The Man Who Built A Better Leg

THE CIVIL WAR was only a few weeks old when seven hundred and fifty Confederate recruits gathered in the fields around Philippi, Virginia. It was early June 1861, and as yet there had been no real battles. The men had eagerly volunteered, but most had no training as soldiers. Their only weapons were the ones they brought from home— old-fashioned flintlock muskets, cap and ball pistols, and a few shotguns.

- Tracy Vonder Brink

Among them was an eighteen-year-old college student named James Edward Hanger. When two of his older brothers signed up to fight for the South, James was determined to follow their example. His mother said she’d only allow her youngest boy to go to war if he joined the same company as his brothers. So James headed to the Confederate camp at Philippi to enlist.

The day after James arrived, word came that 4,500 Union troops were heading their way. There was a railroad near Philippi, and the Northern forces wanted it. James and the other recruits were excited by the news, but the Confederate colonel knew that his poorly equipped soldiers couldn’t stand against thousands. He ordered the recruits to be ready to abandon the camp at a moment’s notice.

As James and the other men prepared to move out, the afternoon grew dark. Lightning split the sky, and rain poured down. The colonel decided to delay their departure and move camp in the morning. He was convinced that there was no way Union soldiers would march all night through such a blinding downpour.

But the colonel was wrong. The enemy was coming!

James and a few others wanted a dry roof over their heads, so they took shelter in a barn for the night. James climbed into the hayloft and settled down to sleep. As he dozed, three columns of Northern forces slogged closer and closer.

At 4:20 a.m., Union cannons thundered, firing from the top of a hill west of Philippi into the Confederate camp below. James jerked awake and swung his legs over the side of the loft. Before he could jump down and dash for his horse, a cannonball crashed through the barn wall. Six pounds of cast iron the size of a grapefruit tore into James’s left leg above the knee. The other men ran, but James’s shattered leg wouldn’t hold his weight. Unable to escape, he dragged himself into the hay and waited to die.