The Northern press, however, celebrated it as an epic triumph and this encouraged Congress to call for the drive on Richmond that ended with the Union defeat at First Bull Run in July.

As the largely-untrained Confederates had fled the battlefield with barely any resistance, the Union jokingly referred to the engagement as the Philippi Races.

"[6] Meanwhile, the 14th Ohio Infantry Regiment, under Col. James B. Steedman, was ordered to occupy Parkersburg and then proceed to Grafton, about 90 miles (140 km) to the east.

On May 4 Confederate Col. George A. Porterfield had been assigned command of the state forces in northwestern Virginia and ordered to Grafton to take charge of enlistments in the area.

As the Union columns advanced, Porterfield's poorly armed 800 recruits retreated to Philippi, about 17 miles (27 km) south of Grafton.

Most were local recruits from Taylor, Pocahontas, Upshur, Hardy, Pendleton, Harrison, Barbour, Marion and the Valley counties of Augusta, Bath, Rockbridge, and Highland.

[8][9] Col. Kelley devised a two-prong attack against the Confederate force in Philippi, approved by Gen. Morris on his arrival in Grafton on June 1.

They disembarked at the small village of Thornton and marched south on a back road on the same side of the river as Philippi, intending to arrive at the rear of the town.

The column, with a total of 1,400 men under Col. Dumont (with the assistance of Col. Frederick W. Lander, volunteer aide-de-camp to Gen. McClellan), would march directly south from Webster on the Turnpike.

The green Confederate volunteers had failed to establish picket lines for perimeter security, choosing instead to escape the cold rain and stay inside their tents.

Those who were armed fired a few shots at the advancing bluecoats, then Southerners broke and began running to the south, some still in their bed clothes.

Dumont's soldiers entered the town from the bridge (Col. Lander's ride down the steep hillside through heavy underbrush was considered such a feat of horsemanship that Leslie's Weekly gave an illustrated account of it shortly afterward[10]), but Kelley's column had arrived from the north on the wrong road and were unable to block the Confederate retreat.

The Northern press, hungry for battle stories, presented it as an epic triumph, encouraging politicians to demand the big advance on Richmond, which became Bull Run.

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.