Battle of Philippi (West Virginia) - Aftermath

Aftermath

The Union victory in the relatively bloodless battle propelled McClellan into the national spotlight, and he was soon given command of all Union armies. It also inspired more vocal protests in the Western part of Virginia against secession. A few days later in Wheeling, pro-Unionists at the Wheeling Convention nullified the Virginia ordinance of secession and named Francis H. Pierpont governor.

There were two significant Confederate casualties. Both were treated with battlefield amputations, believed to be the first such operations of the war. One was a Virginia Military Institute cadet, Fauntleroy Daingerfield. The other Confederate was James E. Hanger, an 18-year old college student. After recovering and being released, Hanger returned home to Virginia. He made an artificial leg from barrel staves with a hinge at the knee. His 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, Hanger Orthopedic Group is the United States market leader in the manufacture of artificial limbs.

Following the battle, Col. Porterfield was replaced in command of Confederate forces in western Virginia by Brig. Gen. Robert S. Garnett. The companies of Confederate recruits who had been at Philippi became part of various regiments, including the 9th Virginia Infantry Battalion, 25th Virginia Infantry, 31st Virginia Infantry, 11th Virginia Cavalry, and the 14th Virginia Cavalry. The Barbour Lighthorse Cavalry, commanded by Capt. William Jenkins, disbanded after the retreat from Philippi.

The short-story writer and satirist Ambrose Bierce was a Union recruit at the Battle of Philippi. Twenty years later, he wrote, in an autobiographical fragment he called On a Mountain:

We gave ourselves, this aristocracy of service, no end of military airs; some of us even going to the extreme of keeping our jackets buttoned and our hair combed. We had been in action, too; had shot off a Confederate leg at Philippi, "the first battle of the war," and had lost as many as a dozen men at Laurel Hill and Carrick's Ford, whither the enemy had fled in trying, Heaven knows why, to get away from us.

The quotation marks indicate the wryness with which Bierce and his fellow veterans, who were to undergo far more harrowing fights, must have regarded the designation of "first battle".