This narrative is printed in pamphlet form to comply with the request
of numerous friends and to meet the suggestion contained in the
editorial notice of the Louisville Evening Post in its issue of May 29,
1919, as follows:
“MORGAN’S MEN.”
“The Evening Post has received a copy of an address delivered a short
time ago before the George B. Eastin Camp of Confederate Veterans, by
Col. Henry L. Stone, of the Louisville bar, general counsel of the
Louisville & Nashville Railroad Company, the address being largely in
the nature of a narrative by the speaker of his personal experiences as
a soldier in the famous cavalry command of Gen. John H. Morgan.
“The Evening Post much regrets that it can not find the space for this
exciting and instructive story. It covers thirty type-written pages,
or seven or eight columns in our print, and the story is so well told
that we feel that nothing could be eliminated, and all that is possible
is to express the hope that either Colonel Stone or the local camp of
veterans will later see fit to issue the address in pamphlet form.
Certainly we have never seen elsewhere in so condensed a form so vivid
a picture of the war-time experiences of those dashing cavalrymen that
the people of the South still allude to as “Morgan’s Men.”
“Passing by this narrative as something that one who did not
participate therein is incompetent even to review, the Evening Post
would call attention, if only for the importance it may have relative
to the soldiers now returning to civil life, to the part played in
the affairs of Kentucky and the Union by these soldiers of Morgan’s
command after the war was over. It was a very creditable part. No
doubt there were the few exceptions that prove the rule, but, as
a broad proposition, wherever one of “Morgan’s Men” settled, the
community gained a good citizen. We will not attempt to call the roll
of those who helped to make the history of Louisville in the past fifty
years. Many of them, indeed, have passed away—Basil W. Duke, John B.
Castleman, George B. Eastin, Thomas W. Bullitt and others whose names
recall the best traditions of Louisville. Henry L. Stone remains with
us, vigorous in body, keen in mind, always ready to fight, and fight
hard, for a good cause, an ornament to the bar and a splendid specimen
of that splendid manhood that the soldiers of the Confederacy furnished
a reunited country.”