John Hunt Morgan

John H. Morgan

John Hunt Morgan (born June 1, 1825 in Huntsville (Alabama) , † September 4, 1864 in Greeneville , Tennessee ), also called "Thunderbolt", was an American cavalry officer and brigadier general of the Confederation in the American Civil War .

His name stands for a sensational military enterprise ( Morgan's Raid ), in which he led 2500 Confederate soldiers behind the lines of the Union to Kentucky , Indiana and Ohio in July 1863 . This was the furthest advance north by regular Confederate troops.

Biography up to the American Civil War

John Hunt Morgan was born in Huntsville , Alabama, the oldest of Calvin and Henrietta (Hunt) Morgan's eleven children . Morgan was an uncle of the scientist Thomas Hunt Morgan and a grandson of the multimillionaire John Wesley Hunt , one of the founders of Lexington , Kentucky. He was also a brother-in-law of Basil Wilson Duke and Ambrose Powell Hill , who later also became generals of the Confederate Army .

The family had to leave Huntsville in 1831 because Calvin Morgan was unable to pay a tax debt due to the bankruptcy of his pharmacy. She moved to Lexington, where Morgan's father ran one of his father-in-law's expanding farms . Morgan attended the local Transylvania College for two years, but was banned from teaching in June 1844 because of a banned duel with a fraternity brother. Like his father before, he became a member of a Masonic Lodge in Lexington ( Daviess Lodge No. 22 ) in 1846 .

After the outbreak of the Mexican-American War , Morgan volunteered for the US Army . In a mounted unit - the term cavalry was not yet common in the USA - he took part in the battle of Buena Vista as a team rank among others .

After the war he returned to Kentucky, where he was initially involved in the manufacture and sale of equipment made from hemp . Later he was able to take over part of his grandfather's flourishing trading business. In 1848 he married Rebecca Gratz Bruce, the sister of one of his business partners. In 1852 Morgan began to set up a militia artillery unit, but it was disbanded two years later.

In 1853, Morgan's wife suffered a stillbirth and fell ill with an infectious septic thrombosis , which is why an amputation had to be performed. Over Rebecca Morgan's poor health and various views on slavery , tensions grew between Morgan and his wife's family. As a personal compensation, Morgan set up a militia infantry company from 1857, with whose training he spent a lot of time; it then became known under the name The Lexington Rifles . Rebecca Morgan finally died on July 21, 1861. In September Morgan led his militia company as ( captain ) to Tennessee, where it was taken over into the Confederate Army.

American Civil War

Morgan was then involved in the establishment of the 2nd Kentucky Cavalry Regiment, to whose commander he was appointed with the rank of colonel . He fought with his unit in the Battle of Shiloh , whereupon on the Confederate side of Morgan's person more and more the hope of being able to take Kentucky for the south. Louisiana author Robert D. Patrick compared Morgan to the Revolutionary War hero Francis Marion and wrote that a few thousand men like Morgan would easily win Kentucky and Tennessee back to the Confederation.

His first operation in the Kentucky area began on July 4, 1862. From Knoxville, Morgan pushed north quickly with about 900 mounted men and operated for three weeks in the rear of the Union lines under the command of Major General Don Carlos Buell . Upon his return Morgan was able to report the capture of 1,200 Yankees , many of whom he was able to persuade of the cause of the South and convince them to defend, the requisition of several hundred horses and the destruction of equipment and supplies. The strategic success of his first Kentucky raid was ultimately limited, but Morgan had exposed the territorial command of the Union in Kentucky. President Abraham Lincoln received such a significant number of urgent requests for assistance that he is said to have suspected chaos in Kentucky by now. The historian Kenneth M. Noe even wrote that this company Morgans in many ways the celebrated ride around McClellan and the Potomac Army (Ride around McClellan) by James Ewell Brown Stuart exceeded the previous spring had. In any case, the success of Morgan's company was a major factor behind the Confederate Heartland Offensive, led by Braxton Bragg and Edmund Kirby Smith , which began that fall. Because the south hoped that many Kentucky residents would fight in the Confederate army as soon as it penetrated the state.

On December 11, 1862, Morgan was promoted to brigadier general. In addition, the Confederate Congress thanked him for his actions against the supply lines of the Union units under Major General William Starke Rosecrans in December 1862 and January 1863. His success in the battle at Hartsville on December 7, 1862 is particularly noteworthy. Also in December 1862, he married Martha ( Mattie ) Ready, the daughter of former Congressman Charles Ready from Tennessee and cousin of William T. Haskell, who was also a former member of Congress from Tennessee.

Morgan's raid of 1863

In connection with the Confederate Operation at Vicksburg and the Battle of Gettysburg in the summer of 1863, Morgan started what was known in the south as The Great Raid of 1863 or simply Morgan's Raid . On the Union side one spoke somewhat derogatory at times of the Calico Raid ( dummy or ghost raid ). The company's intention was to get the Union to move forces to the west and to threaten the supply lines in the north in general.

Contrary to the orders received from General Braxton Bragg, which said to keep south of the river, Morgan crossed the Ohio with about 2500 mounted men near Brandenburg, Kentucky . He then moved in a northeast direction through southern Indiana and southern Ohio. In some skirmishes , large and small , he was able to capture or persuade a considerable number of Union men to defecate. The venture as a coordinated company ended in just over a month on July 19, 1863 at Buffington Island, Ohio. While trying to cross the Ohio to West Virginia , Morgan was attacked by Union troops supported by gunboats . 700 of his men were immediately taken prisoner of war ; about 200 men managed to cross, but most surrendered to the Union on the same day. Morgan himself and the rest of his unit were initially able to withdraw to the north, but on July 26th near Salineville, Ohio with his now emaciated and exhausted troops after a brief final battle he had to surrender . Salineville was the northernmost point reached by the regular land forces of the South in the Civil War, apart from the so-called St. Albans Raid , which was carried out on October 19, 1864 by a few Confederates in civilian clothes in St. Albans, Vermont .

While most of his men were taken to the infamous Camp Douglas POW camp near Chicago , Morgan and some of his officers continued to be held in Ohio. On November 27, Morgan and six of his officers, including a close confidante of Morgan's spy Thomas H. Hines, escaped from their cells in Ohio State Prison. To do this, they dug a tunnel into the courtyard from Hines' cell. From there they could climb over the prison wall with a rope made by themselves from blankets and metal bunk parts. Morgan and three of his officers boarded a train at the nearby Columbus , Ohio station shortly after midnight , which they took to Cincinnati the next morning . Morgan and Hines jumped off before the train pulled into the station. They were then able to get hold of a boat that they crossed the Ohio and eventually escaped to Kentucky. Soon after, with the help of southern sympathizers , they actually reached the Confederate lines. On the day Morgan escaped, his wife had given birth in Tennessee to a daughter who tragically died before he returned.

Morgan's Raid had been followed with great interest by the newspapers in the north and south, and in some cases abroad. Indeed, it had given the Union's military leadership some headache. The greatest strategic effect can be seen in the fact that the Union had to mobilize almost 110,000 men and strong cavalry forces in Illinois, Indiana and Ohio as a countermeasure and to use a large number of gunboats on the Ohio. The financial expenditures for defending the company were allegedly so high that corresponding compensation claims are said to have been made to the US governments until the early 20th century . Still, the strategic value of Morgan's Raid cannot be overestimated; overall it is more likely to be seen as a spectacular fringe episode of the Civil War. Added to this is the irreplaceable loss of excellent cavalry units for the Confederate Army, while the Union Army was soon able to make up for the losses it had suffered in terms of material and personnel. In addition, the loss of Morgan's cavalry brigade, which occurred around the same time as the defeats at Vicksburg and Gettysburg, was another setback for the morale of the South.

After the 1863 raid

After his return, Thunderbolt Morgan had apparently largely forfeited the trust of his superior General Bragg. He was now on the command staff of the Confederate Forces for Tennessee and southwestern Virginia and was only involved once in the planning and execution of a major operation.

In his last raid in late May 1864, Morgan marched from southwestern Virginia in a northwesterly direction into Kentucky. He still had over 2,000 men, but due to the lack of horses, only half were mounted. By the time he reached Mount Sterling in northeast Kentucky on June 9th after several fighting, he had taken about 380 prisoners. In order to be able to turn more quickly to the west against Lexington, he left the prisoners and his unmounted soldiers in Mount Sterling, where they were subject to a surprise attack by Union troops the next day . Morgan was able to get with the remaining cavalry despite some clashes with units of the Union from the vicinity of Lexington along the Kentucky Central Railroad to Cynthiana , Kentucky further north . On June 11, 1864, however, he lost many of his men there in four consecutive heavy battles. Thus Morgan had to end his last Kentucky raid with a quick, direct escape back to Virginia.

Morgan's grave in Lexington

A few weeks after that last Kentucky raid, Morgan was hit by allegations relating to the robbery of a civil bank in Mount Sterling. Some of his men were actually involved in this bank robbery, but to date there is apparently no evidence that he himself was aware of it. In any case, Morgan was busy gathering exonerating material and preparing for an upcoming negotiation. He had been at a friend's house in Greeneville, Tennessee since the eve of September 4, 1864, while some of his men camped nearby.

On the morning of September 4, Morgan was caught in the fire by an unexpectedly advanced Union unit. During the shooting, Thunderbolt Morgan was killed on the streets of Greeneville under circumstances that are not entirely clear. On the one hand, it was said that he was shot because he wanted to evade capture by the Union and to flee; however, some of his soldiers claimed that he was killed in order to avoid another breakout from captivity, which would be embarrassing for the Union. The fatal shots that hit him from behind to that of the Yankees spilled Sagittarius Andrew J. Campbell have fired. John Hunt Morgan was buried in Lexington Cemetery. His funeral took place shortly before the birth of his second daughter.

Memory and trivia

The Hart County High School in Munfordville , Kentucky, by the Thunderbolts soldiers were drawn once called her mascot based on Morgan's men The Raider . In Munfordville there is also a large mural depicting John Hunt Morgan. In Lexington, the John Hunt Morgan Memorial , a bronze equestrian statue on a granite base, was inaugurated in 1911 . Morgan's former home in Lexington has been preserved. Today it is part of a museum-like, historical district of Lexington and houses, among other things, a Civil War Museum.

In the Hollywood film Alluring Temptation with Gary Cooper and Anthony Perkins , Morgan's Raid is partly used as a plot background , albeit in a historically not entirely exact manner.

literature

• James A. Ramage: Rebel raider. The life of General John Hunt Morgan . University Press of Kentucky, Lexington (Ky.) 1986
• Edison H. Thomas: John Hunt Morgan and his raiders . University Press of Kentucky, Lexington (Ky.) 1985 (© 1975)
• Howard Swiggett: The rebel raider. A life of John Hunt Morgan . The Garden City publishing Co. Inc., Garden City (NY) 1937 (© 1934)
• Lora Schmidt Cahill: Thunderbolt: Revisit southeastern Indiana with John Hunt Morgan . K-Hill Publications, Attica (Ohio) 1995
• Robert O. Neff & Edith Elizabeth Pollitz: The bride and the bandit. The story of Mattie Ready of Murfreesboro, Tennessee, wartime bride of General John Hunt Morgan . RO Neff and EE Pollitz, Murfreesboro (Tenn.) 1998
• Don D. John (Ed.): The great Indiana-Ohio raid by Brig.-Gen. John Hunt and his men, July 1863. An authentic account of the most spectacular Confederate Cavalry raid into Union territory during the War Between the States - the capture and subsequent escape of Brig. Gen. Morgan, as seen and told by Basil W. Duke, Orlando B. Willcox, and Thomas H. Hines . With an introduction and commentary notes by Don D. John. Privately printed, Book Nook Press, Louisville 1955
• WA Smith, Wallace Milam: The Death of John Hunt Morgan. A Memoir of James M. Fry . In: Tennessee Historical Quarterly . Volume 19, No. 1, 1960, p. 54
• Forrest Conklin: Footnotes on the Death of John Hunt Morgan . In: Tennessee Historical Quarterly . Volume 35, No. 4, 1976, p. 376
• James Bell Benedict: General John Hunt Morgan, The Great Indiana-Ohio Raid . In: Filson Club History Quarterly . Volume 31, 1957, p. 147
• Lowell H. Harrison: A Federal Officer Pursues John Hunt Morgan . In: Filson Club History Quarterly . Volume 48, 1974, p. 129
• Jere H. Simms and Richard O. Wilson: The last night and last day of John Hunt Morgan's raid . Columbiana County Historical Assoc., East Liverpool (Ohio) 1963

Web links

Commons : John Hunt Morgan  - Collection of Images, Videos and Audio Files

• In memory of John Hunt Morgan
• To the battle of Corydon (Indiana)
• John Hunt Morgan in the database of Find a Grave (English)