MORGAN’S RIDE AROUND CINCINNATI, ON “THE OHIO RAID,” JULY, 1863
In June, 1863, General Banks was hammering Port Hudson, Louisiana,
where General Gardner, the commander of the Confederate forces, made
such gallant and fierce resistance. The fall of Vicksburg on July 4th
did not affect the valor of Gardner and his command. He fought until
his men from mere exhaustion could fight no longer. Without rest, in
constant battle for six weeks, flesh and blood could resist no more.
He inflicted tremendous loss upon his assailants, and he yielded only
when further resistance was physically impossible. These were very
dark days for the people of the Southland.
After the Battle of Murfreesboro at Stone River, December 31,
1862—January 1, 1863, General Rosecrans remained inactive for five
months. The mortality in this struggle measurably paralyzed the
energies of both Confederates and Federals. Each general sat down to
rest, renew hopes, recuperate and plead for reinforcements.
While Rosecrans had behind him almost unlimited resources, an ample
fighting force of trained men and abundant supplies, the experience
at Murfreesboro rendered him uncertain about grappling again with
General Bragg, and the latter, with the awful memory of that
struggle, was glad to wait for the other side to move.
That, in June, 1863, Bragg’s troops were at Shelbyville, Tennessee,
about twenty miles away from Murfreesboro, was convincing evidence
that Rosecrans was not eager for battle. The clamors of those in
authority at Washington indicated that Rosecrans must advance. It
was necessary for him either to go forward or resign, and in June he
undertook to force Bragg still farther south.
Fifty miles from Nashville, at Shelbyville, General Bragg decided
again to try the fortunes of war, but Rosecrans, with a larger army
than Bragg, was able to turn his flanks. On the 27th of June General
Bragg concentrated his army at Tullahoma, which was twenty miles
from Shelbyville. He had at first determined there again to risk a
battle. At this time, General Bragg was in extremely poor health.
With friction among his generals and with enemies in front, he had
suffered both mental and physical depletion, and General Hardee had
said of him that he “was not able to take command in the field.” His
corps commanders advised him to recede and retreat to Chattanooga,
where with his army he arrived on the 7th of July, 1863. The spirit
and courage of his men had suffered no depreciation. He had lost
no guns and no supplies, and the rank and file had no sympathy in
the movements which surrendered so much of Tennessee to Federal
occupation. A third of Bragg’s army were Tennesseeans, and they
looked upon a retreat to Chattanooga as little short of treason. Left
to these men thus expatriated by military necessities, they would
gladly have fought a battle every week.
Determined upon another trial of strength with Rosecrans, General
Bragg undertook, through General John H. Morgan, to threaten and
destroy the Federal lines of communication, to force the withdrawal
of men to defend wagon trains, railroad bridges and trestles.
Morgan was directed to enter Kentucky at or near Burksville on the
Cumberland River, proceed northward to the Ohio River, and then
retreat out of the state by the route which the exigencies of the
moment should suggest as the most feasible road for a return to the
army in Tennessee. For some days previous General Morgan’s division
had been concentrating in Wayne County, Kentucky, in and around
Monticello, its county seat, and he gradually worked his way towards
Burksville. Across the Cumberland, Federal cavalry were guarding the
paths into Central Kentucky and keeping a sharp lookout for Morgan
and his followers. They had stringent orders to be vigilant and under
no stress to allow the Confederate raider to steal by and start havoc
and ruin on the Louisville & Nashville Railroad, then essential for
feeding Rosecrans’ advancing legions.
Here, waiting for the moment which would be most critical in General
Bragg’s southward retreat, on the morning of July 2d, 1863, General
Morgan’s division, twenty-six hundred strong, crossed the Cumberland
River at Burksville and at Turkey Neck Bend, a few miles west of the
town. Nine-tenths of the men composing this division were Kentuckians
and all very young men. A thrill of joy stirred every heart and
quickened every body, when the order came which turned their faces
homeward. The men of Missouri, Maryland and Kentucky were the orphans
of the Confederacy, and to them home-going in army days gave a touch
of highest bliss. The First Brigade, under General Duke, crossed a
short distance above Burksville, while the Second Brigade, under
General Adam R. Johnson, crossed at Turkey Neck Bend, a few miles
below Burksville, some five or six miles apart. The First Brigade had
some flat boats, and the Second had one leaky flatboat and a couple
of canoes. All the horses and some of the men of the Second Brigade
must swim. There was no organized resistance to the crossing of the
stream, which was full from bank to bank and its currents running at
tremendous speed. The Federal watchers thought the great flood in the
Cumberland River would temporarily stop Morgan, and with the water
on their side, they did not believe it possible for the Confederates
to pass over with their artillery and ammunition and get lodgment on
the north side of the stream. They could not learn exactly where he
would try to ferry; they knew he could not ford, and so, trusting to
luck and high water, they securely waited in their camp for what the
morrow would bring forth.
In the Second Brigade the saddles, guns, ammunition, cannon and
clothing were placed in the ferryboat, and regiments one at a time
were brought down to the river. The horses with their bridles and
halters were driven into the stream and forced to take their chances,
not only with the rapid current, but with the driftwood, which was
very abundant and large. At some places it covered almost the entire
surface. The stream was five-eighths of a mile wide. Many of the men
clung to the ferryboat and thus swam across. Some held to the canoes
and floated by their side, while others swam with their horses,
holding to their manes or tails to prevent being swept down stream by
its fierce tides. As the first detachment crossed over, the Federal
pickets undertook to resist the landing. The part of the Confederates
who were in the ferryboat and canoe with their clothes on, rushed
into line, while those who swam, unwilling to be laggard, not halting
to dress, seized their cartridge boxes and guns and rushed upon the
enemy. The strange sight of naked men engaging in combat for a moment
amazed the enemy. They had never seen soldiers before clad only in
nature’s garb; they concluded that warriors, fully grown and armed,
just born into the world, were the men they must fight. Amid such
scenes as this was begun the thousand mile march which constituted
Morgan’s Ohio Raid. The animals were quickly corralled and saddled,
lines promptly formed, and the onslaught upon the Federals begun. It
did not take long for Morgan’s men to discover that their presence
was not only unwelcome, but was expected. In a little while dead
troopers, dead steeds, abandoned clothing, lost haversacks and
wrecked wagons along the highway gave mute but convincing proof of
war’s terrors and war’s exactions. The Southern raiders thus early
learned that the campaign would not be completed without much of
conflict and loss. It did not take long to drive Woolford’s Federal
cavalry out of Columbia. Nothing could stay the impetuous rush of
these riders towards the Bluegrass. The resistance was feeble, but
it was enough to show that enemies were abundant and alert. A few
dead and wounded were left by both sides in Columbia, but these
were remitted to the ministrations and care of non-combatants,
while the fighters rode forward to new conflicts. The enthusiasm
of homecoming lent renewed courage and ever-increasing vehemence
to the Kentuckians, and they were ready to ride over anything that
obstructed the way that pointed toward their friends farther up the
state.
At Green River Stockade was stationed the 25th Michigan Infantry,
commanded by Colonel O. B. Moore. The position of the stockade had
been selected with great skill and protected by an impassable line,
consisting of trees and rifle pits and sharpened pieces of wood
with some wires and fencing. Against this a couple of regiments
were hurled, but in vain. When surrender had been demanded of
Colonel Moore, the Federal commander, he returned the laconic
answer that “the Fourth of July was no day for me to entertain such
a proposition.” He was a brave, gallant and fearless foe, and his
patriotic response won the respect of his enemies. The tone of his
reply foreboded trouble. The Confederates were not long in finding
out that he was prepared in action to back up his words of eloquent
defiance. General Morgan was compelled in a little while to do what
his judgment now told him he should have done in the outset, that is
to leave the stockade and the infantry alone. They were really not in
his way, could do him no damage if left unmolested, and could join
in no pursuit when once he had passed them by. In thirty minutes’
fighting more than forty men were killed and forty-five wounded. Of
the enemy, nine were killed and twenty-six wounded. Colonel Chenault
of the 11th Kentucky, Major Brent of the 5th, Lieutenant Cowan of
the 3d, Lieutenants Holloway and Ferguson of the 5th were among the
valiant and gallant officers who laid down their lives on that day
for their country.
In any protracted war, all commands which extensively participate
have their dark days, and in some respects, outside the disaster at
Buffington Island, fifteen days later, the darkest day that ever
came to General Morgan’s division was this sad 4th of July. For a
little while it checked the enthusiasm and stilled the quickened
heartbeats of the returning exiles. On the morrow at Lebanon there
would be other sorrowful experiences and the hope of home-going would
temporarily vanish when at Lebanon the head of the column turned west
instead of continuing east.
On that grim day at Green River Stockade the 11th under Chenault and
the 5th under Colonel Smith were asked to do the impossible. They
stood until standing was no longer wise, or even brave. The Federal
commander reported that the fighting lasted three hours, but the
real fighting lasted less than three-quarters of an hour, and with
something less than six hundred men engaged, about forty-five were
killed and the same number wounded. This was a distressing percentage
of mortality under the circumstances of the battle.
Chenault, impetuous, gallant, died close up to the enemy with
his face to the foe. Major Brent, of the 5th Kentucky, so full
of promise, was killed as he rode up to salute Colonel James B.
McCreary, who succeeded Chenault in command of the 11th. Captain
Treble, of Christmas raid fame, was among the men who gave their
lives on this field for the Southland. As he rose to salute the
colonel, who had become such by the death of Chenault, and waved his
hand to let him know that he would be ready when the order came, he
fell, struck by a bullet that crushed through his brain.
None of those who saw these dead brought out under the flag of
truce, and the wounded carried in blankets from out of the woods and
from the ravines and laid along the turnpike road from Columbia to
Lebanon, will ever forget the harrowing scene. When they looked upon
the dead, with their pallid faces turned heavenward, and their pale
hands folded across their stilled breasts, poignant grief filled
every heart. It did not take long to bury or arrange for burial of
the dead. Humanity would care for the wounded, and war’s demands bade
the remaining soldiers press forward, and by midnight the division
camped a few miles out from Lebanon to rest for the conflict on the
morrow.
Colonel Charles Hanson, who commanded the 20th Kentucky Federal
Infantry, had prepared to make the best defense possible at Lebanon.
He placed his men in the brick depot and in the houses surrounding
it. General Morgan disliked to leave anything behind, and so he
resolved to capture this force. It was captured, but the cost did
not justify the losses. It was there that we saw General Morgan’s
youngest brother, “Tom,” as they familiarly called him, go down in
the storm. He was a first lieutenant in the 2d Kentucky and was then
serving on General Duke’s staff. With the fiery courage of youth,
backed by a fearless heart, in the excitement of battle he exposed
his person and was struck down by a shot from the depot. War allows
no time for partings. It permits no preparation for the great beyond.
Standing close to his brother, he could only exclaim, “Brother, I am
killed. I am killed,” and then fell into the grief-stricken brother’s
arms. He was a mere lad, but he died like a hero.
The taking of a brick depot with several hundred men inside, in war,
is not an easy job. It was to cost ten killed and thirty wounded.
Here I witnessed what appeared to be one of the bravest things I have
ever observed. The 8th Kentucky—Cluke’s—with which I was connected,
was ordered to charge the front of the depot. The men were advancing
through a field where the weeds were waist-high. It was difficult
marching. The thermometer stood over a hundred in the shade, and the
foliage of the weeds made the heat still more intense. It was this
regiment’s fortune to face the larger door of the depot. It was said
that somebody had blundered, but the charge was ordered and the men
enthusiastically and bravely obeyed. When within a few hundred feet
of the door, the order was passed along to “lie down.” The time in
which the “lying down” was done seemed many hours. The regiment was
subject to the stinging fire of the Federals in the depot. A number
of the men were hit by shots which struck the front of the body
and ranged downward through the limbs of the soldiers. Such wounds
produced excruciating tortures.
A man by my side was shot in the shoulder this way. He was a brave,
uneducated, but faithful mountain soldier. He came from around
Somerset and had been a cattle drover before he went away to war.
Why he had ever volunteered I never could fully fathom. He had no
property, he had no relatives in the Confederacy. He had made a few
casual acquaintances in his journeyings as a drover, but these could
hardly have influenced him to risk his life for the Southland. He was
not a man to seek war for the glory or excitement of campaigning.
Men of his calling are rarely communicative or confidential. Finally
one night, on a lonely scout through the mountains, he unburdened his
soul and told me why he had gone to war. There was something in the
isolation of our surroundings, the constant presence of danger, the
depressing shadows of the trees which shut out even the starlight,
that made the heavy-hearted man long for human sympathy, and in sad,
sad tones he told me his life’s tragedy. He was thirty-two years
of age and had fallen desperately in love with a young girl he had
met while driving stock along the Wilderness Road, having stopped
one night at her father’s house. At the end of each journey he had
purchased souvenirs for his sweetheart, small mirrors, plain rings,
garnet breastpins and plated bracelets and an occasional dress of
many colors, the equal of Joseph’s coat, and these conveyed in the
most delicate way to the young lady the great love that was being
enkindled in the heart of the silent, undemonstrative drover. He
could speak no words, but in deferential courtesy, through these
simple tokens, he endeavored to declare the turmoil raging in his
bosom.
[Illustration: MAP OF MORGAN’S RIDE AROUND CINCINNATI]
He had never the courage to tell her of his affection. He had
worshipped in this patient style at the shrine of her beauty and
forecast in his mind a happy, happy time when in a log cabin on the
mountain side he should claim her for his bride and set up his
household gods in a humble abode. He had in the past loved nobody
else, and he had persuaded himself that in the future he would never
love again, and at the end of each trip he carried back these homely
offerings, showing how, in his humble way, he worshipped her ruddy
face, her bright eyes and wavy hair, and dreamed as only lovers can
dream of the exquisite joy and happiness that would overshadow his
life if he might but make her his own.
Upon returning from one of his long drives, he found that she had
married another. He uttered no word of complaint, he gave expression
to no outcry of grief. He realized that his case was hopeless, that
the brightest dream of his life had been shattered, that he had lost
his first and only love. He nursed in the depths of his soul the
disappointment and sorrow that overwhelmed his joyous anticipations
of a blissful future. He could not bear to pass her home any more. He
had naught of this world’s goods but a few dollars in coin, a saddle,
bridle and an old bob-tailed black horse which had become his when
style and symmetry had put him below the more exacting standards of
the Bluegrass, and condemned him to spend the last years of his horse
life amongst the less fastidious fanciers of the mountains. He called
his steed “Bob-Tail.” He had been nicked in his youth, and now that
age had dignified his demeanor and slowed his speed, he made a hardy
and reliable mount for his steady-going owner, who loved him for his
kindly disposition and for his cheerful performance of every duty,
however severe. They seemed to have a common sympathy and fellowship
in that both had lost out in the struggle of life.
He gave up driving, and one day when Morgan rode through Somerset,
he mounted his old black steed, waved a kindly adieu to his few
acquaintances, and rode away to war, little caring whether he lived
or died.
He was always cheerful, brave, patient and well up at the front.
He insisted upon doing for me all possible services, caring for my
horse, keeping my saddle, bridle and arms in good shape. There was no
sacrifice he would not have made for me, and he had won my heart. He
clung to me because I knew his heart’s tragedy and because he must
love somebody now that his life was a ruin and blank.
The Enfield ball passed almost through his entire body and the
suffering was so horrible that his groans were agonizing. He begged
somebody to bear him off the field. The order had been issued to
shoot any man who arose. This was done to prevent the Federals
from getting the exact range of the regiment which was now lying
down with their heads toward the depot. While in this position, I
observed what was to me the bravest thing I had ever seen in the
war. I always thought it was the 5th Kentucky, but General Duke
says it was the 2d. The men from this regiment charged on the south
side of the depot with their pistols and guns and marched up to the
windows and put their weapons in through the openings and fired into
the mass of Federals inside. It required almost superhuman courage
to undertake this act, yet it was done with a calmness that would
thrill every observer, and those of us who were lying on the ground
and watching this splendid move and realized what it meant for our
relief, cheered and cheered the courage of these valiant warriors.
The groans of my wounded friend became so distressing and harassing
that finally I received permission to rise and take him on my back
and bear him from the field, where the bullets were still whizzing.
Wounded and suffering as he was, I had only time to commend him to
the surgeons and bid him good-bye. He took my hand and pressed it to
his now bloodless lips, and his great black eyes filled with tears
when he looked up at me and said that he would see my face no more.
After my return to Louisville in 1868, succeeding a three years’
exile, I observed in Cave Hill Cemetery the grave of my wounded
friend, Vincent Eastham. The stone which comrades had erected to
his memory was marked “5th Kentucky Cavalry,” but I pointed out the
mistake and put the proper endorsement on his marker, “Company B, 8th
Kentucky Cavalry.” Each Decoration Day, with those near to me, we
carry armfuls of flowers to make beautiful the mound where he sleeps,
and my children and my children’s children have been asked to keep
green the spot where my mountain friend so calmly rests amongst his
Confederate comrades in Louisville’s beautiful “City of the Dead.”
The next ten days were full of intensest excitement and harassing
marching. This marching was done in the midst of stifling dust,
intense heat and almost constant battle. On the 8th day of July the
command crossed the Ohio River at Brandenburg, capturing a couple of
steamboats and fighting off gunboats, until at last, on the evening
of that day, General Morgan and his division camped on northern soil.
No courtesies were expected, and certainly none were received from
the people of the “Hoosier State.” They harassed and distressed
Morgan’s march all they could. If they worried Morgan, he was more
than even with them. Absurd stories of the Confederate and his
followers had gone on before the line of his march, and fear and
dismay filled all hearts when they saw the dust clouds or heard the
shots that proclaimed his presence. These reports with each telling
became more gruesome and horrible and when they stole from behind
trees, or out of the thickets, for a sight of his riders, they
refused to believe that these men in gray were not real, sure enough
devils, horns, hoofs and all. Even rhyme was put under conscription
to help tell how awful they were, and words like these were carried
by speedy couriers in their dashes along the roads to prepare the
country folk for the dreadful catastrophe that was breaking upon the
innocent people of Southern Indiana:
“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.”
Each day was full of strenuous work, night marching, incessant
fighting, guerrilla firing, obstructions of roads, and on the night
of the 12th of July, General Morgan and his men were sixty miles
north of the Ohio River and far up into the State of Indiana. The
average march for all these days was forty miles, counting detours,
under difficulties that sorely taxed human powers.
On the 12th of July the command made thirty-eight miles, although
this was the eleventh day in the saddle.
Scattered along the fence corners for four miles, at a little town
called Milam on the line of the Ohio & Michigan Railroad, Morgan and
his command caught a few hours’ rest. Some subtle and mysterious
instinct came to them that the morrow would demand heroic work. They
seemed to breathe in the very air that something great was expected
of them. The beasts laid down in slumber and rest beside the tired
bodies of their persistent riders. Voices of unseen bodies seemed to
whisper to them that on the morrow they would attempt the longest
continued cavalry march ever said to have been made by twenty-five
hundred men in column. Stuart, when he started from Chambersburg,
was rested. For twelve hours he had slept. Forrest, when in pursuit
of Streight, had briefly halted at Courtland, Alabama, but these
Morgan’s men had been marching and fighting for ten days and yet fate
was to put up to them the task of excelling human records. Two and
a half miles away were twenty-five hundred Federal troops. Although
humanity would suggest that the saddles should be stripped from the
backs of the tired horses, the calls of the hour were such that mercy
could make no response and every man slept with his bridle rein over
his arm, and in his weary hand he held his trusted gun.
They were now over four hundred miles from the place where they began
their march, in territory held by the enemy. They were beset on every
side with forces sent for their capture. Guides were unfaithful, and
sometimes the main roads were blockaded and ambuscades frequent. The
column was three miles long and already there was a number of sick
and wounded in buggies and wagons. Under all these conditions, men
might well ask, “Can this great task be accomplished?”
Morgan felt that the men riding with him were thoroughbreds. They
were the grandsons of the pioneers given by Virginia, Maryland,
Carolina, in the savage work of wresting Kentucky from the Indians,
and the pioneers had given Kentucky men a name and fame wherever the
English tongue had been spoken. They were sons, or grandsons, of the
men who had fought the Battles of Blue Lick, Maumee, Fort Stevenson,
the Thames, of the Raisin, Tippecanoe, New Orleans, Cerro Gordo,
Buena Vista, and their great leader, with the knowledge of what they
had done and faith in what they could accomplish, already in his own
mind was asking, “Can this thing be done?”
These troopers had never failed him either in the march or on the
field. If it were possible for men to do it, he knew it would be
done. He knew that they would try, and if they failed it would be
only because the accomplishment of such a task was humanly impossible.
The command to mount was his answer to these curious questionings
which forced themselves into his brain, as in the dim light of the
early dawn he looked over their sleeping forms and found it hard in
his heart to rouse them from their death-like slumber.
Out into the dusty roads before the rays of the scorching July sun
should be felt, he bade them wake and ride.
By twelve o’clock thirty-two miles were done. Across the White
River into Harrison, Ohio, they rode. The torch was applied to
the great bridge that crossed White River and as the blazes lifted
hissing tongues high in the air, and while they watched the timbers
crumble under the conquering hand of fire, the advance guard of the
Federals exchanged shots over the stream with the rear guard of the
Confederates.
The men could manage a few hours without food. They had fared well
along the line in the plenteous and forsaken kitchens and dining
rooms of the frightened inhabitants, who, upon the advance of the
Confederates, left their tables loaded with well-prepared food and
fled into the woods and fields to escape the terrors of what they
called Morgan’s “murderers and horse thieves.”
The well-filled cribs and stables of the people of Harrison supplied
the tired horses with a good feed. This was the last stop they were
to make until they should end the march, and so the General allowed a
brief rest and time to satisfy appetites, quickened by the long and
tedious ride of the morning.
An hour was consumed in marching and counter-marching so as to
mislead General Burnside and his thirty thousand soldiers at
Cincinnati, only thirty-two miles away. These men at Cincinnati were
planning to create a wall of infantry which it would be impossible
for Morgan to pass.
Haste, haste, haste, was the watchword of the hour, and down the
valley toward the Big Miami River the Confederate column moved. At
dusk the long, wooden bridge across the Big Miami was struck. Bridges
and railroads were dangerous enemies to leave in the rear, and the
torch was called into requisition. As the red flames, created by
the great burning timbers, rose skyward, they illumined the entire
valley; and in the flickering shadows which they cast for several
miles around, in the gloaming of the evening, among the trees and
fences and buildings, huge, weird forms, born, it is true, of the
imagination, filled the minds and hearts of the invading horsemen for
the moment with apprehensive awe and depressing forebodings.
At midnight fifty-five miles had been marched by the ceaseless tramp
of the wearied steeds. A hundred and forty-four thousand steps they
had already taken, and still more than a hundred thousand were to be
required before they could rest their tired limbs, and well might
they inquire as their riders still spurred them onward, “Masters,
masters, be ye men or devils which exact from your beasts such
unseemly toil and fearful sufferings?” With the darkness of the
night the fears seemed to subside, if fears there were. The wearied
bodies called for sleep, sleep, yet there could be no staying for
“tired nature’s sweet restorer.” The early hours of the night were
filled with suffering, but as the intense darkness which preceded
the coming dawn enveloped the column, the strain became still more
terrible. Horses, unwilling and unable to go further forward, sank
down in death with their riders astride still urging them onward,
and under the dreadful physical burdens, strong men fell from their
beasts as if smitten with sudden death. Hundreds of the men lashed
themselves to their saddles while fighting the assaults of sleep.
Riders losing consciousness failed to close up, and by the time the
rear of the columns was reached, this closing up kept a large portion
of the column much of the time in a gallop. Once it became necessary
with lighted candles to crawl upon hands and knees and by the tracks
determine which road the vanguard had ridden. Comrades, dismounted by
the breaking down of their weakened steeds, walked beside the line,
keeping pace with the horses, while others, where possible, sprang
up behind their companions until a convenient stable by the roadside
would provide a new mount.
A common sense of danger told even the most careless rider that the
passage around Cincinnati was the moment of extreme danger, and as
the column came nearer and nearer to that line, the thought that the
supreme moment was at hand gave renewed strength and wakefulness to
the majority of the men now attempting an unprecedented march.
Three times during the night General Morgan changed guides, and each
time it was necessary by either open or covert threat to force an
enemy to lead the column. Guides were informed that the compass would
tell the story of their treachery and that death would be the sure
consequence of their bad faith.
There was no direct line along which the command could march, and
the change of direction did much to confuse the column. The crawl of
the artillery and a large number of buggies bearing sick and wounded
comrades over a hilly and woody country amidst almost absolute
darkness, with here and there an unfriendly shot, made an ordeal
which rarely if at all had come into soldier life.
By two o’clock in the morning the dead line at Glendale was
passed. The Federal commander, deceived by Morgan’s marching and
counter-marching, had carried a large body of troops too far north
and Morgan had slipped through at this neglected point, and his
strategy had foiled the Federal commander’s chances and efforts to
check the invader. This line was crossed at a high rate of speed. If
the passage of the troops had been obstructed, there was nothing to
do but to ride over those who attempted to stay the march, and so
every man rose in his stirrups, grasped his bridle reins with firmer
hold, unswung his gun from his shoulder and carried it on the pommel
of his saddle, and felt to be sure that his trusted revolvers were in
their appointed places in his belt at his side. If foe appeared, woe
be unto that foe unless he could present himself in such vast numbers
as to stay the charge of twenty-five hundred troopers upon whose
courage at this moment depended the escape of the division. The calls
of the hour were met with a cheerful response. Every man carried in
his bosom a firm resolve to sweep any foe from the appointed path and
to cut his way through any ranks that might oppose his going. The
intense emergencies of the moment made them almost hope that somebody
would get in their way. There came into their minds a desire to fight
rather than ride through, and a touch of pride made them anxious for
some sort of contest to show that after all the wear and tear of the
past twelve days they were quite as brave and virile as when in the
flush of the beginning they had forced a passage of the Cumberland
River. Fear seemed to vanish and prudence fled away, as these night
riders saw the people of Glendale rush out into the streets, or
from raised windows, with dreading apprehension, watch the strange
procession gallop through the streets. In the enthusiasm of the
moment, the dust-stained Confederates cheered for Jefferson Davis and
the Southern Confederacy and bade the alarmed onlookers tell General
Burnside and his bluecoats that Morgan and his men had come and gone.
Mind rose superior to the pain and weariness of body, and in these
words of good-natured badinage was a new evidence of the valor and
spirit of these bold raiders.
Though the line was passed, safety was not yet assured. The larger
bodies of infantry were close at hand. A great task had been
accomplished, and still there were thirty-eight miles ahead, and
this distance, now every moment growing longer and longer, the weary
horsemen knew must be covered before solid rest was attainable. In
a little while the sunshine came to brighten the earth and to cheer
as it always does cheer struggling humanity, but the record was yet
unbroken. Every mile seemed to grow into a dozen miles. Each step
brought increasing suffering. Skirmishes and contact with the militia
would arouse the men for a brief while, but with the cessation of the
excitement, nature would again lift its cry for mercy and plead for
sleep for man and beast.
And so on and on and on until the sun was about to hide its face
behind the western slopes, and at four o’clock in the afternoon, on
the 14th, the column, now struggling and oppressed with both hunger
and weariness, reached Williamsburg, Ohio, and camped for the night,
and the greatest single cavalry march of the world, composed of as
large a force as twenty-five hundred men, was ended.
Ninety-five and a quarter miles in thirty-two hours of marching!
Surely such work was not unworthy of what the Confederacy asked of
its sons.
As these hard riders dismounted they stood for a moment helpless
with fatigue. Leaning against a horse or a fence they would sleep
standing, and in taking food to recuperate their wearied bodies,
would sink into slumber. It was a great triumph for Confederate
cavalry, and amid all its terrors and horrors it was worth something
to realize that the record of human endurance had been lifted
several degrees higher. The future had yet in store for some of
these men much of hardship and much of renown—imprisonment in the
Ohio penitentiary, at Camp Chase, Camp Douglass, Johnson’s Island,
Fort Delaware, for many, death under the chafings, starvation and
cruelties of Northern prisons; but out of these there would come a
remnant who should, when others had capitulated, ride as an escort
for Jefferson Davis when Richmond and Columbia would be in ruins and
all hope for the nation’s life had fled.
There would yet come a time when to these still hoping men, hope
would fail, when the Confederate Armies would be shattered and
scattered, when Lee had surrendered and Johnson capitulated, when the
western army and the Army of Northern Virginia, its veterans paroled,
would turn their tear-stained faces toward their desolated homes and
take up anew the burdens of life; when all the mighty legions west of
the Mississippi, which had maintained for four years the mightiest
conflict of the ages, would stack their guns, sheath their swords,
and accept war’s decrees for surrender.
They were yet to see a time when the President of the Confederacy
should go forth from the seat of government, and in sadness and
gloom ride away from the Confederate capital to seek refuge south of
Virginia. There were some of these men who were here at this hour
destined and appointed still to cling to Jefferson Davis’ fortunes
and defend his person in the period of surpassing disaster and
sadness, when with a broken heart he would realize that his nation
was dead and he was without a country. There would come a time
when a pitying Providence should provide out of these soldiers for
the first and only Confederate President a depleted bodyguard, who
would go with him in his reverses and humiliation, and who were to
stand guard over him and his cabinet, to beat off pursuing foes at a
time when every man’s hand would be against him and them, when fate
would hide its face and give him over to a cruel, brutal mocking and
an imprisonment which would shock the world’s sense of mercy and
justice. There were men now closing this great ride who would be
present when the wretchedness of death would hover over and around
the Southern cause, and would look upon the last council of war. When
the greatness of the South should end in desolation and ruin, some of
these riders were, in the closing hours of the Confederacy, to offer
anew their lives and their all to the cause which they loved to the
end, and for which they had sacrificed their fortunes; and yet in the
blackness of death and the final agonies of their nation would again
cheerfully tender their all, to prolong even for an hour its hopes
and its existence. They were yet by their exalted courage to glorify
that cause for which the South had endured untold and immeasurable
suffering, and would by a crowning act of constancy take a deserved
place on the brightest pages of human annals that record patriotic
fortitude and valor.
A few hundred of these men now closing this wonderful march would
accompany Jefferson Davis in his last effort to avoid capture, and
would only leave him and those he loved, when he should plead that
their presence would only endanger his escape. They would only depart
when he commanded them to go, and urged them by their loyalty and
devotion to him to listen to his appeal—that they leave him alone in
the supreme hour of his political grief and distress.
Some of these men would also be present when the last sun that ever
shone on the Confederate States, as a nation, was lengthening its
rays on its western course, and sending forth a fading glow on the
sad scenes of national dissolution which would, if it were possible,
with nature’s shadings, make glorious and immortal the faces of the
heroes who, in anguish and awe, looked upon its death throes, a
nation that in its brief days of four eventful years was to make a
history that would win the admiration and love of all the people of
succeeding ages, who read the story of their suffering, their valor,
their loyalty and their devotion to principle and country.
Some of these riders were to be faithful unto death, and have a
full share of that glorious crown of immortality which fate would
hereafter decree to the men of the South as a compensation for a
victory, which, though deserved, should be denied.