morris's orders told both columns to reach the town at 4 o'clock the next morning.4
The night turned into a storm. In Morris's report, "the heroism of officers and men was as truly displayed in a march of fifteen miles in pitchy darkness, drenching rain, and over a mountainous country as in the irresistible attack and hot pursuit of the discomfited enemy". He wrote that many men fainted and were left on the road, yet the two columns were only fifteen minutes apart at the time set for their meeting.5
A pistol shot at dawn
According to the American Battlefield Trust, a Southern sympathizer, Matilda Humphries, saw the troops approaching and sent her son to warn Porterfield; when Union pickets caught him she fired a pistol, the troops took it for the agreed signal, and the attack began early.6
Union guns opened fire on the town and the Confederates, caught asleep, were driven out. Major M. G. Harman, commanding the Virginia forces at Staunton, called it "a disgraceful surprise, occurring about daylight, there being no picket guard or guard of any kind on duty". The court of inquiry found otherwise: a main and picket guard had been posted, but gave no alarm until the enemy was some 400 yards away and firing; part of the command left the town in good order, and nearly the whole force re-formed some distance from it.7
Kelley's men came in on the wrong road and could not block the retreat, according to the Trust; in Lang's account they arrived only in time to join the pursuit. Kelley himself was severely wounded by a pistol shot in the breast. Morris's first telegram, passed on by McClellan the same day, read: "The gallant Colonel Kelley, of the First Virginia Volunteers, I fear, is mortally wounded". By 10 June McClellan could report him out of danger.8
Colonel Frederick W. Lander, a volunteer aide, rode into the enemy's ranks, according to Morris, and captured the man reported to have shot Kelley, a Confederate quartermaster; Morris added that Lander "had great difficulty in restraining the Virginia Volunteers from summarily dispatching the man". The Trust remembers Lander for a daring ride down a steep hill through the underbrush.9
The Confederates fell back to Beverly and then to Huttonsville, which the Trust puts almost 50 miles south of Philippi. McClellan regretted that his men, exhausted by the night march, could not overtake the mass of the fugitives. The speed of the flight gave the action its nickname, the "Philippi Races".10
Light losses, one leg
No Union soldier was killed. Accounts of the Confederate dead differ widely. Morris, referring to Dumont's reports, wrote that the enemy's killed were estimated at fifteen to forty, carried off, supposedly by friends, during the pursuit. Confederate officers at Staunton, relaying two men who had been in the engagement, reported a loss of "about six killed". Lang wrote that no prisoners were taken and no dead or wounded fell into Union hands, and the West Virginia Encyclopedia says that no one was killed in the encounter. The American Battlefield Trust estimates 30 casualties in all, 4 Union and 26 Confederate.11
According to the Encyclopedia, two wounded Confederates lost a leg, the first amputations of the war; the Trust counts the amputations at Philippi among the first of the war. One of them, James E. Hanger, later founded the artificial-limb company that still bears his name. According to the Trust, he made himself a leg out of barrel staves, with a hinge at the knee, and patented the design after the war.12
Ambrose Bierce, who according to the Encyclopedia had enlisted in the 9th Indiana, recalled nearly half a century later: "We had been in action, too; had shot off a Confederate leg at Philippi, ‘the first battle of the war’". The 9th Indiana had marched with Kelley's column.13
A court of inquiry
Harman urged Richmond to replace Porterfield, whom he judged "entirely unequal to the position which he occupies". On 13 June Robert E. Lee wrote to Porterfield that Brigadier General Robert S. Garnett had been sent to take command in the northwest.14
At Porterfield's own request a court of inquiry met at Beverly on 20 June. It found that he had ordered measures against surprise, but that a misunderstanding over when the scouts were to be called in and "a total want of proper vigilance on the part of the infantry pickets" had caused one; it also praised his coolness and courage under attack. In general orders issued in Lee's name on 4 July, the commanding general could not "exonerate him from blame in not taking proper precautionary measures beforehand", and hoped the case would be "a lesson to be remembered by the army throughout the war".15
Why Philippi mattered
Both the Trust and the Encyclopedia credit the victory with helping McClellan's rise to command of the Army of the Potomac. In his report McClellan wrote that it was believed the engagement would "inspire the Union people of the country with confidence in our ability to afford them protection".16
Within three weeks, according to the Encyclopedia, the Second Wheeling Convention voted to nullify Virginia's ordinance of secession. The Encyclopedia says the victory stiffened Unionist resolve in western Virginia; the Trust, that it bolstered the morale of the convention, whose vote led western Virginia on the path to statehood. The historian Mark Snell, quoted in the Encyclopedia, judged that "Philippi was a trifling tactical affair, but it had significant strategic consequences, the most important of which was to deprive the Confederacy of the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad".17
Five weeks later, on 11 July, McClellan's army defeated Garnett's forces at Rich Mountain; that battle is told in our article on Rich Mountain.18
Also on 3 June
1864: at 4:30 in the morning the Union II, VI and XVIII Corps launched the main assault on Lee's entrenched lines at Cold Harbor, Virginia, and were repulsed with heavy losses; the battle is told in our article on Cold Harbor.19
1942: Japanese aircraft bombed the U.S. naval base at Dutch Harbor in the Aleutian Islands, Alaska. According to the Navy's wartime combat narrative, the raiders were carrier planes, and bombs that fell on Fort Mears killed approximately 25 men.20
