After Morgan withdrew his squadron to the temporary base at Burnsville, he went to General Beauregard with a plan for raiding these supply lines far north into Tennessee and Kentucky. Beauregard was sufficiently impressed to order his quartermaster to issue Morgan fifteen thousand dollars to cover expenses for conducting “a military expedition beyond the Tennessee River.” The commanding general also authorized Morgan to increase his squadron to five companies as soon as practicable.
On April 23, the raiding party began re-outfitting at Burnsville. As Basil Duke was still hospitalized from the wound received at Shiloh, Lieutenant Sellers took command of Company A. A new fourth company of twenty-five Mississippians and Alabamians under Captain A.C. Brown was added to the squadron, and Morgan persuaded Lieutenant Colonel Robert Wood to join on with a detachment from Colonel Wirt Adams’ cavalry regiment, bringing the force to a total of 325 men.
For three days the squadron was busy shoeing horses, putting arms in order, and cooking a supply of rations for the expedition. As they were going deep into enemy territory, extra ammunition and rations had to be transported on pack mules, one mule being attached to a section, or four to a company. Each mule was led by a man detailed from the section to which it was assigned, and all were placed under the command of a former Kentucky legislator, Frank Leathers. Leathers was a private in Company A, but in civilian life he had been known as “Colonel,” and often as not his comrades called him by that title. So it was that the squadron’s first pack mules were known as “Colonel Leathers’ Mule Train,” and according to one of the boys in the train, Leathers “made a bigger row in driving his mules than was necessary to align a division of cavalry for action.”
Early on April 26, the raiders marched east from Burnsville, passed through Iuka and camped that night six miles from the Tennessee River. When they came up to the river at Oats’ Ferry the next morning, they found the stream almost at flood stage. There was only one boat at the crossing, large enough to transport no more than a dozen horses and men each trip. But as there was no other ferry within miles that was free of Federal interference, they settled down to work, spending the better part of two days and nights floating horses, mules and men across the broad, swift-flowing river. “We had the gunboat fever very badly,” one of the men reported afterward, “and expected every minute to see one come in sight, for the Federals were patrolling the river for some miles above this point.”
From the home of Dr. Bowles on the north bank of the river, the morning of April 29, Colonel Morgan wrote his first report of the expedition: “Last of command just crossed river…will go to Lawrenceburg, start men to left and have wires cut upon Savannah road…determined to reach Lexington.” Although his command was still in northern Alabama, he was already thinking of Kentucky and the Bluegrass.
Moving rapidly northeastward, they entered Lawrenceburg, Tennessee, the night of April 30, received a hospitable welcome, an abundance of forage and rations, “and a good deal more whisky than was good for the men.” At dawn, they resumed march and were nearing Pulaski about midmorning when they learned that a force of four hundred Federal troops had just passed on the road to Columbia. Considering this number of the enemy a fair match, the raiders swung northward and discovered the Federals in the act of stringing a new telegraph line which was to run to General Mitchel’s headquarters at Huntsville.
As soon as Morgan’s men appeared, Mitchel’s men blocked the road with wagons and teams, and formed a hasty defense line between a wood and a field. But the raiders charged on horseback, overrunning the Federal defenses, and in a matter of minutes captured 268 of the telegraph crew.
Captain Brown’s new company chased the remainder up the road to Columbia, then turned back to form the rear guard of the squadron’s victory march toward Pulaski.
With the walking prisoners strung out between the advance and rear mounted companies, the column’s entrance into Pulaski was a grand parade. Colonel Morgan led the way, mounted on Black Bess, and the Colonel’s mare almost stole the show, prancing high and tossing her beautifully shaped head. As soon as Morgan dismounted and fastened Bess to a hotel hitching rail, a crowd gathered to admire her glossy black coat, caressing her and feeding her tidbits. When some of the ladies of Pulaski appeared with scissors to clip souvenirs from Black Bess’s jet-black mane, Morgan drew the line and ordered the mare taken to the safety of a stable.
Now the crowd turned its attention to the luckless Federal prisoners, lined up to be paroled. Each captive was required to sign an oath promising not to bear arms against the Confederacy until exchanged, and their names were duly entered on rolls to be forwarded to army headquarters where arrangements would eventually be made to exchange them for captured Confederates. As soon as he had signed his oath, each prisoner was free to return to his home, proceeding usually by foot to the nearest means of transportation. The paperwork required for paroling and exchanging prisoners would grow into a mountain of forms and records before Morgan’s men captured their last man, and the shuttling of parolees back and forth from battlefields to home towns and prison camps would become one of the most bewildering complexities of this complicated war.
Bypassing Murfreesboro, the column headed north along familiar back-country roads, crossed Stone’s River on May 4, and under dripping skies rode into the friendly town of Lebanon as darkness fell.
With the wet night closing down on the town like a curtain, the mood of the boys was relaxation, to rest weary muscles after the hard day’s ride and enjoy the hospitality of the townsfolk. They were deep into enemy-held territory, 170 miles from the Confederate’s main army, and the Federal stronghold at Nashville was only thirty miles to the west, but thus far they had met no opposition they could not handle. The raiding party was intact, and another day’s march would bring them north of the Nashville supply base where they could strike at a vital railroad.
A, B, and C companies occupied the small college buildings on the edge of town, tying their mounts in the college yard. Captain Brown’s company and Lieutenant Colonel Wood’s detachment were quartered around livery stables near the town square. Morgan established headquarters in the hotel, and issued orders to company commanders to be prepared to saddle horses about 4:00 A.M. for an early march to Canoe-branch Ferry on the Cumberland River. Pickets were ordered out on all the roads entering Lebanon.
Everything seemed secure on that bleak, rainy night, so secure that no effort was made by the officers to stop the whisky drinking, the singing, the gaiety indoors—from the college dormitories to the stables, and down in the hotel’s bar. An alligator horse relaxing prefers to relax with whisky, and Lebanon had an abundant supply. “When the warmth of whisky in a Kentuckian’s stomach is added to his natural energy,” Timothy Flint once observed, “he becomes in succession, horse, alligator, and steamboat.” Another admirer of the Confederate soldier’s capacity for alcohol said he had seen few men fonder of spirits. “I do not believe there are many of them who could not finish a bottle of brandy or whisky at one sitting.” But he added: “I do not recollect ever to have seen a drunken private soldier in the South, though perhaps once or twice I may have seen an officer a little ‘tight.’ ”
Morgan’s alligator horses considered drunkenness a sign of weakness, and most of the boys knew when to leave off the bottle, but the fault of judgment on this particular dismal night was with the pickets. They also joined in the liquid merrymaking.
Out on the Murfreesboro road, the boys were soaked and chilled from the steady rain. At first they took turns going in and out of a nearby farmhouse, drying their clothes by the fireplace and sharing hot toddies graciously offered by the host. Then as the night grew wetter and darker, somehow the entire picket detail found that farmhouse more cozily attractive than the deserted road. After all, they could take an occasional glance out the window, just in case some Federal patrol was bullheaded enough to come riding into Lebanon on a foul night such as this one was.
It was a Private Pleasant Whitlow who saw
them first, near daybreak, a whole Federal cavalry regiment plodding by in the slackening rain, heading for town. Whitlow cried a warning to the other pickets, dashed outside, leaped upon his horse, and took off at a fast gait down the road right alongside the enemy column. In the semi-darkness none of the Federals paid any attention to his presence; any who saw him pass took him for a courier from one of the rear companies.
Just as the column entered the town, Whitlow reached the forward point; he spurred his horse into a run, and began yelling at the top of his voice, calling out Morgan’s name and warning: “The Feds! The Feds!” Guns exploded behind him, and Whitlow pitched off his horse, dead. But Morgan and his officers in the hotel had heard the warning; they dashed out, Morgan running straight for Black Bess’s stable.
The next few minutes were indescribable confusion. Although the rain had stopped and dawn was breaking, the light was murky, creating an illusion of unreality over the frantic town square. From somewhere a bugle screamed boots and saddles, and men were running across the college grounds, from the livery stables, from the hotel—searching for horses, yelling and firing.
2
The Federal force of six hundred cavalrymen which entered Lebanon, Tennessee, on the morning of May 5 was under the command of Brigadier General Ebenezer Dumont; the advance regiment was the 1st Kentucky Union Cavalry, better known as Wolford’s Cavalry after its leader, Colonel Frank Wolford.
There in the misty daybreak of a little Tennessee town—which bore the name of a biblical mountain of cedars—it was Kentuckian against Kentuckian, the irony of civil war brought into sharp focus. For many of these men the choice of armies had been fortuitous, the chance of geography, the happenstance of family relations or acquaintances, of being brought up under one mystical shibboleth or other, in which all believed sincerely but few could have clearly explained.
Frank Lane Wolford and John Morgan knew and respected each other; they had served together in the Mexican War. Wolford was the antithesis of the Bluegrass cavalier, a true yeoman who said “hit” for it, “sot” for sit, “fetch” for carry, “thar” for there. His diction was pure Old English poetry, and he loved oratory so dearly that his public speeches endured for three or four hours at a time. Anyone who saw Frank Wolford once never forgot him—his powerful chest, his short thick neck, his oversized head covered with thick black hair, a huge beak of a nose, powerful chin, clear gray eyes that were piercing, hawklike, fiery. “He rode the framework of an ugly roan horse,” an observer said of him while he was organizing his cavalry regiment. “He wore an old red hat, homespun brown jeans coat, and his face had been undefiled by water and razor for sometime.”
Many of the stories told about Frank Wolford were concerned with his colorful military language. “Colonel Wolford has but two commands,” a Federal general once complained. “ ‘Scatter, boys!’ and ‘Huddle up, boys!’ ” Like as not he would also shout “Skedaddle!” or “Light out!” Officers on both sides in the western armies were accustomed to inventing spur-of-the-moment commands such as “Git up and git!” “By move forward! Put!” “Wheel into line! Git!” To dismount and fight on foot, one commander used: “Down and atter ’m, boys!” And for crossing a log over a creek, it was: “Company attention! In one rank to walk a log! Walk a log! March!”
On this May morning, Colonel Wolford’s advance scouts opened the firing by shooting Private Pleasant Whitlow off his horse as he cried the alarm in the town square of Lebanon. Wolford immediately quickened the pace of the main column, but as his regiment clattered up the pike, Morgan’s men began swarming out of the college buildings on high ground to the right. Not an officer was present on the campus, but Orderly Sergeant Zelah Boyer barked Company A into a formation of sorts, and the boys poured a volley of fire into Wolford’s right flank. Wolford responded by wheeling his men to the right and swarming over the college grounds, surrounding the dormitories, and forcing A, B, and C companies back into the town.
According to a correspondent of the Louisville Daily Journal who was present, the atmosphere was heavy and the smoke from the guns hovered low. “After a short time of firing little could be seen except flashes from the muzzles of guns. The din was terrible. Amid the crack of rifles, the reports of pistols, and the clatter of hoofs on the hard wet streets, could be heard hoarse shouts of fighting men, and at times the shrill shrieks of frightened women and children in the houses.” Several Morgan men were captured in this action, C Company bearing the brunt of Wolford’s first charge.
As the squadron fell back into town, the three companies became intermixed, but Sergeant Boyer’s deep voice kept up a constant call for A Company platoon leaders and by the time they reached the square the sergeant had the Green River veterans aligned for battle. Suddenly out of the gray dawn, Colonel Morgan appeared on Black Bess, his voice calmly ordering his men to stand firm and look to their arms.
Meanwhile Colonel Wolford had rallied his men for a charge into the square, and they came in now, yelling and firing, breaking through the jumbled lines of B and C companies. But as the first Union platoons galloped into the square, a withering crossfire caught them from the upper windows of the Odd Fellows Hall. Lieutenant Colonel Wood had taken his detachments in there, and this fusillade combined with a blast from A Company’s steady line slowed the attackers.
For a minute or so, smoke and mist obscured the square, the smell of horse and dung and leather mingling with the acrid odor of burned powder. Morgan’s men could hear Wolford’s oratorical voice shouting orders from somewhere near the hotel; those who had reloaded poured a rain of bullets in that direction. Friend and foe became entangled in the succeeding melee, and for a few minutes there were isolated hand-to-hand combats all around the square.
Wounded in the side, Colonel Wolford wheeled his mount. He saw a line of horsemen forming, and dashed toward them. As he swayed from his saddle, Frank Leathers of Morgan’s mule train, caught him in his arms. “Frank Wolford!” he shouted. “Old Meat Axe! Well, this is glory enough for me for one day!”
In the brief lull that followed, while Wolford’s leaderless men withdrew from the square, Morgan pulled his horse over to greet the distinguished prisoner, and inquire after the wound. Wolford protested that it was nothing, although blood streaked down one trousers leg. When Morgan offered to take the Colonel’s parole so that he might go into the hotel and lie down, Wolford stubbornly refused, declared he would take his chances on being rescued by his own men. The fight is not over yet, he warned Morgan, and he was right.
Coming up the Murfreesboro road behind Wolford was General Dumont with elements of the 7th Pennsylvania Cavalry. As soon as Dumont heard the rifle fire of the first encounter, he guessed that Wolford had run into a Confederate patrol of considerable size. He sent companies racing to left and right to seal off all roads leading from Lebanon, and then hurried forward with his main force.
Skirmishing parties from these fresh troops burst into Lebanon while Morgan was still talking with Frank Wolford, and although the squadron stood off the first attacks, it was soon apparent to Morgan and his officers that they were too far outnumbered to remain much longer in the town.
In one of the first brushes, Private Jeff Sterrett of B Company captured a chaplain, W. H. Honnell. “I am only a chaplain,” Honnell protested. “I rode up here to pray for our wounded, and I request permission to rejoin my command.”
“The hell you say,” retorted Sterrett. “Don’t you think Morgan’s men need praying for as well as Wolford’s devils?”
A few minutes later, Morgan issued the order to retreat from Lebanon, and Chaplain Honnell, taken along as prisoner, described the pell-mell ride: “We were on the wildest race a soldier ever experienced. Sometimes we would jump clear over a fallen horse, and horses would sometimes shy around a man on hands and knees struggling to escape from the road.”
Colonel Wolford also was along for the ride—still an unparoled prisoner—but because of his weakened condition, Morgan allowed him to drop behind. Whe
n two of Wolford’s officers at last overtook him, the Colonel urged them to leave him and press on to capture John Morgan. Blood was dripping from his wound into the road as he spoke. His officers refused the order, and took him back to Lebanon in a buggy. Old Meat Axe Wolford recovered, of course, and he and Morgan—the yeoman and the cavalier—would meet again face to face, a little more than a year later, on a dusty road far north in Ohio.
Racing out of Lebanon on the east road to Carthage, Morgan’s men ran into General Dumont’s flanking companies, who dashed down on the Confederate rear, attacking with sabers. The Bluegrass boys retaliated as best they could with pistol fire, but it was no easy accomplishment to reload a pistol while keeping a horse going at full gallop. One of them later recalled seeing Colonel Morgan coolly engaging in such a series of duels. “He waited until the foe got within gunshot, wheeled, and emptied his pistols, and then touched up Black Bess until he could reload. The victors tried for dear life to catch him.”
In a moment of exertion, Bess broke the curb of her bridle, and Morgan could not control her flight. She ran like a tornado, and although two or three men tried to slow her, there was no heading Black Bess until she ran through the village of Rome and faced the unbridged Cumberland river.
As swift as the ride had been, the Federals were coming up fast in the rear, and Morgan had only a dozen or so men with him now. The river ferry was too small for loading both horses and men; they had only time to dismount, slap their mounts’ rumps, board, and start poling for the opposite shore.
Safely across, they looked back and saw Black Bess running along the river bank, head high, mane flying. “She was the most perfect beauty I ever beheld…broad tilted loins, and thighs—all muscle…her head as beautiful as a poet’s dream…wide between the eyes, it tapered down until her muzzle was small enough to have picked a lady’s pocket.”