John Hunt Morgan
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| John Hunt Morgan | |
|---|---|
| June 1, 1825 – September 4, 1864 | |
 Brig. Gen. John Hunt Morgan |
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| Nickname | Thunderbolt |
| Place of birth | Huntsville, Alabama |
| Place of death | Greeneville, Tennessee |
| Allegiance | United States of America Confederate States of America |
| Years of service | 1846–47 (USA), 1861–64 (CSA) |
| Rank | Brigadier General |
| Battles/wars | Mexican-American War American Civil War |
John Hunt Morgan (June 1, 1825 – September 4, 1864) was a Confederate general and cavalry officer in the American Civil War. He led 2,460 troops in a daring raid, called Morgan's Raid, racing past Union lines into Kentucky, Indiana, and Ohio in July 1863. This was the farthest north any uniformed Confederate troops penetrated during the war.
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[edit] Early life and career
John Hunt Morgan was born in Huntsville, Alabama, the eldest of ten children of Calvin and Henrietta (Hunt) Morgan. He was an uncle of geneticist Thomas Hunt Morgan and a grandson of John Wesley Hunt, an early founder of Lexington, Kentucky, and one of the first millionaires west of the Allegheny Mountains. He was also the brother-in-law of A.P. Hill and of Basil W. Duke.[1]
Morgan's father lost his Huntsville home in 1831 when he was unable to pay the property taxes following the failure of his pharmacy. The family then moved to Lexington, where Calvin Morgan would manage one of Hunt's sprawling farms.
Morgan attended Transylvania College for two years, but was suspended in June 1844 for dueling with a fraternity brother. In 1846, Morgan joined the Freemasons, as had his father before him.
He enlisted in the U.S. Army as a cavalry private in the Mexican-American War, and saw combat at the Battle of Buena Vista. On his return to Kentucky, he became a hemp manufacturer and eventually took over his grandfather's prosperous mercantile business. In 1848, he married Rebecca Gratz Bruce, 18-year-old sister of Morgan's business partner. Morgan raised a militia artillery company in 1852, but it was disbanded two years later.
In 1853, Morgan's wife delivered a stillborn son. Rebecca Morgan contracted septic thrombophlebitis, an infection of a blood clot in a vein, which eventually led to an amputation. Relations with his wife's family suffered over different views on slavery and with her health problems. In 1857, Morgan raised an independent infantry company known as the "Lexington Rifles," and spent much of his free time drilling them.
[edit] Civil War
Like most Kentuckians, Morgan did not initially support secession. Immediately after Lincoln's election in November 1860, he wrote to his brother, Thomas Hunt Morgan, then a student at Kenyon College in northern Ohio, "Our State will not I hope secede[.] have no doubt but Lincoln will make a good President at least we ought to give him a fair trial & then if he commits some overt act all the South will be a unit." By the following spring, Tom Morgan (who also had opposed Kentucky's secession) had transferred home to the Kentucky Military Institute and there began to support the Confederacy. Just before the fourth of July, he quietly left for Camp Boone, just across the Tennessee border, by way a steamer from Louisville to enlist in the Kentucky State Guard. John stayed at home in Lexington to tend to his troubled business and his ailing wife. Becky Morgan finally died on July 21, 1861. In September, Captain Morgan and his militia company went to Tennessee and joined the Confederate States Army. Morgan soon raised the 2nd Kentucky Cavalry Regiment and became its colonel.
Morgan and his cavalrymen fought at the Battle of Shiloh and he soon became a symbol to secessionists in their hopes for obtaining Kentucky for the Confederacy. A Louisiana writer, Robert D. Patrick, compared Morgan to Francis Marion and wrote that "a few thousands of such men as his would regain us Kentucky and Tennessee." In his first Kentucky raid, Morgan left Knoxville on July 4, 1862, with almost 900 men and in three weeks he swept through Kentucky, deep in the rear of Maj. Gen. Don Carlos Buell's army. He reported the capture of 1,200 Federal soldiers, whom he paroled, acquired several hundred horses, and destroyed massive quantities of supplies. He unnerved Kentucky's Union military government and President Abraham Lincoln received so many frantic appeals for help that he complained that "they are having a stampede in Kentucky." Historian Kenneth M. Noe wrote that Morgan's feat "in many ways surpassed J.E.B. Stuart's celebrated 'Ride around McClellan' and the Army of the Potomac the previous spring." The success of Morgan's raid was one of the key reasons that the Confederate Heartland Offensive of Braxton Bragg and Edmund Kirby Smith was launched later that fall, assuming that tens of thousands of Kentuckians would enlist in the Confederate Army if they invaded the state.[2]
Morgan was promoted to brigadier general (his highest rank) on December 11, 1862. He received the thanks of the Confederate Congress for his raids on the supply lines of Union Maj. Gen. William S. Rosecrans in December and January, most notably his victory at the Battle of Hartsville on December 7. Also in December, Morgan married Martha "Mattie" Ready, the daughter of Tennessee United States Representative Charles Ready and a cousin of William T. Haskell, another former U.S. representative from Tennessee.
Hoping to divert Union troops and resources in conjunction with the twin Confederate operations of Vicksburg and the Battle of Gettysburg in the summer of 1863, Morgan set off on the campaign that would become known as the Great Raid of 1863 by Confederates, or derisively as the "Calico Raid" by Federals. Morgan crossed the Ohio River, and raided across southern Indiana and Ohio. After many skirmishes and battles, during which he captured and paroled thousands of Union soldiers, Morgan's raid almost ended on July 19, 1863, at Buffington Island, Ohio, when approximately 700 of his men were captured while trying to cross the Ohio River into West Virginia. (Intercepted by Union gunboats, less than 200 of his men succeeded in crossing.) Most of Morgan's men captured that day spent the rest of the war in the infamous Camp Douglas Prisoner of War camp in Chicago, which had a very high death rate. On July 26, near Salineville, Ohio, Morgan and his exhausted, hungry and saddlesore soldiers were finally forced to surrender.
On November 27, Morgan and six of his officers, most notably Thomas Hines, escaped from their cells in the Ohio Penitentiary by digging a tunnel from Hines' cell into the inner yard and then ascending a wall with a rope made from bunk coverlets and a bent poker iron. Morgan and three of his officers, shortly after midnight, boarded a train from the nearby Columbus train station and arrived in Cincinnati that morning. Morgan and Hines jumped from the train before reaching the depot, and escaped into Kentucky by hiring a skiff to take them across the Ohio River. Through the assistance of sympathizers, they eventually made it to safety in the South. Coincidentally, the same day Morgan escaped, his wife gave birth to a daughter, who died shortly afterwards before Morgan returned home.
Though Morgan's Raid was breathlessly followed by the Northern and Southern press and caused the Union leadership considerable concern, it is now regarded as little more than a showy but ultimately futile sidelight to the war. Furthermore, it was done in direct violation of his orders from Gen. Braxton Bragg not to cross the river. Despite the Raiders' best efforts, Union forces had amassed nearly 110,000 Union militia in Illinois, Indiana and Ohio; dozens of U.S. Navy gunboats along the Ohio; and strong Federal cavalry forces, which doomed the raid from the beginning. The cost of the raid to the Federals was extensive, with claims for compensation still being filed against the U.S. government well into the early 20th century. However, the Confederacy's irreplaceable loss of some of the finest light cavalry in American history far outweighed the Union's replaceable losses in equipment and supplies. When taken in together with the defeats at Vicksburg and Gettysburg, the loss of Morgan's cavalry brigade dealt another serious blow to Confederate morale.
After his return from Ohio, Morgan was never again trusted by General Bragg. He was placed in command of Confederate forces in eastern Tennessee and southwestern Virginia, but the men he was assigned were in no way comparable to those he had lost. Nevertheless, Morgan did what he could. On September 4, 1864, he was surprised and killed while attempting to escape capture during a Union raid on Greeneville, Tennessee. His men always believed that he had been murdered to prevent a second escape from prison, but it seems he was simply shot because he refused to halt.
Morgan was buried in Lexington Cemetery. The burial was shortly before the birth of his second child, another daughter.
[edit] Legacy
Hart County High School, in Munfordville, Kentucky, the site of the Battle for the Bridge, named their mascot the Raiders, in honor of Morgan's men. Also, a large mural in the town depicts Morgan.
The John Hunt Morgan Memorial statue in Lexington is a tribute to him.
The Hunt-Morgan House, once his home, is a contributing property in an historic district in Lexington.
[edit] See also
- Alvan Cullem Gillem
- Battle of Buffington Island
- Battle of Corydon
- Battle of Salineville
- Guerrilla warfare
- Kentucky in the American Civil War
- William P. Sanders
- John Hunt Morgan Memorial
[edit] References
- Eicher, John H., and Eicher, David J., Civil War High Commands, Stanford University Press, 2001, ISBN 0-8047-3641-3.
- Mackey, Robert R., The UnCivil War: Irregular Warfare in the Upper South, 1861-1865, Norman, Okla.: University of Oklahoma Press, 2004. ISBN 0-8061-3624-3.
- Noe, Kenneth W., Perryville: This Grand Havoc of Battle, University Press of Kentucky, 2001, ISBN 978-0-8131-2209-0.
- Ramage, James A., Rebel Raider: The Life of General John H. Morgan, Lexington: University of Kentucky Press, 1995. ISBN 0-8131-0839-X.
- Horwitz, Lester V., "The Longest Raid of the Civil War." Farmcourt Publishing 1999. ISBN-13: 978-0967026725.
[edit] Notes
[edit] Further reading
- Duke, Basil W., Morgan's Cavalry New York, 1906.
- Johnson, Robert Underwood, and Buel, Clarence C. (eds.), Battles and Leaders of the Civil War, Century Co., 1884-1888.
[edit] External links
- John Hunt Morgan Heritage Trail
- "The Battle of Corydon, Indiana" — Article by Civil War historian/author Bryan S. Bush, which contains rare images of Morgan shown courtesy of the Civil War Museum of the Western Theater in Bardstown, Kentucky.
- John Hunt Morgan at Find A Grave
