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The Twenty-Five Days of Morgan - July 19, 1863

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Confederate Brigadier General John H. Morgan’s 1,930 men are awakened from their disturbed slumber around 3:00 am. A thick fog had settled into the Portland Bottoms during the night. No one can see more than fifty yards in front of them. In Colonel Basil Duke’s brigade, Colonel Dabney Howard Smith is given the task to lead the five hundred troopers of the 5th Kentucky and 6th Kentucky cavalry regiments in an assault on foot against Captain D. L. Wood’s redoubt that guards the entry to the Lower Ford of Buffington Island. The redoubt stands in James Williamson’s orchard, which has been cleared of its trees. The attack will occur without artillery support because Captain Edward Byrne’s battery is useless until the fog lifts. At 4:45 am, Smith and his men form a line of battle and rush forward through the fog toward the entrenchment located four hundred yards distant. As they close in on the fortification, they surprisingly receive no enemy fire, and soon the men reach the trench and find it empty of Union soldiers!

 

Captain D. L. Wood and over two hundred Marietta Militiamen had abandoned their earthwork at midnight the previous evening, upon receiving orders to do so from Brigadier General Eliakim Scammon. First, using the cover of the fog, they had dismounted the barrels of the two cannons of Nye’s Battery and had rolled them over the edge of the steep bluff of the river chute without somehow alerting the Confederates. Next, the militiamen had forded the river chute and had crossed the island to its eastern side, where the steamboat Starlight had been moored throughout the previous day. The Starlight had been sent from Parkersburg by Captain A. V. Barringer, Post Quartermaster, to supply Wood’s troops, against the orders of Lieutenant Commander LeRoy Fitch. The militiamen had boarded this steamboat, put on steam (again, without the Confederates hearing it), and sailed downstream to Ravenswood, West Virginia, where Scammon had slept that night on the transports with Colonel Rutherford B. Hayes’s brigade. Wood’s men had successfully performed the most important feat that any militia unit had accomplished so far on the raid. Their contribution directly affects the outcome of the campaign.

 

Colonel Duke is visibly upset when he hears that the redoubt has been abandoned during the night. Had his pickets detected this fact, the division may have started the fording procedures hours earlier. Nevertheless, Duke is afraid that the Union defenders are lurking nearby, and he orders Colonel D. Howard Smith to march the two cavalry regiments in dismounted battle line toward the south, using the Pomeroy-Portland Road as his guide in the dense fog. In the meantime, Duke sends a dispatch to General Morgan to tell him that the fording procedures can begin.

 

Colonel Duke immediately sends 110 men of the 9th Tennessee Cavalry, led by Captain John D. Kirkpatrick, over the Upper Ford on four skiffs and a flatboat that the scouts have scoured the area to find. There are not enough boats to transport their horses with them, and so these men will work on foot. Their mission is to climb the steep bluff on the West Virginia shore and establish a defensive perimeter to protect the Upper Ford while the rest of Morgan’s Division, totaling 1,820 men, swims the Ohio River. The skiffs and flatboat will be used to transport the additional two hundred sick and wounded soldiers.

 

To the west of Buffington Island, Brigadier General Henry Judah’s 1,100 cavalrymen and artillerymen had ridden all night across the neck of the Great Bend of the Ohio River. They had passed through Racine, Ohio, and had turned east from there, but in the pitch darkness, the guide had led them on the road to Ravenswood rather than the direct road to Portland. After they had discovered their mistake in the middle of the night, they had been forced to backtrack to the Portland Road. From there, they had marched east through the rugged, forested hills before descending around 5:00 am into the Ohio River bottoms about a mile southwest of the foot of Buffington Island. Because of the fog, they can see neither the river nor the island. Judah orders his column to turn left on the river road and halt where it meets the road from Durst Ridge. At this point, understanding very well that Morgan may be nearby, Judah leads his large vanguard toward the island and the unknown.

 

The heavy vanguard contains approximately seventy-five Union cavalrymen. Among them are Major Daniel McCook, Sr., a Union paymaster who has volunteered his services to General Judah at Cincinnati to seek revenge against one of Morgan’s soldiers who had allegedly murdered Dan’s son, Robert, in northern Alabama in August 1862. Daniel McCook is one of the patriarchs of the nationally known “Fighting McCooks”; his sons include several colonels and generals in the Union Army who have been fighting the Confederacy from the beginning of the war. Dan McCook is also a close friend of President Abraham Lincoln’s secretary of war, Edwin Stanton. What the sixty-five-year-old McCook does not know is that the Rebel who had killed Robert has never been associated with Morgan’s command; it is a false rumor of the deadliest proportions.

 

Also among the Union vanguard is General Judah, who, against the pleadings of his officers, determines to lead his troopers into the fog with Dan McCook by his side and Judah’s staff and escort riding behind them. Judah decides to bring with him Captain Edward C. Henshaw and one cannon of his Illinois battery, limbered at the rear of the column. The rest of the men are detached from the 5th Indiana Cavalry and the 14th Illinois Cavalry.

 

At about 5:30 am, after advancing three hundred yards southwest of the Union redoubt, Colonel D. Howard Smith’s Confederates suddenly spot a ghostly column of Union cavalry on horseback appearing out of the fog only fifty yards away. The Federal troopers are equally surprised by the shadowy figures of a line of Rebel foot soldiers on both sides of the road. Like a scene from an Old West showdown, Smith’s Confederate raiders and Judah’s Union cavalrymen raise their guns simultaneously to open fire at each other. The Battle of Buffington Island has begun!

 

The opening exchange of volleys is deadliest for the Union cavalry. Two enlisted men are killed, while Major Dan McCook drops off his horse into the road mortally wounded. Ten Union enlisted cavalrymen and Lieutenant Frederick G. Price are wounded. General Judah is luckily not struck by the hail of bullets, but his horse is shot out from underneath him, and the general falls to the dirt. An enlisted man pulls Judah onto the back of his horse and expertly rides through the mayhem toward safety. When Captain Henshaw attempts to turn around his limbered cannon in the narrow road, it capsizes, thus blocking the way for the frenzied Union horsemen heading for the rear. About thirty of the vanguard are captured, including Captain Henshaw, Captain R. C. Kise, and Captain John J. Grafton, as the Confederate dismounted cavalrymen wrap around the Union column, which is trapped by the high fences on either side of the Pomeroy Road. Judah and the remnants of the Union vanguard escape to warn their brigade, which waits anxiously on the Pomeroy Road a half mile away.

 

Colonel Smith controls the battlefield at the Williamson and Daniel farms for the moment, and he sends his prisoners north to General Morgan’s headquarters at the Tunis Middleswart house, where they will be paroled. However, Smith’s Kentuckians continue father south along the Pomeroy Road to chase Judah’s men who have withdrawn into the fog. After Smith’s troopers enter Dougherty’s farm field, a warm breeze blows into the valley and breaks up the fog bank, revealing a threatening sight to the colonel. Across the field to the west, he can see the figures of one thousand cavalrymen on horseback, with artillery, lined up in column on the Pomeroy Road. Smith halts his dismounted men, who exchange fire with Judah’s column as it deploys for battle on the opposite side of Dry Run. Colonel Duke, who has rushed to Smith after the firing had started, understands the gravity of the situation before him. Duke orders Smith and his Kentuckians to fall back beyond the Marietta Militia redoubt to form an eight-hundred-yard line across the valley, from the hills on their right to the Ohio River chute on their left.

 

Covering the Confederate retreat from the Dougherty farm are Smith’s skirmishers and the section of Parrott Rifles under Lieutenant Elias Lawrence, which holds a hill located directly west of the Union redoubt. General Judah, exasperated by his near-death experience, calls to his soldiers to dismount and form a battle line across the valley, facing north. He orders his artillery to unlimber on the Dexter farm and begin opening fire on Lawrence’s battery and Smith’s troopers.

 

The Union counterbattery fire is immediately effective, causing Lawrence to limber up and retreat to a knob about seven hundred yards to the rear. There, he sets up his Parrotts and the one brass six-pounder howitzer captured from Henshaw. Smith forms his first defensive line, consisting of about five hundred troopers of the 5th Kentucky Cavalry and 6th Kentucky Cavalry, and places them across the valley at the Jenkins (Adams) House. Judah directs his dismounted battle line slowly forward, with the 5th Indiana Cavalry on his left bordering the wooded hillside, the single companies of the 11th Kentucky (U.S.) Cavalry and 8th Michigan Cavalry in the center, and Colonel James I. David’s two companies of the 9th Michigan Cavalry on the right along the riverbank. Colonel Horace Capron’s 14th Illinois Cavalry marches in reserve behind the 5th Indiana. These soldiers have been itching to fight Morgan ever since they had been left behind on the Green River in Kentucky. Now it is their turn to take on Morgan’s raiders.

 

Duke approves of Smith’s line and orders him to hold his ground while he rides north to alert General Morgan of Judah’s presence and to bring back reinforcements from the camps centered around the Chester Road. However, Judah is too quick for Duke, and a new foe suddenly appears on the Confederate left flank.

 

Lieutenant Commander LeRoy Fitch’s gunboats USS Moose and Allegheny Belle have gotten over the (Big) Sandy Creek bar at Ravenswood during the early morning hours and have steamed slowly up the river. However, the heavy fog has slowed their progress to a crawl, and they have anchored just below the southern tip of Buffington Island. When Fitch hears the initial fighting south of the Williamson House, he orders his flagboat USS Moose to take the lead up the narrow, snag-choked river chute that separates the island from the Ohio shore. Following closely behind them is the Allegheny Belle, with the Imperial dispatch boat taking the rear, to use as a towboat in case either of the two gunboats run aground in the chute.

 

As the little flotilla works its way upstream through the chute, a Union officer appears out of the fog and flags down the Moose. It is Captain John Grafton, who has eluded his Rebel captor near the Daniel House and has made his way down the steep bluff to the edge of the chute. Fitch’s sailors help Grafton aboard the Moose, and he informs Fitch of the situation occurring above them on the Ohio bottomland. The bluffs are too steep and tall for the sailors to see anything going on in the Portland Bottoms, but Grafton offers his services to direct the fire of the gunners on the Moose. Grafton knows where the Confederates are located. Fitch accepts Grafton’s suggestion, and Grafton goes to work. The USS Moose opens fire with its portside 24-pounder Dahlgren smoothbore cannons toward Smith’s new defensive line. The loud reports of the guns and the subsequent large explosions of the bowling-ball sized shells surprise Smith’s men, who have had little expectation of encountering Fitch’s gunboats this far upstream. The appearance of the U.S. Navy at Buffington Island is not a complete shock to General Morgan and his officers, but it is one which they had concluded was less of a possibility.

 

Smith braces himself for the assault from Judah’s brigade, which outnumbers Smith’s troopers two to one. The Rebels have five or less cartridges per man left to use, since they have not replenished their ammunition since leaving Lebanon, Kentucky. Lawrence’s Parrotts have only three shots per gun, and their barrels are caked with mud from the long journey from Berlin Crossroads. Their fire has proven already to be inaccurate against Judah’s lines of troopers and artillery. Now, Smith must worry about the gunboats pounding his thin line in enfilade.

 

Judah’s troopers advance in perfect formation across the James Williamson and Anderson Price fields toward the Jenkins farm. The Union artillery of the 5th Indiana Cavalry Battery and the 14th Illinois Cavalry Battery lob shells at a steady rate, and they silence Lawrence’s battery quickly, and then they turn their attention to Smith’s line. Smith’s line holds steady until Judah’s soldiers fire at close range into the Confederate line, and the Federal artillery shells burst above the Rebels. They slowly fall back as they return fire.

 

Out of the Union rear comes a company of Federal horsemen galloping straight for Lawrence’s guns. It’s Lieutenant John O’Neil’s crack unit of 5th Indiana Cavalrymen, who charge up the knob where the Confederate artillery is placed. Lawrence’s gunners are helpless as the Hoosiers slash at them with their swords. Colonel J. Warren Grigsby of the 6th Kentucky Cavalry tries to help Lawrence by charging his men up the knob to fight off O’Neil. The Hoosiers, supported by soldiers from the 14th Illinois Cavalry, beat off Grigsby’s Kentuckians in hand-to-hand fighting. Smith’s line subsequently collapses. Just before 6:00 am, the Rebels retreat in haste to their horses and mount them to get away. O’Neil’s Hoosiers claim the abandoned Parrotts of Lawrence’s battery and recapture the brass smoothbore that Captain Henshaw had lost in the opening fight.

 

Colonel Duke returns to the scene of the action just as Smith’s men are retreating on their horses. Duke is concerned by what he sees, especially by the sudden appearance of the gunboats. However, Duke has ordered the 2nd Kentucky Cavalry to come to the rescue, but the regiment is nowhere to be found. The 14th Kentucky Cavalry rides south with the two remaining guns (twelve-pounder howitzers) of Captain Edward Byrne’s Battery. They pass through Portland at a gallop to support the 5th Kentucky Cavalry’s left flank on the river. Duke and Smith rally their troopers into a thousand-yard-long skirmish line that stretches from the east at the Upper Ford, where Byrne’s guns are planning to unlimber, across the Charles Price farm fields to an ancient Adena Indian mound that stands just below the wooded ridge on the west. The 14th Kentucky forms a line to defend the ford and the battery. The terrain in this section of the battlefield allows the left flank of the Confederate line to be visible to the boats on the river.

 

As Fitch works his gunboats upstream to the top of the Buffington Island chute, Byrne’s Battery catches sight of them and gets into position to unlimber. However, before the Confederate’s artillery can deploy, the USS Moose counters with its forward Dahlgren guns. The balls land very close to the Rebel cannons, and a few of Byrne’s gunners are killed or wounded. They immediately turn their guns around and race up the Portland Road to a position where the road bends toward the Chester Road, about a mile north of the Upper Ford.

 

Soon, Morgan’s worst nightmare occurs. He has known that Hobson is close behind him, but he has not thought that his bulldog adversary is near enough to get into the action this early. This will be a fatal assumption. At about 5:00 am, Colonel August Kautz receives word from his scouts that they have struck Morgan’s pickets on Durst Ridge, which lies two miles from the Portland Bottoms and less than a mile from the fog-bound Trouble Creek valley. Kautz had not realized that his men had rested for several hours within cannon-shot of his enemy!

 

When Kautz hears this news, he excitedly mounts from his Ohio Brigade two hundred men (one hundred from the 2nd Ohio Cavalry and another hundred from the 7th Ohio Cavalry), because the Buckeyes have only two hundred serviceable horses left to use. The artillery accompanying the brigade has been left in the rear with Wolford, who is far back at Chester. Thus, Kautz has only the firepower of his cavalrymen at his disposal. Nevertheless, Kautz leads his tired but eager cavalrymen at a quick trot toward Portland using the Chester Road (today’s Bald Knob-Stiversville Road).

 

Kautz’s vanguard gradually forces the stubborn Rebel pickets under Captain Jacob “Jake” C. Bennett to withdraw. A half hour later, the Union commander hears the booms of cannons in the distance. His men are encouraged, and they ride with determination toward the battlefield. At 6:00 am, the Buckeyes dismount and form two lines of skirmishers in the woods stretching above the open plain of the Portland Bottoms. Kautz’s Ohioans steadily push back Colonel Adam Johnson’s skirmishers of the 7th Kentucky Cavalry, who have deployed in the woods on both sides of the Chester Road after Bennett’s pickets had told Johnson that Hobson was coming. Johnson sends urgent messages to Colonel Duke and General Morgan that General Hobson’s troopers have arrived. Duke and Morgan are incredulous. The timing of Hobson’s appearance could not have been worse.

 

Now that Union forces are attacking from three sides, the only open exit for Morgan’s division is toward the north. General Morgan decides to rally the rest of his troopers who are still milling about in the camps situated in the fields along the Chester Road. They represent the majority of the division’s strength. If Morgan can extricate them from the battlefield, then perhaps they can find another Ohio River ford farther upstream where the gunboats cannot reach them. Colonel Duke sends General Morgan a dispatch suggesting that Duke and Johnson will delay the Union advance as long as possible to allow the most raiders, led by Morgan himself, to escape out of the north end of the valley. The general agrees with Duke’s plan. Duke is left as the senior Confederate leader on the field.

 

When Captain Byrne pulls his howitzers out from their position at the Upper Ford, the 14th Kentucky Cavalry flees with them, which exposes the 5th Kentucky Cavalry’s left flank to the Union gunboats. Fitch takes advantage of this visibility and fires broadsides into the Kentuckians. The Allegheny Belle’s guns add their weight to the mix. With Judah’s Union troopers advancing on foot through the fields in a formidable solid battle line, Duke realizes his thin skirmish line has no chance to hold firm. Additionally, he knows Johnson’s brigade is under attack from Hobson toward the right rear. Duke orders the 6th Kentucky Cavalry and the 5th Kentucky Cavalry to fall back and mount horses. It’s about 6:15 am.

 

Colonel Duke reforms the 6th and 5th Kentucky Cavalry regiments into a dismounted skirmish line behind the fence bordering the small farm lane separating the Middleswart and Bell farms. Duke’s Kentuckians face Judah’s brigade to the south. Simultaneously, Colonel Johnson directs the 7th Kentucky Cavalry and 10th Kentucky Cavalry into a line in the cornfields centered on the Chester Road. They face west to meet the attack of General Hobson. Colonel Johnson’s left flank, which is held by the 7th Kentucky Cavalry, joins with the right flank of Colonel Grigsby’s 6th Kentucky Cavalry. Within the next thirty minutes, this unusual ‘L’-shaped Confederate line will prove to be a disastrous deployment.

 

While Johnson holds tentatively to his exposed position below Kautz’s dismounted skirmishers, who hold the tree line and the higher ground, Johnson’s and Duke’s men are pounded by artillery fire from Fitch’s gunboats on the river and Judah’s artillery on the Browning Cemetery rise. Then, around 6:15 am, Brigadier General Edward Hobson and Colonel William P. Sanders suddenly appear at the tree line behind Kautz with the two rifled cannons of Lieutenant Cyrus D. Roys’s 11th Michigan Battery. Roys places one cannon in the Chester Road on the crest of the wooded ridge, while the other cannon moves forward by a farm lane connecting the Chester Road with the Middleswart family cemetery, which sits on a cleared knoll. The gun on the Middleswart Cemetery knoll delivers a devasting enfilade fire on Duke’s line, while the artillery piece on the Chester Road strikes Johnson’s line head-on.

 

A few minutes later, Companies D and F of the 9th Michigan Cavalry under Major Michael F. Gallagher deploy in the woods as dismounted skirmishers and emerge from the tree line on the left flank of Kautz’s Buckeyes. The Wolverines’ line stretches beyond the right flank of the 10th Kentucky Cavalry, which makes Johnson’s men more uncertain every moment. The final straw for the Confederates is when Lieutenant Colonel George S. Acker’s Companies A and B of the 9th Michigan Cavalry, followed by the combined remnants of ten companies of the 8th Michigan Cavalry under Lieutenant Colonel Grover S. Wormer, charge on foot toward Johnson’s dismounted battle line. At the same time, Colonel James David’s Michigan cavalry detachment of Judah’s brigade charges into the three-hundred-yard gap separating the left flank of the 5th Kentucky Cavalry and the riverbank. The Wolverines’ seven-shot Spencer repeating rifles, a Federal invention of the Civil War, produce a hail of bullets that Johnson’s and Duke’s demoralized soldiers cannot withstand.

 

The remaining Confederate regiments are escaping on horseback from out of their former campsites enclosed by the center of the ‘L’ line. These units are not deploying for battle but are instead dodging the Union bullets and cannonballs coming in from three directions. Their casualties are mounting. Colonel Duke describes the scene of pandemonium that reigns among these soldiers in the rear:

 

The scene in the rear of the lines engaged, was one of indescribable confusion. While the bulk of the regiments, which General Morgan was drawing off, were moving from the field in perfect order, there were many stragglers from each, who were circling about the valley in a delirium of fright, clinging instinctively, in all their terror, to bolts of calico and holding on to led horses, but changing the direction in which they galloped, with every shell which whizzed or burst near them.

 

The artillery shells coming from three sides, combined with the rifle fire from Hobson’s and Judah’s troopers, create an intense crossfire that causes Duke and Johnson to lose control of their men, most of whom are demoralized and nearly out of ammunition. Byrne fires a couple of volleys at the gunboats, but the shots fly errantly and do no harm. After Bryne’s howitzers fire their last shots at Fitch’s gunboats, without effect, Fitch silences the Confederate battery with the Moose’s Dahlgrens. At about 6:30 am, Captain Byrne’s artillery and the 5th Kentucky Cavalry break in confusion for the rear. A portion of the 2nd Kentucky Cavalry, while trying to form into line behind the 6th Kentucky Cavalry, immediately mounts and rides north without offering any resistance. Colonel Grigsby abandons his 6th Kentucky soldiers and rides pell-mell with dozens of others toward Swan’s Bar, a deep river ford near the mouth of Lauck’s Run. Captain Byrne and Colonel Grigsby, along with nearly thirty others, skillfully swim their horses across the raging Ohio River at Swan’s Bar before the USS Moose blocks the ford and uses its cannons to force the remaining raiders back onto the Ohio shore. The Rebels who reach the West Virginia side of the river at Swan’s Bar will successfully escape to Confederate lines in Virginia.

 

Major William Bullitt finds himself in charge of the remnants of the 6th Kentucky Cavalry, the last of Duke’s regiments left in position in the ‘L’ formation. Facing him is yet another new threat. Toward the southeast, he sees two regiments of Union infantry forming into line on Browning Cemetery Hill and the fields to the west. They are the 970 veteran soldiers from the 23rd Ohio Infantry and the 13th (West) Virginia Infantry under Colonel Rutherford B. Hayes, who have just disembarked from steamboats at Portland’s riverboat landing. With Brigadier General Scammon watching from the rear, Hayes leads his brigade’s battle line forward from the hill.

 

Scammon has also dropped off a portion of the 13th (West) Virginia Infantry onto the West Virginia shore, at the Buffington Island Ford, to prevent the Confederates from escaping. These bluecoats fail to notice Captain Kirkpatrick’s 9th Tennessee boys looking down on them from the forested hilltop above. When the Union soldiers begin moving inland on the road from the ford, Kirkpatrick concludes it is time for his downtrodden men to make their way into the West Virginia wilderness, too. They have no horses, so they would have to make their escape on foot. Indeed, these Confederate refugees successfully reach Confederates lines after a long, arduous march through the enemy-infested mountains.

 

Colonel Duke spots Scammon’s infantry advancing toward the gaping gap in the ‘L’ line where the 5th Kentucky had been. Duke and Johnson determine that General Morgan and most of the division have ridden in good order off the battlefield, and the two brigade commanders conclude that the remaining three regiments in the ‘L’ line would retreat simultaneously. The Confederates bravely remount their horses under a heavy fire and ride north “by columns of fours by right of companies.” Duke orders Major Bullitt to cover the retreat. Bullitt’s 6th Kentucky Cavalry falls back steadily to the north by mounting and dismounting its troopers into skirmish line. Completely outgunned and outmanned by Sanders’s and Kautz’s combined forces, these gritty Kentuckians mount and dismount and mount again three times over the course of a mile, slowing the advance of Hobson’s charging Federals. Most of Bullitt’s soldiers have no ammunition; they stand under fire with empty cartridge boxes.

 

Meanwhile, the wagon train that includes the makeshift ambulances containing two hundred sick and wounded raiders rushes north on the Portland Road toward its entry into Lauck’s Run ravine. As the carriages, buggies, and wagons head for the coveted exit from the valley, Roys’s artillery and Fitch’s gunboats shell the caravan, and their cannonballs bowl over some of the vehicles, spilling their men and trophies upon the ground and blocking the road. Byrne’s three artillery pieces, which include the two howitzers and the one captured rifled gun (a three-inch Ordnance Rifle) from Brandenburg, get caught in the resulting traffic jam. As shells fall about the raiders, panic sets in, and the drivers extricate their vehicles from the road and head at a gallop toward the exit at Price’s farm lane farther north. The small lane becomes clogged with vehicles, and many wagons and horses tumble down the sides of Lauck’s Run ravine. Men scramble to escape the ravine near its mouth at the Ohio River, but they are surrounded by Fitch’s gunboats and Michigan troopers. Dozens of Rebel soldiers are captured off the battlefield on the riverbank or in the woods north of the Anderson House.

 

Other raiders, including the artillerists, direct their cannons and wagons into the fields and drive them at top speed toward the Portland Road exit. Here, the westward-guiding Portland Road makes a sharp bend to the north, at which point the road descends steeply into the forty-foot-deep ravine of Lauck’s Run. The sides of the ravine are like cliffs. The charging wagons and artillery pieces fail to slow down in time for the road curve. They lock wheels and jump off the road together, rolling end-over-end down the cliff, leaving at the bottom a piled mass of wreckage interspersed with the corpses of men and horses.

 

Duke and Johnson are somehow able to rally about two hundred cavalrymen from the various regiments that have been withdrawn from the ‘L’ formation. The colonels place these brave men into a dismounted skirmish line that runs diagonally across the Portland Road about two hundred yards east of the exit into Lauck’s Run ravine. The Rebels are in flat, open fields surrounded by the jam of stolen vehicles, most of which have been abandoned except for the sick and wounded who are too incapacitated to ride away.

 

Just after 6:45 am, Major Bullitt’s 6th Kentucky Cavalrymen ride through the final line of defense and continue toward the west out of the valley. They have completed their delaying mission with great success. Chasing after them are the mounted pursuers of Sanders’s Michigan Cavalry Brigade, followed up by Kautz’s Buckeye horsemen. The Wolverines dismount to confront Duke’s and Johnson’s line. Sanders places Lieutenant Colonel Wormer’s 8th Michigan Cavalry in the center, and then he splits the 9th Michigan Cavalry and places two of its companies under Major Gallagher on Wormer’s left flank and the rest under Lieutenant Colonel Acker on Wormer’s right flank. The Wolverines advance steadily on foot toward Duke’s line, firing their deadly Spencer rifles as they go. Raiders begin to fall rapidly. The Confederates are nearly out of ammunition, and they slowly withdraw into the woods at the edge of the field. There, the Rebels lie prone to the ground behind the crest of the ravine, using trees and logs as cover.

 

Colonel Duke knows his last stand cannot hold out much longer, and he consults with Colonel Johnson. Duke orders him to retreat from the ravine with as many men as he can. Johnson complies, and he leads over one hundred men safely out of Lauck’s Run ravine on the Portland Road. The Michiganders nearly capture Johnson, who fights with his rear guard, but Captain Ralph Sheldon, 2nd Kentucky Cavalry, comes to the rescue with twenty men. Johnson uses these timely reinforcements to set up an ambush, and they successfully turn away their Union pursuers.

 

With his remaining men out of ammunition, Duke orders them to retreat around 7:00 am. Many follow him, but others ride off on their own in different directions. Those that head for the Anderson House are eventually captured individually, but Colonel Duke leads about fifty men and officers, including Colonel Dabney H. Smith, into a deep ravine that abuts the left side of the Portland Road as it ascends into the hills west of the bottomland. They hide themselves in the thick underbrush, hoping to wait for the cover of nightfall before they attempt an escape. However, several of these raiders have led their horses down into the ravine, and while most of Sanders’ Wolverines have galloped past Duke and his men without noticing them, Sergeant Charles F. Doke of Company B, 9th Michigan Cavalry, spots horse tracks leading over the edge of the ravine. When he stops to investigate, he looks down and sees the Confederates peering back up at him. They cannot capture Doke in time before he rides away to warn his comrades. Duke and his soldiers quickly climb out of the ravine, but when they reach the top, a large group of 8th Michigan and 9th Michigan cavalrymen have surrounded the area. Duke has no choice but to surrender to Sergeant Doke and Major Elisha Mix’s battalion of the 8th Michigan Cavalry. It's just after 7:30 am, and the Battle of Buffington Island comes to an end.

 

The two-hour battle is the largest Civil War battle fought north of the Ohio River. It produces Union casualties of 6 killed and 20 wounded, which include the totals from the army and navy. All the Union prisoners who had been captured at the beginning of the battle are liberated on the field by Judah’s cavalry. On the other hand, the Confederates lose 57 killed, 63 wounded, and 71 captured on the battlefield. An additional one hundred to two hundred of the raiders’ sick and wounded who have been conveyed to Portland in ambulances are also captured. Some of these men are able to ride off the battlefield on wagon horses, but they are rounded up later by Union militiamen or volunteer troops. According to Colonel Duke, the lopsidedly high casualties in the Confederate ranks compared to the Union forces are mainly a result of the lack of ammunition in Morgan’s Division. Simply put, Morgan’s men fought much of the Battle of Buffington Island with empty guns.

 

Most of the Confederate losses occur off the battlefield. About 450 men who escape in small groups or individually from the Portland Bottoms will be seized over the course of the next twenty-four hours by local Union militia or by the combined volunteer ground forces of Hobson, Judah, and Scammon. All these raiders are captured in eastern Meigs County, Ohio, or in West Virginia near the Ohio River. This count excludes the Rebels who will fall prey at the Skirmish at Bashan, Ohio, and the surrender at Flatwoods, Meigs County, Ohio.

 

According to Judah’s final report on July 22, exactly 2,373 Confederates are captured between July 19-21, which is more than the total number of men (approximately 2,000) in Morgan’s Division whom Duke has stated had entered Ohio. Duke will reiterate this number in 1867 and 1909 when he publishes editions of his History of Morgan’s Cavalry, and he will confirm the number again in multiple articles and papers written long after the war. His comrades from Morgan’s Division, in their own memoirs and reminiscences, never debate Duke’s totals of Morgan’s men present on the raid. Furthermore, Morgan’s Division officially lists 2,743 total effectives in its July 31, 1863, organizational report to the Army of Tennessee’s headquarters, and subtracted from that total is a regiment (Breckinridge’s 9th Kentucky Cavalry) that Morgan leaves behind in Tennessee before the raid begins. Morgan loses at least 350 men in Kentucky of his 2,460 effectives that had started on the Great Raid. Duke confirms that loss, restating in post-war accounts that Morgan had entered Indiana with 2,100 men.

 

Then how can such a huge discrepancy exist between Union and Confederate records? The most logical reason is that the roughly 250 prisoners taken at the Battle of Buffington Island and the 450 prisoners captured in Meigs County and West Virginia are multiplied several times over by Union authorities, who miscount them as they are brought into and out of various prisoner-of-war (POW) facilities. The primary POW processing centers that Hobson and Judah set up are located at Buffington Island, Chester, and Cheshire in Ohio. If one looks at a map of Ohio, one will see that these centers are more than a dozen miles from each other, and they do not communicate with one another. Because Union captors record no information stating the exact capture site of each prisoner, Union authorities at these processing centers universally mark their prisoners as having been captured at those facilities, even though most of the Confederates have surrendered many miles away from those places. Even worse, the Union units who escort these prisoners would make their own counts of their prisoners, and many times the numbers are embellished and sent to their superiors in official dispatches. The commanding generals add the counts from those messages to the numbers given from the POW processing facilities, which causes the prisoner counts to be doubled or tripled. Thus, the Union records of Confederate prisoners are sketchy and unreliable for this portion of the raid. One must rely on Duke’s numbers and some basic mathematics to get the most accurate number of Rebel prisoners.

 

Strewn on the battlefield is an unusual assortment of items that Morgan’s men have looted from stores and homes along the raid route. Women’s clothes, hats, ribbons, and veils; men’s clothing, boots, and shoes; toys and baubles of all types; silverware and cups; and bolts of calico and silk. A Cincinnati newspaper correspondent describes the scene best: “On the battlefield at Buffington Island, one could pick up almost any article in dry goods, hardware, house furnishing or ladies or gentlemen’s furnishing line.” The local citizens walk their fields that have been destroyed by the battle and pick up useful goods that they want or need. They also care for the wounded in their houses and help bury the dead.

 

General Morgan escapes from the Buffington Island battlefield with about 1,050 of his 1,820 soldiers who have engaged in the fight. Colonel Adam Johnson is Morgan’s highest-ranking officer remaining in the main column. All of Morgan’s artillery and wagons have been lost to the enemy, so there is no requirement to follow good roads. During their flight from the battlefield, Morgan turns his troopers to the east on the Long Run Road, which leads them toward the Ohio River. However, several detachments, who have fled on their own through the woods and defiles of this rough region, ride west, away from the river and the dreaded gunboats. Colonel Richard Morgan, commander of the 14th Kentucky Cavalry, uses the same logic and turns his men west on the Long Run Road. This proves to be a wrong turn for all who follow him.

 

As the battle at Buffington Island winds down, General Hobson wisely sends dispatches back to General Shackelford and Colonel Wolford, who receive them east of Chester, Ohio. One of the messages places Wolford under Shackelford’s command. General Shackelford deals with subsequent dispatches from Hobson that conflict with one another, which forces Shackelford to march and countermarch the two brigades throughout the morning. Hobson, at first, orders them to take their brigades on the nearest road up the river. Then, later, Hobson changes his mind and orders them to take the nearest road toward the river. By late morning, Shackelford and Wolford pass through Bashan.

 

Bashan, Ohio, is a small crossroads village located over six miles from Portland Bottoms by the shortest road distance. General Hobson had passed through this intersection during the prior evening, and his familiarity with Morgan’s tricks convinces Hobson that the Confederate leader may likely double-back to escape the trap at the Ohio River. General Morgan correctly anticipates Hobson’s move, but Colonel Richard Morgan, who has separated himself from the main column, does not.

 

Colonel Morgan arrives east of Bashan (Bashan Church) at about 9:00 am with 180 troopers from various regiments. He is closely pursued by Major Henry C. Edgerley’s battalion of the 8th Michigan Cavalry, who follows Colonel Morgan on Long Run Road rather than pursuing General Morgan. Suddenly, Colonel Morgan halts his men at the Trussell farm. His hopes plummet when his videttes exchange shots with a long line of Union cavalrymen deployed on Bashan Ridge ahead of him. They block his only avenue of retreat. Colonel Morgan, being the senior Confederate commander on the field, forms his troopers into a skirmish line within a densely wooded ravine that crosses the Long Run Road. They are within two hundred yards of the enemy.

 

When Colonel Morgan attacks Shackelford’s rear guard at Bashan, Colonel Wolford’s brigade happens to be marching at the front of Shackelford’s column. Shackelford reverses his column toward Bashan, which, as a serendipitous result of the earlier countermarches, lies just a short distance away. Shackelford dismounts his brigade on the eastern crest of Bashan Ridge, along the top of which runs the Bashan-Adams Mill Road. When Wolford arrives with his brigade, Shackelford places two of Wolford’s regiments (the 1st Kentucky (U.S.) Cavalry and 45th Ohio Mounted Infantry) in the center of the line supported by Hammond’s Battery.

 

Colonel Morgan’s men face Shackelford’s and Wolford’s soldiers for the first time since leaving the Bluegrass State. They are fellow Kentuckians who fight on opposite sides. One of Shackelford’s regiments is the 9th Kentucky Cavalry, whose men harbor a deep grudge against these Rebel troopers for supposedly murdering some of their comrades who had been captured by Morgan during the skirmish at Norris Branch, Kentucky, on July 2, 1863. Colonel Richard T. Jacob of the 9th Kentucky notices his cavalrymen picking off soldiers from Colonel Morgan’s command. Jacob orders a ceasefire and stands between the lines pleading for the raiders to surrender before the bloodshed becomes worse. Eventually, Colonel Morgan complies.

 

After an hour into the skirmish, as he notices Morgan’s fire slacking from lack of ammunition, Shackelford orders Lieutenant Colonel James H. Holloway to lead the three center Union regiments in a mounted saber charge. Holloway’s charge focuses on the wooded ravine directly ahead. The perfectly aligned assault successfully overruns the woods on Morgan’s right flank, and Holloway’s men capture many prisoners. Around 10:30 am, a teary-eyed Colonel Morgan realizes the game is over. With his right flank turned, his rearguard already skirmishing with Edgerley’s Wolverines, and Jacob’s Kentuckians threatening slaughter in front, Colonel Morgan sends a white flag into Shackelford’s lines. Morgan surrenders his men and officers, who include Colonel William Ward and Major William P. Elliott.

 

Meanwhile, General John H. Morgan swims his 1,050 men across the Shade River at its mouth and follows the Ohio River to Long Bottom, Ohio. There, he rests his men while he waits for refugees from his division to come in. During this period, Morgan sends a detachment west to Adams Mill (Keno, Ohio) to round up any roaming fragments of Morgan’s command, but there the group encounters 250 mounted Highland County militiamen under Lieutenant Colonel Noah H. Hixon. The Rebels retreat to Long Bottom without a fight. After an hour has passed, the general is saddened to realize that many of his best officers, including his right-hand man Colonel Basil Duke, are nowhere to be found. Morgan hopes that perhaps they have found another path to freedom. When scouts announce the approach of Fitch’s gunboats downstream of Long Bottom, General Morgan has no choice but to continue his ride upstream in search of a ford.

 

Morgan’s troopers follow the river road north for five miles and reach the Belleville Island (Reedsville) Ford just before noon. Here, a good Ohio River ford exists, but the flooding has made it dangerous to use. General Morgan orders Colonel Johnson to lead the way across the river, and he and the men, who represent every regiment in the division, swim their horses through the raging waters in column of fours. Simultaneously, the USS Moose and Allegheny Belle appear downstream. They open fire on the exposed column of raiders stretched across the river ahead of them. After some anxious moments, Colonel Johnson makes his way to the West Virginia shore, but he discovers that some of his staff officers and men have been overtaken by the strong current. Several have already drowned. While the Federal artillery shells splash into the water around them, Colonel Johnson grabs a leaky skiff and pulls out one of its seats to use as a paddle. He pushes out into the river and saves the life of Captain Neil Helm, the leader of the Second Brigade’s scouts.

 

General Morgan is swimming his horse, Glencoe, midstream when Fitch’s gunboats fire their guns. Morgan looks back at the hundreds of his men stranded on the Ohio shore, and without hesitation, he skillfully about-faces his horse and swims it back to the Buckeye State. The general resolves to share the fate of his men. He calls to his African American servant, Box, and to his faithful telegrapher, George Ellsworth, to continue to West Virginia. They both make it there, along with about 330 others (this is Johnson’s number; Ellsworth counted 271 men in total). For the rest, the USS Moose and Allegheny Belle get too close and begin shelling the Ohio bank where the raiders are waiting. General Morgan leads them at a gallop upriver, out of range of the gunboats, to seek another ford.

 

The USS Moose sails among the refugees still floundering helplessly in the water. In a great display of mercy, the sailors hold their fire. They fish some of the Confederates out of the water and save them from drowning, while other Rebels successfully reach the West Virginia shore and follow Colonel Johnson into the woods. Johnson gathers the men together. He will conduct them through the Union-occupied West Virginia mountains to the safety of the Confederate lines in southwest Virginia.

 

Less than two miles upstream of Reedsville, Ohio, another ford presents itself below the mouth of Lee Creek, West Virginia. Here, Morgan’s vanguard begins another attempt to ford the river, and between twenty to sixty men are successful at doing so before Fitch’s gunboats block their way. The soldiers on the West Virginia shore fire their rifles at the USS Moose and wound one of its sailors. The gunboat responds with a broadside from its starboard cannons, which kills and wounds a few Confederates. The other Rebels scatter back into the trees and head for the West Virginia hills, where they will join up with Johnson’s refugees. Morgan again leads his remaining troopers into the Ohio interior and away from the river.

 

Morgan’s men try one more time to ford the river, this time at a shoal four miles farther north, near the mouth of Indian Run. Lieutenant Commander Fitch has learned Morgan’s scheme, and his gunboats are ready. They immediately shell Morgan’s troopers as they descend Parker’ Hill to the ford. Without artillery, the Rebel general knows he cannot compete against gunboats. Furthermore, Indian Run flows into the Ohio River one mile south of the heavily defended town of Hockingport, and he understands that his demoralized men, most of whom have no guns or ammunition left, could not force a crossing of the Hocking River. Morgan concludes that he must find a different way to elude the U.S. Navy. He takes his tired troopers inland toward the village of Flatwoods (Joppa), located several miles east of Tuppers Plains, Ohio. He hopes to escape the Federal snare that is enclosing around him.

 

Meanwhile, back at the Tunis Middleswart House outside Portland, Ohio, General Judah and General Hobson meet. There, General Judah tries to exert the chain of command on Hobson by ordering him to maneuver the Provisional Division as Judah wishes. Hobson politely refuses because his orders are to lead the Provisional Division until General Burnside says otherwise. Judah is upset by Hobson’s refusal to submit to him, and Judah detains Hobson while he sends a dispatch to Burnside questioning the decision of allowing Hobson to continue leading the division, because Judah is Hobson’s superior officer, after all. Several hours later, Burnside responds, telling Judah to respect Hobson’s command of the division and ordering him to get after Morgan immediately. Wasting time by squabbling over command control would only incur the ire of the public. Morgan must be caught! However, it's too late now for either of the two field generals to be involved personally in chasing General Morgan and his remaining soldiers. The delay that Judah has created by waiting for a response from Burnside has taken both Judah and Hobson out of the race. It will be up to General Shackelford, who has ridden north after Morgan following the fight at Bashan, to take the lead in capturing the wily Rebel chieftain.

 

As the battle at Buffington Island simmers to a conclusion, General Scammon loads Hayes’s brigade onto the transports docked at the Portland Landing. They immediately steam upriver behind Fitch’s gunboats. After the gunboats turn back Morgan’s last attempt to ford the river at Indian Run, Scammon orders Hayes to disembark Lieutenant Colonel James M. Comly’s 23rd Ohio Infantrymen at the mouth of the creek to prevent Morgan from returning later. In the afternoon, a detachment under Captain William H. Zimmerman crosses over to West Virginia on a transport steamboat to hunt for Morgan’s raiders who have forded the river at Lee Creek. Unfortunately, Zimmerman’s search comes up empty. Soon after, Scammon directs the 13th (West) Virginia Infantry to deploy along a five-mile stretch of the West Virginia shore. These men will block Morgan from fording the Ohio River during the night. In addition, the Union general sends the remaining companies of Comly’s regiment to search for Morgan’s troopers who have been spotted near Flatwoods, Meigs County, Ohio. Comly and his Buckeyes march into the night along the crude path that Morgan’s men had taken earlier in the day. It would not be until morning that the Union infantry would approach Flatwoods.

 

General Hobson’s last dispatch to General Shackelford gives him authority to chase the Confederate column with his and Wolford’s brigades. In the afternoon, Hobson sends Kautz’s brigade to Shackelford as a reinforcement, but Kautz will not join him until the next morning. In the meantime, the brigades of Shackelford and Wolford ride from Bashan to Tuppers Plains, Ohio, to surround Morgan and his remaining troopers in a trap bounded by Shackelford and Wolford to the west; Sanders, Kautz, and Judah to the south; Fitch and Scammon on the Ohio River to the east; and Lieutenant Peter Long, with his detachment of the 7th Ohio Cavalry and the Ohio militia, on the Hocking River to the north.

 

As twilight approaches, Morgan’s Division, now reduced to eight hundred men, arrives at Flatwoods. General Morgan reorganizes his two brigades, each containing four hundred men. He places the First Brigade under Major Thomas B. “Iron Man” Webber, the commander of the 2nd Kentucky Cavalry, and he gives command of the Second Brigade to Colonel Leroy S. Cluke, leader of the 8th Kentucky Cavalry.

 

The Confederate scouts report the bad news to General Morgan that the fords over the Hocking River and the Ohio River are blocked by volunteer forces, and that Hobson’s cavalry and artillery are positioned on the hills east of Tuppers Plains. The raiders are surrounded. Morgan decides to encamp for the night on Heiney Ridge and along the hilltops surrounding Flatwoods. His demoralized and saddened soldiers light fires and take a much-needed rest. Many try to improve their spirits by joining in a barn dance at the Heiney farm. In the meantime, Morgan searches for a way to escape his seemingly unsolvable predicament.

 

Shackelford deploys his six hundred cavalrymen and four pieces of artillery on the Dodderer farm a half mile west of Morgan’s pickets. The Union cavalry control the only road leading west from the river – or so they think! Shackelford, Wolford, several staff officers, and a local citizen conduct a personal reconnaissance to within a few hundred yards of the Rebel picket line. They determine that an attack, either on foot or mounted, against Morgan’s position would be too difficult because of the steepness of the densely wooded ravines intervening between the opposing forces. Shackelford will need to rely on the cavalry forces coming up from Portland to assault Morgan’s rear in the morning. What the Union commander does not know is that General Hobson has recalled Colonel Sanders’s brigade to Portland following a wild goose chase, and that General Judah has brought his brigade back to the Buffington Island battlefield. Judah’s command-control conflict with Hobson has introduced a fatal delay in following up Morgan’s rear and forcing him to surrender.

 

 

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.

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