The Twenty-Five Days of Morgan - July 6, 1863

While the rest of the division moves northward to Bardstown during the previous night and into today’s early morning hours, Lieutenant Colonel Alston, Morgan’s adjutant and chief of staff, paroles the prisoners at Springfield. Morgan rarely kept prisoners because they ultimately would slow his march and use up his precious supplies. After Alston finishes his task, he tells his subordinates to ride ahead and catch up to the rear guard of the division while he takes a short nap. However, Alston’s nap lasts longer than expected, and as dawn breaks, he races north with his orderly to catch up. They ride directly into a Union patrol and are captured.

General Morgan and his division arrive in Bardstown at 4:00 am to find Captain Ralph Sheldon and his Kentuckians besieging 25 Union cavalrymen under Lieutenant Thomas Sullivan. Colonel Richard Morgan brings up his 14th Kentucky Cavalry to aid Sheldon, who has surrounded Sullivan’s fort at the livery stable. When Colonel Morgan sends Sullivan another demand to surrender, threatening “to blow him to hell,” Sullivan calmly responds, “I am obliged to the general for his kind intentions, and feel sorry that it becomes my duty to trouble him a little longer.” Richard Morgan is flabbergasted! He orders forward the four guns of Byrne’s battery and unlimbers them at point blank range from the stable. When Sullivan sees this, he walks out of the stable door and offers to surrender his men, and Richard Morgan begrudgingly accepts. General Morgan hears of Sullivan’s stubbornness. The general “could not help complimenting the 25 ‘damned Yankees’ who detained him twenty-four hours.”

Bardstown stands only forty miles from Louisville, Kentucky, one of the largest and most important supply depots in the North. Through this city flowed most of the reinforcements, supplies, armaments, and equipment being funneled to the Union armies in the Western Theater. From Louisville, steamboats on the Ohio River transported goods by river to the Union-controlled Southern ports, while dozens of railroad trains moved war materiel 24/7 along the line of the Louisville & Nashville Railroad. The loss of Louisville would be devastating to the Union cause. Confederate general Braxton Bragg, Morgan’s superior who had authorized the Great Raid, had ordered Morgan to make Louisville a priority target. The city is now within range of Morgan’s troopers, and no significant Union force stands between them and glory.

However, Morgan plans to disobey Bragg’s orders to stay within Kentucky and to threaten Louisville. Morgan will use Louisville as bait for a successful shift of his division toward the west. His intentions are different from what Burnside and Bragg are expecting from their respective headquarters hundreds of miles away. Morgan wants to cross the Ohio River into Indiana!

To convince General Burnside that Morgan will attack Louisville, the Rebel general sends Captain William Davis with two companies of cavalry (roughly 130 men) toward Harrodsburg and Louisville. Davis’s special mission is to ride around the eastern suburbs of Louisville, ford the Ohio River at Twelve Mile Island, and avoid Union forces long enough to return to Morgan’s main column somewhere near Salem, Indiana. Captain Davis and his brave cavalrymen ride out of Bardstown, not knowing the adventures that lay ahead of them.

That night, as the division crosses the Louisville & Nashville Railroad at Bardstown Junction, he calls upon Private George “Lightning” Ellsworth to work his magic. What is Ellsworth’s special talent? Ellsworth is a Canadian who had joined Morgan’s Raiders to find fun and adventure. He had proven to be a terrible soldier, but Morgan had quickly learned about Ellsworth’s other traits, and he had taken advantage of them. Ellsworth had been trained as a telegrapher by the inventor of the telegraph, Samuel B. Morse. Not only is Ellsworth an expert telegrapher, but also the former Canadian has the unique ability to learn the tapping rhythm (the “fist”) of another telegrapher by listening only a few minutes to the person as he taps out a message. After he memorizes the person’s tapping rhythm, Ellsworth can replicate the rhythm perfectly enough to convince other operators on the line that he is not an imposter. Ellsworth has become the first military man in world history to employ electronic warfare – something that continues in today’s computerized world through viruses and malware.

Morgan orders Ellsworth to tap into the railroad’s telegraph lines and learn everything he could about Union movements meant to counter Morgan’s advance. Ellsworth confirms from intercepted messages that Union leaders believe Morgan is heading north to Louisville. Davis’s feint is working to perfection! Also, Ellsworth learns that the Army of the Ohio’s cavalry are finally riding north in pursuit of Morgan.

Before leaving Bardstown Junction, Morgan’s troopers fight a skirmish with a company of the 63rd Indiana Infantry south of Shepherdsville, Kentucky. Morgan’s men also capture a railroad train containing more of the Hoosier infantrymen and parole them later in the evening. This skirmish, being so close to Louisville, only intensifies the anxiety of the city’s civilians and its military defenders.

Brigadier General Edward Hobson, thoroughly frustrated by his superior officer Henry Judah’s poor decisions, decides to take matters into his own hands. He proactively gathers all the available cavalry, mounted infantry, and mobile artillery units located near Greensburg, Campbellsville, and Lebanon in Kentucky. Hobson reaches Campbellsville at daylight this morning and joins forces with Brigadier General James Shackelford, who is junior to Hobson. Together, they head north, following Morgan’s cold trail. Soon after 1:30pm, they meet Colonel Frank Wolford and Colonel August Kautz with their cavalry brigades at the smoldering town of Lebanon, Kentucky. Wolford and Kautz have ridden from Jamestown, Kentucky. All these officers submit to Hobson’s orders. Hobson is now the senior commander of all the cavalry forces in the immediate area, because the most senior general, Judah, still lies too far off to the west at Vaughn’s Ferry on the Green River. Hobson gives his own cavalry to Shackelford, and they all leave behind their foot infantry and heavy artillery (they are too slow for what’s ahead). Hobson names his hodgepodge Union cavalry force the “Provisional Cavalry Division.” Together they total 2,500 men and six artillery pieces. They would be the most feared troops confronting Morgan during the raid.

General Burnside, from his headquarters at Cincinnati, learns of Hobson’s actions and is impressed. At 4:30 pm, he sends a telegram directly to Hobson giving him full authority over the troops in the new division, some of whom belong to his superior, General Henry Judah. Burnside is sending a clear message to Judah that he has not been pleased with Judah’s performance.

Meanwhile, Judah and his remaining cavalry (mostly from Manson’s brigade) are stuck at the Green River, waiting for its flooded waters to recede. General George Hartsuff, commander of the XXIII Corps, writes this morning to Burnside, “I have no idea where Judah can be. He ought to have been in Lebanon before now.” In the same dispatch, he informs Burnside that he has ordered Colonel William P. Sanders to take command of Colonel James I. David’s Michigan brigade. Hartsuff is quite upset by Colonel David’s poor decisions at Lebanon.

Sources:

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.

Gorin, Betty J. “Morgan Is Coming!” Confederate Raiders in the Heartland of Kentucky. Louisville, KY: Harmony House Publishers, 2006, pp. 99-260.

Mowery, David L. Morgan’s Great Raid: The Remarkable Expedition from Kentucky to Ohio. Charleston, SC: History Press, 2013, pp. 15-72.

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.

“The Great Raid, Summer 1863.” Trails-R-Us (Kentucky)—John Hunt Morgan Home Page, http://www.trailsrus.com/morgan/map.html.