How Strong Was Morgan's Command?

John H. Morgan's brother-in-law Basil Duke mentioned in his history of Morgan's cavalry that the command consisted of 2,460 men when they set out on the Indiana-Ohio Raid in late June or early July (depending on one's point of view about where the raid actually started). The accepted number of Confederates present at Buffington Island is 1,820 men (The Battle of Buffington Island Self-Guided Driving Tour brochure). Capturing accurate unit strengths, particularly when determining Confederate strengths due to record unavailability, has long been an historian's challenge. Also, when it comes specifically to those captured at Buffington Island, the numbers have long been misreported as men that were captured miles from the battlefield were processed at Buffington Island, and as a result the location of their captured is incorrectly given as Buffington Island. Then there is the timeline of events that also can confuse the issue: If Morgan broke out of the encircling Federal forces at Buffington with 800 men, but Adam R. Johnson escaped with 300 raiders across the Ohio River shortly thereafter, is Johnson's men counted as part of the 800? So the question becomes one of accuracy - how accurate are these numbers and could it be that Duke mislead his readers by providing a lower number, possibly to inflate what was accomplished by fewer men?

Recently I was reviewing my copy of Morgan's Light Brigade, a highly detailed look at Morgan's command during the period of 1861-1863. Published in limited numbers by Doctors Elizabeth and Dwight G. Watkins in 2001, it is a deeply researched listing of every man that served with Morgan, listing name, rank, regiment, company, enlistment date, enlisted location, if captured then where and when, if wounded or killed then where and when, and prison location. Some of the men were captured or wounded more than once, and those additional entries are listed. I gave some thought as to going through page after page and tallying those killed, wounded, and captured along the raid. That effort is daunting as Morgan's Light Brigade is hundreds of pages long, with over 3,000 men listed. Therefore I decided to use AI to assist.

AI was able to document Morgan's Light Brigade along with numerous other online sources to determine the strength of Morgan's command based on its findings. The results though were not as different as AI used Duke's 2460 as a baseline as that number has appeared so often in various sources as to become gospel (and it well may be the correct number). AI determined the following data:

Event / Location	Date (1863)	Status	Approx. Number	Cumulative Loss
Start of Raid (Burkesville)	July 2	Effective Strength	2,462	0
Tebbs Bend/Lebanon	July 4-5	Casualties	~75	75
Start of Raid (Indiana)	July 8	Effective Strength	~2,200	~262
Battle of Corydon	July 9	Killed/Wounded	51	313
March Attrition (IN/OH)	July 10-18	Stragglers/Sick	~200-300	~600
Buffington Island	July 19	Captured	~1,200	~1,800
Buffington Island	July 19	Killed/Wounded	~60	~1,860
River Escape (Johnson)	July 19	Escaped	~300	~2,160
Post-Buffington Chase	July 20-25	Captured/Missing	~200	~2,360
Salineville	July 26	Captured	~364	~2,724 (Discrepancy due to estimates)

The number of lost men shows that Morgan's command consisted of 2,724 men, nearly 300 more than Duke's accepted 2,460, but including variance due to estimates. While AI has provided a bit of a different view with its larger count of men, it is not a definitive accounting due to confusion as to who was being counted where, and if Johnson's force is part of the 800 that broke free at Buffington Island.

My next step is to go through the listing, man by man. I feel by doing this that, using Morgan's Light Brigade as the most detailed accounting of Morgan's command, that I will be able to be able to provide a more accurate assessment of the casualties along the raid.