The Twenty-Five Days of Morgan - July 14, 1863

Brigadier General John H. Morgan’s 2,000 Confederate troopers and five artillery pieces continue their non-stop night march around the largest and most vital Union city west of the Appalachian Mountains. Morgan understands that halting for the night anywhere in the northern suburbs of this great city would spell certain disaster for his men. A delay would give time for Major General Ambrose Burnside, the commander of the Department of the Ohio (headquartered in Cincinnati) and the XXIII Corps, to transport tens of thousands of troops in front of Morgan’s Division. If that happens, Morgan and his division would be crushed between them and Brigadier General Edward Hobson’s Provisional Division of experienced Union cavalry, who trail Morgan’s rear by less than a day’s ride.

This morning at its Cincinnati camp, Colonel William P. Sanders’s Michigan Cavalry Brigade is reduced to 250 men from its original strength of 1,500 when it had operated under Colonel James I. David near Lebanon, Kentucky, on July 5. On July 6, Major General George Hartsuff, the field commander of the XXIII Corps, had decided to replace Colonel David with Colonel Sanders as leader of the Michigan Cavalry Brigade. Hartsuff had written Burnside, “I am astonished and disgusted with the conduct of the Michigan regiments, and am in doubt now whether to send them at the enemy….” Hartsuff had concluded that Colonel David had handled his men ineptly by mysteriously allowing them to rest for four hours while positioned approximately three miles east of Lebanon, all the time listening to the battle raging in town between Colonel Hanson and General Morgan. From July 7-13, Colonel Sanders had marched the brigade in Kentucky from Danville, through Lawrenceburg and Eminence, and then to Westport, from where he had transported the men by steamboat to Vevay, Indiana, to report to Brigadier General Mahlon Manson. Manson had ordered the cavalrymen and artillerymen farther up the Ohio River to Lawrenceburg, Indiana, before ending their waterborne journey at Cincinnati.

Before sunrise, General Burnside orders Sanders to relocate his brigade from Cincinnati to Avondale, a small, affluent village three miles northeast of the city on the Reading Turnpike. Sanders departs the Queen City at 4:00 am with his Michigan Cavalry Brigade, and in just over an hour, they reach Avondale. There, they lie in camp until 3:30 pm, when Burnside instructs Sanders to join his troopers with General Hobson’s Provisional Division somewhere near Camp Dennison. Had Burnside sent the Michigan Cavalry Brigade directly to Camp Dennison without stopping at Avondale, there would have been a chance that Sanders could have attacked Morgan’s Division as it made its way around Camp Dennison. Sanders’s cavalrymen fall in with Hobson’s division at Montgomery, Ohio, where the Wolverines camp for the night.

After Colonel Basil Duke’s First Brigade successfully reunites with Colonel Adam Johnson’s Second Brigade just west of Springfield (Springdale), General Morgan leads them east from Springfield toward the most critical point north of Cincinnati – the Sharon Road crossing of the Cincinnati, Hamilton & Dayton Railroad. It is here that Morgan fears the worst might occur: that General Burnside would transport thousands of troops on the CH&D Railroad and detrain them at the upscale village of Glendale, where the railroad intersects Sharon Road. Encountering Union troops in the night would force Morgan to stop and camp until dawn, when he could determine whether to attack or sidestep the enemy. Fortunately, his vanguard enters Glendale around 2:00 am, and not a sound could be heard. Not a single Union soldier occupies the village. In fact, only thirty minutes before the scouts’ arrival, a Union troop train had steamed northward to Hamilton carrying Union soldiers and a battery of artillery. Morgan’s feints and Ellsworth’s deceptive messages have worked!

While Morgan’s troops tear up the CH&D tracks at Glendale and forage horses and food from the citizens, George “Lightning” Ellsworth takes control of the telegraph at the Glendale railroad station’s communications office. Here, Ellsworth sends more believable, but false, messages to Burnside and his officers in other towns. Burnside is tricked into thinking Morgan has gone to Hamilton, Ohio. It will not be until later in the day when Burnside realizes his mistake.

General Morgan and his brigade commanders are elated when they arrive at Sharon (Sharonville), Ohio, around 3:00 am. Sharonville lies on the Reading Turnpike. The Rebels have passed the most dangerous spot on their raid around Cincinnati – in fact, the most dangerous obstacle throughout all of Indiana or Ohio – and now they are close to claiming that the third of four barriers has been surpassed for the Great Raid to be a success. At the Sharon Hotel tavern, Morgan, Duke, Johnson, and several other officers share a bottle of brandy and smoke cigars in celebration of the moment, while they take advantage of the hotel’s Copperhead proprietor, who is upset by Morgan’s idea of compensation to a Southern sympathizer. Morgan’s men detest the Copperhead Northerners more than the Unionist Northerners. The Copperheads’ lack of assistance on the raid creates a feeling of betrayal among the Confederates. Now, the Rebels consider the Southern sympathizers as traitors.

Morgan and his officers conclude that they need their men to refresh themselves and gather new horses. To increase the area of foraging, Morgan sends Duke with his brigade directly east, while General Morgan and Johnson march south and east with the Second Brigade. Montgomery, Ohio, will be their rendezvous point. While waiting for a large detachment to come in from Reading, Ohio, Morgan rests briefly outside the John Schenck farmhouse at East Sycamore (Deer Park). The Schenck family has hidden the Thompson family of escaped enslaved persons in the house’s parlor, along with two prized stallions worth several thousand dollars each. The Confederates never catch wise about the parlor’s inhabitants, because the Rebels have been tricked by the Schencks into thinking a child sick with smallpox sleeps in a bed in that room.

Morgan heads east toward the eight-hundred-acre Camp Dennison facility, the largest permanent camp and military hospital in the State of Ohio. Camp Dennison boasts the eighth largest capacity of all Union general hospitals across the nation.* Destroying or damaging Camp Dennison would be Morgan’s dream accomplishment, but with nearly 1,400 militiamen already gathered there to defend the installation, Morgan knows he has little chance at success. He reaches a point called The Crossroads located three miles west of Camp Dennison on the Madisonville Turnpike. Here, the commander of Camp Dennison, Lieutenant Colonel George W. Neff, has prepared a welcome party for the raiders. *[Charles Smart, Medical and Surgical History of the War of the Rebellion (1861-65), Pt. 3, Vol. 1 (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1888), p. 910, 960-964.]

Neff had received word from Brigadier General Jacob D. Cox at 1:30 am this morning that Morgan’s troopers had been spotted at Glendale. Neff, who is a native of Cincinnati and a veteran warrior of the Civil War, understands the most likely path that the Confederates will follow to reach Camp Dennison. Most of the hundreds of militiamen at the camp have no weapons (Burnside has held them back in Cincinnati). In fact, Neff has only enough guns to equip four hundred men. He hands them out to about two hundred convalescent veteran soldiers who are recuperating at the camp hospital, and they join one hundred fifty militiamen under Captain Joseph L. Proctor who have used their brawn to build rifle pits and abatis on the eastern ridge overlooking The Crossroads.

General Morgan and Johnson’s brigade appear on the west side of the valley of The Crossroads at around 6:00 am. Captain Edward Byrne’s Kentucky Battery opens with its twelve-pounders upon the entrenched Union convalescents and militiamen, but they do not flinch. Johnson deploys his skirmishers, who advance to the abatis, but they go no farther.  After thirty minutes of the two sides exchanging ineffective fire, Morgan calls off the attack and retreats north to Montgomery. There is no need to stay any longer because it becomes evident that the Union troops from Camp Dennison will not interfere with the Rebels’ crossing of the Little Miami River east of Montgomery.

Colonel Basil Duke’s scouts find an undefended ford of the Little Miami River at a place called Porter’s (Hamilton’s) Mill. General Morgan directs Duke and his brigade to cross first and send flankers to the north to fend off attacks from the Loveland Militia. Around 7:15 am, Duke’s lead regiment, the 14th Kentucky Cavalry (containing Morgan’s Scouts), fords the shallow river and reaches the tracks of the vital Little Miami Railroad on the opposite bank. The Kentuckians build a barrier of upended railroad ties thrust into a cattle guard of a farm lane’s railroad crossing. Suddenly, a troop train containing 115 raw militiamen from Clark County, Ohio, and a few dozen civilian passengers comes steaming around a bend a half mile north of the barrier. The Rebels shoot into the locomotive to persuade it to halt, but the engineer, instead of obeying, puts on more steam and increases the speed of the train to escape its captors. Unbeknownst to the engineer, as his train rounds a blind curve, on the other end of the curve stands the barrier. The engineer cannot stop the train in time, and the locomotive (named the Kilgore) smashes into the crossed ties. The locomotive and its tender flip onto their sides, severely injuring the engineer and killing the fireman. However, during the collision, the tender miraculously uncouples from the baggage and passenger cars, which slowly coast to a stop. None of the passengers are severely injured – only a few with bumps and bruises. Morgan’s raiders surround the train and order the occupants to disembark. The Confederates capture the militiamen without a shot and force them to march to Morgan’s headquarters a mile and a half north, where they will be paroled. The raiders rob the citizens of their valuables, but they release them afterwards. Finally, the raiders burn the train after the Rebel column finishes crossing the railroad around 9:30 am.

Meanwhile, Colonel Duke sends his scouts to capture a group of green 11th Ohio Cavalrymen who are training at Camp Dennison, and who are now caught playing poker on the floor of the Madisonville Pike bridge over the Little Miami River. For some reason, the Buckeye soldiers did not hear the destruction of the Kilgore barely over a half mile away. Morgan’s scouts quickly capture or scatter the Ohio cavalrymen and take their horses; subsequently, the raiders take control of the bridge.

Duke’s brigade rides eastward to the town of Miamiville, where a prize awaits them. Here, the long bridge of the Little Miami Railroad – the main railroad feeding Camp Dennison with men and supplies – spans the Little Miami River. Duke’s men could make life difficult at Camp Dennison for a few days if they destroy this bridge. Around 8:00 am, after a stiff fight, Duke’s skirmishers capture or disperse a small squad of frightened 11th Ohio Cavalrymen who defend the trestle. As the Confederates prepare to fire the bridge, Lieutenant Colonel Neff sends to the rescue two hundred armed militiamen on a forced march under Lieutenant William H. H. Smith of the 21st Ohio Battery. Smith and his detachment reach the south end of the railroad bridge just as the Confederate bridge burners are nearly ready to set the fire. The militiamen charge into the raiders, causing the startled Confederates to flee to the north bank of the Little Miami River. They begin a shooting match with Smith’s militiamen positioned on the south bank with the few 11th Ohio Cavalrymen who rally to the fight. General Morgan, who has heard the crescendo of gunshots from his headquarters, races to the scene, but he finds Duke has the skirmish under control. Morgan orders Lieutenant Elias Lawrence to unlimber the two ten-pounder Parrott cannons of Byrne’s Battery on a hill above Miamiville. They shell the Union line at the bridge and then turn their guns toward Camp Dennison’s barracks located nearly two miles distant. Morgan rides to Johnson’s brigade to urge them through Ward’s Corner with the wagon train.

The skirmishing lasts over two hours, when Captain Joseph Proctor’s determined infantrymen from The Crossroads attack Duke’s rear guard at the Madisonville Pike’s river bridge. Within hearing distance to the east, Lieutenant Colonel Neff arrives around 10:30 am with twenty armed convalescent soldiers from the Invalid Corps on the south bank of the river at the disputed railroad trestle. Neff seizes the opportunity presented by Proctor’s attack, and Neff personally leads his convalescents in a bayonet charge across the bridge and into the Confederate skirmish line. Morgan’s men are shocked by Neff’s aggressive assault, and they break for their horses in the rear to escape the Union onslaught. Neff’s veterans kill, wound, and capture several Confederates as they try to mount their horses, while the other Rebels are fortunate to ride away. Duke orders an immediate withdraw of his men to Ward’s Corner several miles to the north, where they will rejoin Morgan and Johnson with the main column and the wagon train. Duke loses six men killed, four wounded, and seven captured. Neff’s casualties amount to one killed, several wounded, four captured, and one missing. Neff’s foot soldiers cannot pursue the enemy cavalrymen, and Neff does not have serviceable cavalry of his own. Nevertheless, he has accomplished a major feat – he has saved one of the most important military camps in the North from Morgan’s overwhelming numbers. General Burnside would recognize Neff’s actions by bestowing upon him a promotion to full colonel six days later.

The reunited Rebel division travels southeast to Mulberry (Newberry) and Camp Shady (Camp Repose), where a Union supply depot contains fifty fully laden army wagons that sit in neat rows. Neff had not had enough drivers to move them before Morgan’s arrival. The Confederates quickly take what they need from the U.S. Army wagons, and then Morgan orders them to be put to the torch. It will be the costliest destruction of Federal military property in either Indiana or Ohio during the raid.

Morgan’s Division, which is spread out over multiple parallel roads, passes through Williams Corner and Boston (Owensville) in Ohio before they reach the designated rendezvous point at the quiet town of Williamsburg. Simultaneously, large flanking units forage from the citizens at Withamsville, Amelia, Batavia, and Afton to the south and Goshen and Belfast to the north. A portion of the group that comes through Goshen fans out to the Woodville Pike at the village of Charleston (Manila), Ohio, where they collide with Captain Joseph T. Wheeler’s 4th Independent Battalion Ohio Cavalry. In the ensuing skirmish, Wheeler’s soldiers kill five Confederates and capture thirty of them. The rest of the Rebels escape to Belfast. Wheeler’s men bury the five raiders in graves that would be lost to time. Most of the Confederates who die on the raid will lie in unmarked graves along the raid route.

This first of Morgan’s troopers enter Williamsburg at 4:00 pm, approximately eighty-five miles and thirty-five hours from where they had left their last camp at Ferris Schoolhouse Crossroads, just south of Sunman, Indiana. This total mileage stands in the American record books as the longest non-stop march of a horse-mounted infantry division in enemy territory. General Morgan orders his troopers to make camp at Williamsburg, and they quickly comply, many of them slipping off their horses asleep as they hold the reins. Morgan stays the night at Williamsburg’s Kain House Hotel, where he will peruse newspapers and captured mail for military intelligence.

Meanwhile, Hobson’s Provisional Division of Union cavalry and artillery leaves Harrison, Ohio, at 4:00 am and follows Morgan’s path across northern Hamilton County. The worn-out, hot, thirsty cavalrymen are revived when they are jubilantly greeted by throngs of Buckeye women and old men who line the roadsides with baskets full of prepared picnic foods and pitchers of milk and buttermilk. Brigadier General James Shackelford recalls his experience of riding through Glendale, Ohio, nearly eleven hours after Morgan’s soldiers had left town:

A host of young ladies who were attending Glendale College, were all out, standing in lines along the streets. In their hands were trays, baskets, dishes, and pitchers, all filled with both the substantials and luxuries of life, with which they served the troopers as they passed through, in their saddles. I never witnessed a lovelier sight.

Hobson’s exhausted cavalrymen set up camp at the Harker and Tudor farms outside of Mulberry, Ohio, about 9:00 pm.

Around 3:00 pm today, Brigadier General Henry Judah’s seemingly “lost brigade” of 1,200 Union cavalry and artillery arrives at the Cincinnati Public Boat Landing on the Ohio River via a flotilla of fifteen steamboats. Burnside had shipped the brigade from Louisville, Kentucky, after Judah had marched his men thirty miles in the opposite direction that Morgan and Hobson had taken in Kentucky, thus, wasting several days of valuable time and using up precious horsepower. Judah spends the rest of the day in downtown Cincinnati waiting for his brigade to be refitted with fresh horses and supplies. The plan will be for Judah and his brigade to reboard ten steamboats, with whatever men he can refit, and transport them eastward by the Ohio River so that he can get ahead of Morgan’s troops. Portsmouth, Ohio, which lies at the mouth of the Scioto River, is usually the farthest upstream that a fully laden steamboat can reach during the dry summer months when the Ohio River is at its shallowest. Beyond there, steamboats and gunboats will run aground on the river’s treacherous sand bars. Judah plans to disembark his troopers, horses, and artillery at Portsmouth and maneuver by land to prevent Morgan from crossing the Scioto River.

Indiana is not finished yet with Morgan’s Raid. One of the most devastating occurrences within the state during the Civil War occurs this night. At 9:00 pm at Hardinsburgh (Greendale), Indiana, Colonel Kline G. Shryock’s 105th Indiana Militia regiment accidently marches in front of the position of Colonel James Gavin’s 104th Indiana Militia, who are entrenched about a half mile north of town on the Harrison-Lawrenceburg Turnpike. Hindered by the darkness, each regiment’s inexperienced Legionnaires mistake each other for Morgan’s men. They fire into each other before Colonel Shryock realizes their error and rides down the line to stop the unfortunate slaughter. When the smoke clears, five Hoosiers are dead and eighteen are wounded. It’s the largest single loss of Union lives resulting from Morgan’s Great Raid within the Hoosier State.

Sources:

Cahill, Lora Schmidt. The John Hunt Morgan Heritage Trail in Indiana: A Tour Guide to the Indiana Portion of Morgan’s Great Raid, July 8–13, 1863. Attica, OH: K-Hill Publications, 1997, pp. 6-51.

___ and David L. Mowery. Morgan’s Raid Across Ohio: The Civil War Guidebook of the John Hunt Morgan Heritage Trail. Columbus, OH: Ohio Historical Society, 2014, p. 19-315.

Duke, Basil W. A History of Morgan's Cavalry. Cincinnati, OH: Miami Printing and Publishing Co., 1867, pp. 402-465.

Johnson, Adam R. The Partisan Rangers of the Confederate States Army. Louisville, KY: George G. Fetter Co., 1904, pp. 142-150, 438-467.

Mowery, David L. Morgan’s Great Raid: The Remarkable Expedition from Kentucky to Ohio. Charleston, SC: History Press, 2013, pp. 85-165.

U.S. War Department. The War of the Rebellion: A Compilation of the Official Records of the Union and Confederate Armies. Ser. 1, Vol. 23, Pt. 1. Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1880–1901, pp. 11-15, 632-818.