In 1862, a plan was drawn up by the South to invade the western counties, destroy the railroads and recapture the salt-rich Kanawha Valley. By early 1863, that plan had been partially abandoned. Instead, during May, Brig. Gens. William E. Jones and John D. Imboden conducted a series of raids attempting to destroythe Baltimore & Ohio Railroad and round up as many horses and supplies as possible. Coincident with the raids, a small infantry force mounted a diversionary attack to draw Union troops away from Jones and Imboden.

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Bryan’s Battery had spent the winter of 1862­63 at Thorn Spring near Dublin, Va. After necessary repairs were completed to the buildings in which they were living, the soldiers settled into the boring routine of camp life while they waited for spring. The only military maneuver they engaged in (other than twice daily drills) was a march to Dublin on January 11 to attack an expected enemy force that did not show up. Humphreys noted in his diary, “We stood around in the snow all day and returned to camp late.” Fearing an attack on nearby Saltville, they left Thorn Spring on April 16, 1863, and camped on the north fork of Holston River.

On May 3, Bryan’s Battery moved north to Princeton. The march over rough ground took three days. While crossing Clinch Mountain, the men caught a rattlesnake, defanged it and kept it as a pet. They remained at Princeton until May 16, when they were ordered to move toward Fayetteville, the county seat of Fayette County, and attack the Federal fortification there as a diversion.

The small force under Colonel John McCausland consisted of the 36th Virginia Infantry, six companies of the 60th Virginia Infantry, a company of cavalry and four pieces of Bryan’s Battery–two 3-inch rifled cannons and two 12-pounder howitzers. They averaged 15 miles per day, engaging in minor skirmishing as they neared the fort. On the morning of May 19, two miles from Fayetteville, they encountered a small force of Union cavalry. Bryan’s guns opened fire and drove them into the woods. One casualty was Humphreys’ favorite gun, “Maggie,” which jumped out of its brass trunnion bands and broke a front sight.

The Confederates arrived at a cleared plateau approximately a mile and a half in front of the fort. Humphreys gave the following account of the battle in his book, Military Operations in Fayette County, West Virginia. “The infantry went down into the woods toward the works,” he wrote. “The road to Raleigh (now Beckley, West Va.) after running in a straight line nearly three-fourths of a mile from Fayetteville, turns square to the left, and ascends to a small cleared plateau with a hill on the right. On this ridge were posted Bryan’s third and fourth. The second piece (mine) was posted on the plateau at the end of a straight opening which had been cut in the woods and ran directly toward the Federal Fort.

“My piece opened first and was immediately answered, and my third or fourth round cutting away the Yankee colors, they shelled us so vigorously and accurately with several guns that we were compelled to move to a place nearby where we could not be seen for the timber in front of us and the smoke behind us rising from the woods beyond the road which were on fire.”

This was a perfect opportunity for Humphreys to try his theory of indirect fire. He knew that the fort was approximately a mile away. From experience, he knew the range of his cannon. By using trigonometry, he calculated how far he would have to elevate the muzzle of his piece to shoot over the stand of black pines in front of him and drop a shell into the vicinity of the fort. The distance from the gun to the fort formed the base of a triangle; the trajectory of the shell was the hypotenuse. Once the shell expended its momentum, it would drop to earth.

Humphreys placed a man on a nearby hill to direct his fire, which he kept up the rest of the day and well into the following day. Under orders to fire slowly, due to a shortage of ammunition, he fired only 65 shots. The Union commander, Colonel Carr B. White, sent an armed patrol out on the 20th to locate the cannon, whereupon the Rebels prudently withdrew.

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