The Twenty-Five Days of Morgan - July 18, 1863

Today becomes a race between Morgan’s raiders and Union forces to get to the Ohio River ford at Buffington Island, which is found a half mile south of Portland, Ohio. The Buffington Island Ford is composed of two separate low-water fords – the Upper Ford, located at the northern tip of the island, and the Lower (or Middle) Ford, positioned near the midpoint of the island. During the summer months, both fords are about two and half feet deep, while the rest of the river in this region ranges from four to ten feet deep. Other fords exist upstream and downstream of Buffington Island, but the Buffington Island Ford is the most popular and most well-known to civilians of the Upper Ohio Valley. Also, Captain Thomas Hines had scouted Buffington Island Ford in May 1863 before his raid into Indiana in June.

Brigadier General Henry Judah and his 1,100-man Union cavalry brigade break camp at Centerville, Ohio, around 4:00 am and turn east. They travel through Harrisburg, Porter, and Kygerville (Kyger) in Gallia County before reaching Middleport, Ohio, on the Ohio River.

Brigadier General Edward Hobson’s Provisional Cavalry Division starts from Jackson, Ohio, at 3:00 am. The Union main column follows the path that Confederate colonel Adam Johnson had taken the day before – through Winchester (Rocky Hill), Keystone Furnace, Vinton, and Danville. A large Federal detachment rides through Berlin Crossroads, Wilkesville, and Salem Center, which is the path that Duke’s brigade had used. Hobson again sends Colonel Kautz and the Ohio Brigade ahead as his vanguard, followed by Sanders’s Michigan brigade, and lastly by Shackelford’s and Wolford’s brigades. Large gaps will form among these three sections of the Provisional Division as fatigue among men and horses takes its toll. Kautz, the closest to Morgan’s main column, will reach Rutland, Ohio, in Meigs County at about 4:00 pm – approximately five hours after Morgan’s rear guard departs the town. Morgan is losing his cushion quickly.

The main reason why Morgan’s troopers are reducing their incredible pace is because of the fatigue of their horses. There are fewer horses to steal in the sparsely populated regions of Pike, Vinton, and Meigs counties. Though the Union forces are more at a disadvantage when it comes to acquiring fresh horses, the Federals use railroads and steamboats to transport troops ahead of the Confederates. These troops slow Morgan’s progress and wear out his men’s horses. Morgan cannot do that to Hobson.

Brigadier General John H. Morgan’s division leaves its camp at Wilkesville, Ohio, at 3:00 am this morning. Morgan sends a large detachment to the northeast along the Dexter Road to scout for possible Union forces in northern Meigs County and to feint toward the large city of Athens, Ohio, where Union militia and volunteers have gathered to move on the raiders. This detachment will pass through Dexter and Harrisonville, Ohio. The intended rendezvous point with the main column is Pomeroy.

Morgan’s main column rides through Salem Center around 5:00 am, where a group of one hundred home guards burn a small bridge to slow the raiders. Morgan’s soldiers will encounter more road barricades and more snipers today than at any time on the raid. Some of the snipers are Union veterans who are home on leave. Several of the raiders will be killed or wounded by these Unionists hiding in the woods or on the hills lining the roads upon which the Confederates travel. Such shooting naturally causes the men to halt temporarily while they send flankers out to search for the snipers.

Colonel Adam R. Johnson’s Second Brigade departs from its camp at Vinton, Ohio, at dawn. The stores have been emptied of their items, and local women have cooked meals for the raiders. The rear guard finishes their visit by burning the 120-foot covered bridge over Raccoon Creek. Johnson’s column passes through Danville, Ohio, and merges with Colonel Basil Duke’s brigade at the village of Hanesville on the Wilkesville-Pomeroy Road. Johnson reports to General Morgan that Judah’s Union brigade is somewhere between them and the Ohio River. This means that access to the Eight Mile Island Ford at Cheshire, Ohio, is blocked. Morgan’s men will try next for the ferries at Middleport and Pomeroy. Meanwhile, the Confederates have no idea what is happening with the U.S. Navy. The last report they have is that Lieutenant Commander LeRoy Fitch’s gunboats were near Portsmouth. If the Ohio River is at normal depth, then that city is as far upstream as Fitch can go.

At Langsville, the raiders suffer a significant delay because the home guards have burned the covered bridge over Leading Creek next to McMaster’s Mill. The mill dam has made the creek’s depth high enough to cause it to be unfordable, and so Morgan’s men force local men to construct a makeshift bridge out of logs. As this work is progressing, General Morgan rests at the home of Lieutenant William McKnight, who is serving at this time in the 7th Ohio Cavalry, but who is stationed in Kentucky with a detachment of the regiment that does not participate in the raid. McKnight’s wife, Samaria, and their children host General Morgan during his brief stay in Langsville. Samaria writes later that Morgan had treated them kindly. Ironically, General Morgan’s troopers will mortally wound William in the Second Battle of Cynthiana, Kentucky, nearly a year later.

After completing the temporary bridge over Leading Creek, the Confederate main column proceeds to Rutland, Ohio, where it enters around 8:00 am. The Confederate vanguard has coerced the women of the town into baking breads and biscuits for the raiders, and these delights are hot out of the oven when the main column trots into town. Later, the same women will willingly bake for Kautz’s Buckeyes.

Three miles east of town, a drunken sixty-five-year-old man named Pulliam Holliday Hysell, standing on his porch, not only cheers for the Union, but he also yells demeaning slurs at the passing raiders. Alas, as tensions run high, the Confederates shoot the old man dead. Neighbor and doctor William Hudson, who comes to aid Hysell and shut him up, is mortally wounded by the gunfire.

From Hanesville, Johnson’s brigade heads Morgan’s Division as it approaches Middleport, Ohio. Morgan’s Scouts of the 14th Kentucky Cavalry lead the way. As the scouts travel on the direct road to Middleport around the south side of Jacobs Hill, they encounter armed Union militiamen ensconced behind a barrier of trees across the road. The militiamen are those under Captain R. B. Wilson who had been transported yesterday on a steamboat sent by Colonel William R. Putnam. The bridge over a small creek that flows into Thomas Fork is destroyed in front of the barrier. Wilson’s position presents a tough facade, and the 14th Kentucky cavalrymen retreat northwest to inform Johnson that the road to Middleport is blocked.

Johnson knows these men are Union militia, whom he feels he can easily clear out, like he has done many times before. Unfortunately, Captain Byrne’s artillery is far to the rear, and so Johnson will have to fight the militia with only his veteran cavalrymen. Nevertheless, Johnson decides to outflank the militia barricade on the Middleport Road by riding around the north side of Jacobs Hill by way of the Rutland-Pomeroy Road. Then, he will use the Thomas Fork Road (Old Stagecoach Road) to turn south and attack the rear of the Union position.

Johnson’s lead regiment behind the scouts is his trusty 10th Kentucky Cavalry. As the Kentuckians near the intersection of the Rutland-Pomeroy Road and the Old Stagecoach Road, they suddenly receive an unexpected volley of bullets from a rocky hill northeast of the crossroads. The shots originate from a company of Pomeroy Militia and a detachment of Captain Charles W. Smith’s Trumbull Guards from Gallipolis, Ohio. The Trumbull Guards are volunteer soldiers, albeit unseasoned campaigners, but their blue uniforms worry the Confederates facing them.

The 10th Kentucky Cavalry and 14th Kentucky Cavalry form a skirmish line and dash up a small knoll overlooking the northwest corner of the crossroads. The Kentuckians lay down a steady fire against the Trumbull Guards and the Union militia, who remain behind barriers constructed across the Pomeroy Road as it passes over the densely wooded ridge east of the crossroads. To the south of the crossroads, Johnson’s men find more of Captain R. B. Wilson’s Middleport Militia hiding behind trees and boulders on Jacobs Hill. Wilson’s militiamen are formed into an inverted ‘V’ line that defends both sides of the gap through which the Stagecoach Road leads to Middleport. Wilson has roughly 120 men, and Captain Smith has about 150 men. As the Kentuckians skirmish with both Union forces, a salute cannon commanded by Union militia captain John Schreiner suddenly opens fire on the advancing Confederates. The cannon is placed on the Stagecoach Road where it passes over the crest of Jacobs Hill. The artillery’s volley is relatively ineffective because it contains pieces of scrap metal and nails. However, it is enough to make Johnson’s veterans duck for cover.

General Morgan hears the fighting and finds Johnson and his men exchanging shots with the Union militiamen and volunteers. Because blue uniforms have been spotted, neither Morgan nor Johnson knows for sure if these are men from General Judah’s brigade, whom Johnson had encountered the previous day north of Centerville. Morgan decides not to assault the Union positions, which are protected by crude barricades on the hills to the Rebels’ front and right; rather, Johnson’s Kentuckians will hold the Unionists in check while the rest of the Second Brigade and Duke’s First Brigade push through the crossroads and turn left on the Old Stagecoach Road. The fighting with Wilson and Smith will begin an action known locally as “The Gauntlet.”

General Morgan observes smoke rising above the hills in the direction of Pomeroy that appears to be from steamboats. It could be that Judah’s men have disembarked there, or even worse, Fitch’s gunboats may be present. Confederate military intelligence is lacking at this point. However, Morgan assumes the worst and concludes that neither Middleport nor Pomeroy are suitable places to cross. From this moment, the Rebel general becomes fixated on a single option – the Buffington Island Ford. This choice, without thinking of the other fords in the region, will prove to be a short-sighted and single-minded decision for a leader known for having multiple options up his sleeve.

For the next four miles, the Old Stagecoach Road follows the winding course of Thomas Fork, which is bordered on both banks by steep, wooded, boulder-strewn hills rising within shooting distance of the road. Smith’s Trumbull Guards and Pomeroy Militia, and the Meigs County Militia under Captain Horace M. Horton (a Union veteran on recruiting leave from his regiment), have built barricades during the previous night and into the morning that block the entryways of the roads that connect the Old Stagecoach Road with Pomeroy. Behind each of these barricades, a small group of Trumbull Guards or militiamen stand in defense. As the Confederate column moves northeast through the narrow valley, these militiamen will use the familiar terrain to leap-frog from one barrier to another by way of the tops of the steep hills intervening between the barriers. The militiamen will use the cover of the woods and boulders on the hillsides to fire down on the Confederates, who are sitting ducks to the Unionists who suddenly appear from behind a tree or log above the raiders.

Even worse, the militiamen have destroyed the various bridges that the Old Stagecoach Road uses to cross the meandering Thomas Fork. The banks of the creek are steep and slippery, which makes the waterway impassable to artillery and wagons. Morgan’s advance troopers, using axes, attempt to cut down trees or rearrange barriers to create a temporary bridge of logs, but the men scatter under the fire of the Union militia on the hills surrounding them. Eventually, Morgan’s men capture civilians and force them to rebuild the bridges, and this slows the militia’s sniping.

Unknown to Morgan is that the steamboat smoke he has witnessed rising above Pomeroy includes Union transports which have arrived in the morning from Gallipolis with veteran infantrymen from a Union division commanded by Brigadier General Eliakim P. Scammon. Yesterday, Scammon had shipped some of his troops by steamboat from the Kanawha Valley of West Virginia to protect the vital Union supply depot at Gallipolis. They reach Gallipolis at 2:00 am this morning, and Scammon leaves a battery and a small portion of the 23rd Ohio Infantry there while he transports two infantry regiments by steamboat to Pomeroy, where they dock at 8:00 am. The 970 Federal troops at the Pomeroy wharf are the 23rd Ohio Infantry and the 13th (West) Virginia Infantry from the brigade of Colonel Rutherford B. Hayes, a future president of the United States. Within the ranks of the 23rd Ohio Infantry is another future president of the nation, Lieutenant William McKinley, of Company E. Both regiments march on foot out of Pomeroy to the east end of The Gauntlet using Spring Avenue and the Athens Road. They form themselves into battle lines on the wooded hills on both sides of the Old Stagecoach Road.

As casualties mount among the raiders, Morgan’s lead regiment, Colonel J. Warren Grigsby’s 6th Kentucky Cavalry, helps to drive off snipers to the front and protect the axe men, while Major Thomas Webber’s stalwart 2nd Kentucky Regiment fends off Smith’s and Horton’s men as they nip at the rear of the crawling Confederate column. Each barricade and destroyed bridge compels the column to stop, which makes the raiders easy targets. Duke describes the scene as “one continual fight.”

Just after 11:00 am, the 6th Kentucky Cavalry receives a well-directed volley from both flanks and from its front. The Kentuckians see blue uniforms behind the gun smoke. They are Colonel Rutherford Hayes’s soldiers of the 23rd Ohio Infantry and 13th (West) Virginia Infantry, who are anxious to engage the famous Rebels of whom they have heard tall tales over the years. With Hayes’s veterans are another bold set of volunteers – the crack company of 5th Indiana cavalrymen under Lieutenant John O’Neil. They have been sent ahead by General Henry Judah to engage Morgan’s troopers if the opportunity presents itself. Indeed, it has!

Here, the fighting becomes general. Morgan realizes he is in a tough spot. He orders Grigsby’s 6th Kentucky Cavalrymen to charge on horseback through the last half-mile stretch of The Gauntlet while the column rides behind them at a gallop. This move works well, because it causes Hayes to hold his infantrymen in position on the hills rather than to swing his flanks across the Old Stagecoach Road to block the eastern outlet of the valley. It is Hayes’s worse mistake of his Civil War career. O’Neil’s cavalrymen try to hold off Grigsby’s assault, but they are outnumbered and are required to fall back on the Athens Road. The exit door is opened to Morgan’s troopers. They leave The Gauntlet and form a strong skirmish line in the valley surrounding Rock Springs. Hayes and the Union militia do not attack aggressively, but instead they resort to long-range skirmishing. They will not pursue the raiders any farther – another lost opportunity for the Federals to capture Morgan’s cavalry division once and for all.

At Rock Springs, Morgan and his troopers regroup while they drink from the cool waters and briefly refresh their tired horses. The Confederate division has suffered three killed and sixteen wounded – a miraculously low count considering the terrain that the Union forces had to their advantage. The 23rd Ohio Infantry has one man wounded, while the Union militia’s casualties total four wounded.

Morgan’s troopers continue their journey eastward to Chester, Ohio, the former seat of Meigs County. Here, at 1:00 pm, Morgan calls a halt to rest his men and gather horses and provisions for the final thrust to the Ohio River. The men drop down from their horses upon the old courthouse hill and the large town square. Morgan sits in a chair on the front porch of a store, with his feet propped up on the railing. He invites Colonel Johnson to join him. Morgan, appearing carefree and confident, says to Johnson in a warm, calming tone, “All our troubles are now over, the river is only twenty-five miles away, and tomorrow we will be on Southern soil.”

Unfortunately, the next two hours would not go as Morgan plans. His rear guard burns the bridge over the Shade River at the west end of Chester, as ordered, but the flames leap into the air and accidently set the adjacent Benjamin Knight Carding Mill on fire. While the troopers rush to extinguish the fire at the mill, the guards watching over Morgan’s only civilian guide to Buffington Island Ford leave the man unattended, and he uses the opportunity to escape. None of the soldiers can find him. General Morgan now needs to search for another guide to direct the division to the ford, and it takes an additional ninety minutes to finally find one. This wasted ninety minutes are what Duke and Johnson point to as the straw that breaks the camel’s back. The lost time at Chester is considered Morgan’s worst mistake of the raid because it leads to the division reaching Buffington Island after dark.

Morgan’s 1,930 troopers pass through Bashan, Ohio, and turn east toward Portland, Ohio, just south of which is the Buffington Island Ford. The evening is dark and overcast. The dark forests lend an eerie atmosphere to this very important time in the raid. Morgan’s scouts enter the Portland Bottoms of the Ohio River around 8:00 pm (twilight begins around 8:21 pm). Complete darkness occurs just after 9:30 pm. The scouts capture some pickets belonging to Captain D. L. Wood’s Marietta Militia force which had arrived here by steamboat from Blennerhassett Island yesterday evening. Some of the Union pickets are wearing the blue uniforms of volunteers (Company A, 128th Ohio Infantry).

Even worse, the Rebel scouts find blocking the Lower Ford of Buffington Island a formidable entrenchment with two heavy artillery pieces and a couple hundred men whom they think are volunteer soldiers (not militia!), but it is hard to tell in the coming darkness. Captain D. L. Wood has spread his militia and volunteers across the rear of the trench to fool the raiders into thinking a larger Union force opposes them. The trick works, because the scouts report to General Morgan that an indeterminately sized enemy stands between Morgan’s Division and the freedom of the West Virginia shore. Several of Morgan’s officers, still smarting from the bloody defeat at Tebb’s Bend two weeks ago, feel it is too dangerous to make a night attack on an entrenched foe. Morgan agrees.

The scouts also give additional bad news: the Ohio River is flooded. One local lady says it’s a twenty-year flood for this time of year. The fords (both Upper and Lower), which normally in the summer are thirty inches deep, now appear to be five or six feet deep. A five-foot depth is dangerous to swim on a horse, especially for the Indiana and Ohio workhorses, but it is impassable for wagons and artillery. Over the course of the previous three weeks, Morgan has accumulated about two hundred sick and wounded men who are unable to ride on horseback. Instead, they are transported in makeshift ambulances (carriages, buggies, and wagons stolen along the raid route). Morgan refuses to abandon these incapacitated men to the enemy in favor of allowing his horsemen to swim the river.

A council of war is held at dusk in the Tunis Middleswart House with Morgan, Duke, Johnson, and the lead officers of the division. They talk about the different obstacles facing them, including their critical shortage of ammunition to defend themselves if they should be attacked in the morning. Little is discussed about using other fords, but Morgan sends the 14th Kentucky Cavalry during the night to search for any nearby crossings that are practical for wagons to use. The regiment is unsuccessful because a dense fog rolls in and obscures the river. Ultimately, General Morgan decides to encamp for the night outside Portland and accept the risk of being attacked. At first light tomorrow, Duke’s brigade will assault the Union entrenchment, and after defeating the enemy, the raiders will begin fording the river immediately thereafter. The sunlight will help determine the best method to get across the flooded waters. Hopefully, during the night, the scouts can find civilian flatboats and skiffs that can be used to ferry the men unable to swim the river on their horses.

The Rebel officers and enlisted men feel a sense of dread and doom. They know Hobson has narrowed the gap today, and they know about Judah’s presence in Pomeroy. Gunboats are a real threat now, too, with the river being flooded. Morgan has ordered his men to sleep upon the cold ground tonight without fires, which could alert the enemy from afar. It’s a dreary, sleepless night for these diehard raiders who have outwitted and outran tens of thousands of Union soldiers up until now. Will General Morgan pull a miracle out of his hat once again, as he has done on previous raids?

Meanwhile, General Henry Judah’s brigade of 1,100 men reaches Pomeroy around 6:00 pm. Most of the militia who had joined him at Portsmouth have left him. At Pomeroy, the citizens serve a banquet to his volunteer soldiers while he consults with Brigadier General Eliakim Scammon, who is in town with Colonel Rutherford B. Hayes. Scammon informs Judah of Hayes’s morning fight with Morgan’s troopers north of Pomeroy. Scammon, like Judah, knows only that Hobson’s division is somewhere west or north of Pomeroy and that Morgan is most likely heading for Buffington Island. After this conversation, Judah decides to ride his men overnight from Pomeroy to Buffington Island using the Syracuse Road. He is confident that he can overtake Morgan in the morning, and he departs Pomeroy with his brigade at 10:00 pm. Scammon uses his steamboats to transport Colonel Hayes’s brigade and Colonel Carr B. White’s brigade upstream on the Ohio River during the night, with the objective of guarding the Ohio River fords from Pomeroy to Buffington Island.

Hobson’s column passes through Rutland and follows Morgan’s path to Rock Springs, Chester, Bashan, and Buffington Island. Hobson is unaware of Scammon’s or Judah’s exact locations, but he knows they are somewhere near Pomeroy or east of there. Hobson is determined to catch Morgan before he crosses the Ohio River, and so he urges Kautz and Sanders to continue riding into the night. By 8:00 pm, Kautz’s Ohio Brigade is at Chester, from where it will leave about 11:00 pm, and Sanders’s Michigan Brigade is on the Old Stagecoach Road north of Pomeroy, while Shackelford’s and Wolford’s brigades are back near Rutland. Kautz will represent the head of the Provisional Cavalry Division when he rests his soldiers near Trouble Creek in tomorrow’s pre-dawn hours. At the same time, Sanders is riding just west of Bald Knobs only a mile behind Kautz, while Shackelford and Wolford are on the road to Chester.

Unknown to Morgan and Hobson, Lieutenant Commander LeRoy Fitch arrives in Pomeroy this morning with four of the five tinclad gunboats, including his flagboat, USS Moose, accompanied by a dispatch boat, Imperial, as well as Burnside’s fortified steamboat, Allegheny Belle, which carries a mounted ten-pounder Parrott Rifle and a section of Thompson’s 11th Michigan Battery. How are these boats able to be here? Gunboats and heavy steamboats could not navigate the shoals and sandbars of the Ohio River upstream of Portsmouth during the summer months because of the typical dry, shallow-water conditions. However, Mother Nature has a different plan. Heavy rains that had started two weeks earlier in West Virginia, Pennsylvania, and Maryland have raised the depths of the upper Ohio River to summer levels that have not been seen in twenty years. The surge of water moving downstream from Pittsburgh, whose citizens had reported this phenomenon to Fitch on July 8, has made the flood depth of the river navigable for gunboats from Portsmouth to Hockingport during a window of only four or five days, and the river’s peak depth at Buffington Island is today! Lieutenant Commander Fitch immediately leads his flotilla upstream, knowing that time is working against him as he takes advantage of this rare stroke of luck. Fitch, the USS Moose, Imperial, and Allegheny Belle reach the (Big) Sandy Creek Ford at Ravenswood, West Virginia, around midnight. The other four tinclads guard four of eight fords along a forty-mile stretch of the Ohio River – Eight Mile Island (at Cheshire, Ohio), Goose Island (at Mikes Run, Ohio), Wolf’s Bar Riffle (at Racine, Ohio), and Brownsville (at Hartford City, West Virginia).

Sources:

Cahill, Lora Schmidt, 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.

Rutherford B. Hayes Presidential Library – Manuscripts Collection, Fremont, Ohio. The Civil War Memoir of Russell Hastings, 23rd Ohio Volunteer Infantry, Chapter 4 (July 17-22, 1863).

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.

___. Official Records of the Union and Confederate Navies in the War of the Rebellion. Ser. 1, Vol. 25. Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1912, pp. 238-259.