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.

Union losses were light–two killed, seven wounded and nine missing. There is no record of Confederate casualties. Much of the damage sustained was to the landscape around the fort and, no doubt, to the Union soldiers’ nerves. They had no idea where the shells were coming from.

In a modest explanation of what he had done, Humphreys wrote: ‘The term ‘indirect fire’ is firing upon a point or place (A) from a point (B) which is not visible to people at (A). It is necessary, of course, that the trajectory or path of the projectile should pass above the top of the ‘mask’ or intervening object. At Fayetteville, May 19 and 20, 1863, the writer used a grove as a mask, but at Winchester, Va., Sept. 19, 1864, he successfully used a low hill. I claim no credit for the ‘invention’; the thing is so obvious. In fact, if I invented it, I did not do it at Fayetteville, but in my day-dreams when I was about 8 years old.’

After the war, Humphreys returned to Washington College to finish his education. In 1869, he graduated with a master’s degree in ancient languages. From 1872 to 1874 he studied in Europe, earning a doctorate from the University of Leipzig. Upon returning to the United States, he taught at Vanderbilt University and the University of Texas. In 1887, he accepted a professorship at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville, where he remained until his retirement in 1912. Although he lived a life that had brought many honors, titles and degrees, Humphreys once wrote, ‘I became known as the ‘First Gunner of Bryan’s Battery,’ a title in which I take more pride in than any other ever bestowed upon me.’

Humphreys died in 1928 and was buried in the chapel at the University of Virginia. His brilliant innovation — indirect firing — lives on.

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This article was written by Ben Crookshanks and originally appeared in America’s Civil War magazine.

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