The 2nd Kentucky won the hot dusty race into Salem. Lieutenant A. S. Welch of Company L led his platoon of twelve men in at a brisk gallop, their yells and fierce momentum scattering a force of frightened home guards. Before the defenders could re-form, Captain W. J. Jones brought his company pouring into a side street, overturning an ancient swivel gun, which was loaded and ready to fire, in the public square.
By noon both brigades were swirling around the little town. They fed and watered horses, burned the railroad depot and a bridge over Blue River, ripped up tracks for several hundred yards, and then descended upon the Salem stores.
Basil Duke frankly admitted that his men pillaged Salem, “actuated by a desire to pay off all scores that the Federal Army had chalked up in the South.…Calico was the staple article of appropriation—each man tied a bolt of it to his saddle.…One man carried a bird cage with three canaries in it for two days. Another rode with a chafing dish, which looked like a small metallic coffin, on the pommel of his saddle, until an officer forced him to throw it away. Although the weather was intensely warm, another slung seven pairs of skates around his neck, and chuckled over his acquisition.”
Morgan’s provost marshal attempted to stop the plundering, but nothing short of mass courts-martial would have been effective on that hot July day in Salem. The alligator horses literally cleaned out every drygoods store, saddle shop, and liquor store in town. “The ragamuffins were particularly delighted,” commented the New Albany Ledger the next day, “with the style of Salem clothing and the quality of Salem whisky.”
The only thing that stopped the mad celebration was an order to march out, and by two o’clock that afternoon the dusty horsemen were gone, vanished as quickly as they had come, leaving Salem, Indiana, its one day of Civil War to be talked about for years to come.
7
Under a blazing cloudless sky the raiders turned straight eastward now, marching to Canton where they paused only long enough to wreck a stretch of railroad and tangle several sections of telegraph wire. “We then rapidly moved on,” James McCreary recorded in his diary, “like an irresistible storm to Vienna.” Here for the first time they found a town filled with women and children, the able-bodied men having departed northward to help guard Indianapolis from expected attack. Also for the first time the Kentuckians learned how deep ran the awesome dread of Morgan’s “terrible raiders” among these people. “The women were soon crying,” Sergeant Peddicord reported, “begging and imploring us to spare their children. The boys heard this with amazement, and asked the women if they thought we were barbarians that they should think we could hurt women and children. The men assured them that not a hair of their heads would be injured, nor would they wound their feelings in any way.”
While the columns continued on through Vienna in the dusk, George Ellsworth went to work in the telegraph office. He learned that Union forces were concentrating around Indianapolis, that home guard companies had been working through the day felling timbers and blocking roads south of the city, and that pursuing cavalry forces were still crossing at Brandenburg. Morgan was especially pleased that his Indianapolis ruse was working so well, and saw nothing alarming in reports of enemy cavalry still a day’s march behind him.
Six or seven miles east of Vienna, near the village of Lexington, the advance companies began moving off the road for a short bivouac. They were only thirty miles due north of Louisville, yet for all that Union commanders anywhere knew of their whereabouts, they might as well have been on the moon.
That night John Morgan commandeered a house in Lexington and slept in comfort, guarded only by a small escort. Just before daylight a dozen or so Federal cavalrymen blundered into town, were challenged by Morgan’s guards, and three of the Yankees were captured before they could gallop away.
Awakened by the clatter, Morgan decided he might as well start the columns moving again, and this day he chose to march north on a winding road through rolling country toward Vernon. A few miles above Lexington he sent Colonel D. Howard Smith’s 5th Regiment east in a feint toward Madison. He also issued orders to seize every saddle horse in sight; the raiders’ mounts were still holding up well, but he did not want to leave any replacements behind for his pursuers. Before noon, each regiment had a sizable horse herd bringing up the rear.
It was midafternoon when the scouts sighted Vernon, and a cautious reconnaissance indicated that the town was prepared to fight. Sturdy barricades had been thrown up in the streets, and several hundred militiamen were waiting with rifles at ready. When Morgan sent in a truce party demanding surrender, the colonel in command flatly refused.
Morgan moved up to the front, joining Basil Duke and Adam Johnson for a conference. None of them liked the looks of the town. They believed they could force their way in, but feared the cost would be high, and to lose more men now might endanger the success of the raid. They decided to shift the brigades over to a side road leading back southeastward toward Dupont.
To gain time while his straggling columns were re-forming for the turnabout, Morgan sent in a second demand for surrender. In the meantime, however, a long railroad train had rolled in from the north, bringing General John Love and more than a thousand volunteer troops. After taking command in Vernon, Love immediately sent out a reply demanding Morgan’s surrender.
It was now late in the day, shadows of mounts and riders falling in tall black slants across the dusty roads. Morgan purposely delayed his answer until the sun was down. Then, about nine o’clock, he sent a message in to Love informing him that he would give the Federals thirty minutes to remove women and children, after which time the raiders would begin shelling Vernon with artillery.
While Love was frantically rounding up noncombatants and hurrying them to safety north of Vernon, Morgan’s rear guard slipped away, and concealed by darkness hurried on after the forward columns. The division was miles away to the southeast before Love, waiting for an artillery barrage that never came, realized he had been outbluffed by a master of military legerdemain.
“We traveled all night to Dupont,” wrote James McCreary, “where we rested and fed our horses. Like an avalanche we are sweeping over the country. Man never knows, his powers of endurance ’till he tries himself. The music of the enemy’s bells is now as familiar and common as the caroling of the spring bird which, unknowing of death and carnage around, sings today the same song that gladdened our forefathers.”
At midnight they went into camp, but Morgan had them in their saddles again by three o’clock in the morning. Since crossing the Ohio River they had averaged twenty-one hours a day on horseback, and fatigue was beginning to take its toll. They were hungry, too, this Sunday morning, July 12, and after daylight when they passed a meat-packing plant near Dupont, the boys could not resist falling out of column to “capture” some Indiana hams. Most of them slung the hams to their saddles and resumed march, but several laggards in the rear guard stayed too long and were captured by a band of militiamen.
Sunday morning church bells were ringing in all the villages—whether to summon worshipers or to warn them of the approaching raiders, the men could not tell. About noontime, Tom Hines’ scouts and the 2nd Kentucky rode into Versailles at a walk, men and horses suffering from dust and sultry weather. After subduing a halfhearted force of home guards, they watered their horses and sought food and drink from the terrified householders.
While waiting for the rear regiments to come up, many men fell asleep on the streets beside their horses, but when a rumor was passed around that Frank Wolford’s 1st Kentucky Union Cavalry had been reported only a dozen miles to the rear, they all mounted up willingly to resume march. The pursuing forces had closed the gap as a result of the division’s delay and reversal of march at Vernon. All day Saturday the raiders’ route of march had been like an inverted V, Morgan’s men traveling both sides, the Union cavalry only the short base.
Leaving Versailles, Morgan put his columns on parallel roads again in an attempt to gain upon his pursuers
, marching northeastward at a steady gait. Near Milan sheer weariness forced a halt, Bennett Young describing how he passed his dust-begrimed comrades “scattered along the fence corners for four miles.” And James McCreary, the faithful diarist, was so weary that night when he tumbled off his horse, he could write but one sentence: “We moved rapidly through six or seven towns without resistance, and tonight lie down for a little while with our bridles in our hands.”
The point where the two columns came together long after nightfall was just outside a village called Sunman. They bivouacked there, only fifteen miles from the Ohio state line.
8
While Morgan’s main columns had been successfully eluding enemy forces in both front and rear, the detachment of two companies under Captain William J. Davis and Lieutenant George Eastin had not been so fortunate. After leaving Shepherdsville, Kentucky, this diversionary party of about one hundred men marched rapidly around Louisville to Shelbyville, then swung north through Smith-field to Sligo, cutting telegraph wires, burning railroad bridges, and attempting to create the impression that they were Morgan’s entire raiding force.
On the night of July 10, while their comrades were bivouacked scarcely twenty miles north across the Ohio near Lexington, Indiana, Captain Davis’ men were approaching Westport on the river. The latter part of their march was over a corduroy road—poles laid crosswise on muddy earth—the clattering of their horses’ hoofs breaking the stillness of the night.
About daylight of the eleventh, at the time Morgan’s raiders were beginning their drive north toward Vernon, Davis’ detachment reached the river. While his men were searching for boats, Davis stopped in at the residence of a Dr. Barbour, accepted an invitation to breakfast, and enjoyed making the acquaintance of the host’s lovely daughter.
When Davis returned to the riverbank, Lieutenant Eastin reported that two small flatboats had been found opposite Twelve Mile Island. The bottoms not being particularly sturdy, Davis decided the safest method of crossing would be to use one boat to ply between the Kentucky shore and the island, the other between the island and the Indiana shore.
By eight o’clock all were off the Kentucky landing except Lieutenant Josiah B. Gathright of Company A, 8th Kentucky, and an eight-man platoon posted to guard the rear. As Gathright was calling the rear guard down to cross to the island, he saw three steamboats turning the river bend. A moment later puffs of white smoke rose from the decks, and shells roared toward the Indiana shore where Davis, Eastin, and about forty men were waiting along the grassy flats. About fifty other men were trapped on Twelve Mile Island with their horses.
Gathright acted promptly, taking the boat out quickly to the island. He made two turns to the island and back to the Kentucky shore, narrowly escaping a direct hit on the second run, rescuing thirty-four men before the gunboats moved up too close for risking another try. But in their haste, these men left not only their horses but also their arms and accouterments on the island.
And so at nine-thirty the morning of July 11, Lieutenant Gathright found himself the sole officer in command of forty-two men, only eight of them mounted and armed. They were cut off from their command across the river, and in their rear a dozen irate Federal patrols were searching for them. (As several of these men were of D Company, 2nd Kentucky, their subsequent adventures will be recorded in a later chapter.)
Meanwhile, Captain Davis and Lieutenant Eastin had moved away from their exposed position on the Indiana shoreline, and with their little band of forty set out to find John Morgan. If they had continued straight northward they might have overtaken the column’s rear guard, but Morgan had underestimated by one day the time he expected to be in Salem. Unaware of this, however, and obedient to orders Davis turned west toward Salem, only to run into the hornet nests stirred up in the wake of the swift-moving raiders.
“While crossing a small creek near Pekin,” he later wrote to Frances Cunningham, “we were attacked by the 73rd Indiana Volunteers and a detachment of 5th U. S. Regulars in ambuscade.” Outnumbered, Davis ordered a retreat into a nearby woods where he hoped to make a stand. In the fight which followed, Davis’ horse stumbled over a fallen tree, throwing its rider. Davis fell unconscious, and most of his men, believing him killed, surrendered.
Among those surrounded was George Eastin, still wearing the captured sword of Dennis Halisey. Aware that a price had been put on his head for the alleged murder of Halisey, and knowing that identification of the sword was certain, Eastin quickly hid the shiny blade under a log somewhere in that little patch of woods near Pekin, Indiana. He also concealed all articles of identity and marks of rank, and when the Yankee captors asked his name, he told them he was Private George Donald, and it was under this nom de guerre that Lieutenant George Eastin went into a Northern prison camp. A few hours later Captain Davis was revived by a cool evening breeze. He was still lying beside the log which doubtless had concealed him from the victorious Yankees. Davis hid in a thicket until morning, then set out on foot, alone in enemy country. After walking about five miles he met a small boy in a field. The boy volunteered the information that a wounded Rebel soldier was in a house nearby. Davis walked to the house, entered, and surrendered to six militiamen who were carefully guarding the wounded captive. It would be fifteen months before Captain Davis could rejoin Morgan’s raiders.
11
Farthest Point North
I’m sent to warn the neighbors, he’s only a mile behind;
He’s sweeping up the horses, every horse that he can find.
Morgan, Morgan, the raider, and Morgan’s terrible men,
With Bowie knives and pistols are galloping up the glen.
I
MONDAY MORNING, JULY 13, 1863, the state of Ohio was invaded by Confederate troops for the first time in the war. The next two weeks for many Ohioans, particularly those in isolated farming areas and villages, was to be a time of self-induced terror which often approached the comical in its absurdities. As Bennett Young put it, the raiders in gray were pictured as “real sure enough devils, horns, hoofs and all. Even rhyme was put under conscription to help tell how awful Morgan’s men were.”
Actually, during most of their drive across Ohio the raiders were in flight. Rather than being bent upon destruction of the enemy, they sought to avoid him, dodging militiamen in front and racing to escape from an army of Union cavalry pounding at their heels.
About noon of the thirteenth, the 2nd Kentucky, heading Duke’s brigade, rode into Harrison, Ohio, without resistance. “The most beautiful town I have yet seen in the North,” James McCreary noted. “A place, seemingly, where love and beauty, peace and prosperity, sanctified by true religion, might hold high carnival. Here we destroyed a magnificent bridge and saw many beautiful women.”
Waiting in Harrison for John Morgan was a man in rough civilian clothing, Sam Taylor, one of the captains who had captured Brandenburg and the steamboats. Taylor had been on another special mission—this time into Cincinnati. He reported to Morgan that Cincinnati was stampeded, the city under martial law and expecting attack, and Union troops were pouring in from Kentucky to defend it.
But Morgan had no intention of attacking Cincinnati, of risking disaster in its labyrinth of streets and hills. What he was looking for was an escape corridor between Cincinnati on the south and Hamilton on the north. As soon as the last of his companies was across the Whitewater bridge, he ordered the structure burned in order to delay his immediate pursuers, then marched out of Harrison on the road toward Hamilton. A few miles out he cut the telegraph lines, sent scouts north in a feint toward Hamilton, and turned his main column in the direction of Cincinnati. By thus threatening both points in the same afternoon, he kept his enemies waiting for him, leaving the intervening area free for his columns to slip through during the night.
The Union troops pursuing the raiders—including Wolford’s Wild Riders—were so close behind that as they rode down the hill toward the river west of Harrison they could see a long line of Confederate
cavalry stretching away toward the east. But the Federals could come no closer in the fading twilight; the bridge over the Whitewater was a mass of charred timbers.
2
On that afternoon of the thirteenth, the raiders started their longest continuous march, the severest test ever endured by Morgan’s men and their horses. Yet it was not a rapid cavalry march, the dark night and unfamiliar roads holding them to a plodding pace much of the time. To fight off sleep, the men talked, slow and easy, recalling events of their four days in Indiana. Already there were dozens of stories swapped back and forth among the companies of little incidents which would be forever remembered.…One of the boys entering the kitchen door of a farmhouse asking for food, the lady of the house flourishing a butcher knife in his face and shouting: “I’ll let you know I’m from the State of Virginia and if you make any further attempt to enter here, I’ll cut your heart out!” The cavalryman retreating, apologizing: “Ma’am, I know you Virginians will fight like the devil, and I have no doubt you mean what you say.”…The hams captured at Dupont; some of the boys at a rest-stop broiling theirs over a fire, the aroma tantalizing just as a warning of approaching Yankees came. “Mount up!” They strung the half-cooked hams to their saddles, galloping away at top speed, hams flapping, breaking loose, strewing the road, delectable suppers lost in the dust.…And Colonel Duke’s story of the pies: everywhere they went they found bread and pies left in deserted kitchens like propitiatory offerings to fierce gods. The boys were suspicious of such gifts, uneasily passing them by until the day Duke rode up and caught several of his forward scouts standing around a table filled with apple pies cooling from the oven. “Why don’t you eat them?” Duke asked. “They might be poisoned,” replied one of the wary troopers. “I’ve always been fond of pies,” said Duke. “Hand me one of the largest.” The little Colonel downed the pie with relish, and when he appeared to be suffering no ill effects, the boys dived in and finished the lot. After that, Duke seldom arrived in time to find any pies left over by the ravenous scouts…