Federal artillery shelled the center of the battlefield at Philippi as two Union infantry charges converged there. Colonel Dumont's 1,400 troops crossed the bridge on the left while 1,600 soldiers under Colonel Benjamin F. Kelley raced into town on the right, intending to trap Porterfield's Confederate troops. Kelley's men had taken a train east to Thorton to make it appear they were leaving the area, then were supposed to arrive on the east end of town to cut off the Confederate escape route, but they took a wrong road and arrived at the center instead. Virginia infantryman James E. Hall recalled that shells fell thick and fast, wounding a few, and that Colonel Porterfield immediately ordered a retreat. Seeing an avenue of escape, Porterfield sent his Confederates retreating to Beverly down Main St. in a pell-mell flight that became known as the Philippi Races. On Talbott Hill, Colonel Frederick Lander was with the Union artillery, and when he saw Kelley arrive in the wrong location, he rode down the steep hill and up Main Street to Kelley, who had already been shot, then chased down and captured the man who wounded him. News of Lander's daring ride at Philippi soon appeared in Northern newspapers.