Dee brown on the civil w.., p.51
Dee Brown on the Civil War, page 51
About nine o’clock the next morning the 2nd Kentucky, with Morgan and Duke riding in the advance, came trotting into Brandenburg, the other regiments strung out in columns of fours under a long dust cloud in the rear. The town’s main street sloped straight to the river which was still covered by a streamer of early-morning fog concealing the Indiana shoreline. This was the first time the boys of the 2nd had looked upon the Ohio since their fight at Augusta in 1862, and from what they could see of it the dark greenish brown stream was running full.
Captains Taylor and Merriwether rode out to meet the column, giving Morgan the good news of the capture of the two passenger steamers. They also informed Morgan that Captain Tom Hines had brought in what was left of his command to Brandenburg.
The officers rode on down to the landing where they found Hines “leaning against the side of the wharf boat, with sleepy, melancholy look—apparently the most listless, inoffensive youth that was ever imposed upon.” Morgan dismounted and talked with Hines for several minutes. The young captain had much to report of conditions in Indiana, the roads, the towns, what help or resistance might be expected from the people. At the end of their conversation Morgan informed Hines that he was to take command of the scouts, the third officer to replace Tom Quirk within the week.
Establishing headquarters in a many-windowed house on the town’s highest hill, Morgan began issuing orders for the river crossing. Captain Ballard of the McCombs and Captain Pepper of the Alice Deem were given instructions, a Parrott gun was placed aboard each steamer, and bales of hay were stacked along the bulwarks for defense.
The veteran 2nd Kentucky, with Hines leading the scouts, was chosen to make the first crossing on the Alice Dean. Colonel W. W. Ward’s 9th Tennessee would follow on the McCombs. There would be no room for horses; they would come over on the second trip.
While the men were loading, the river mist thinned slightly, then suddenly burned away under the sun to reveal a line of enemy riflemen along the Indiana banks. A few moments later the Indianians opened fire, flashes spouting from a hundred weapons, quickly followed by a long leaping flame and the sullen roar of a fieldpiece.
Across the thousand yards of rippling brown water the background was incongruously peaceful and pastoral, like a Currier and Ives color print—two or three neat farmhouses with tan haystacks in yellow fields, strips of trees and underbrush in two shades of green, fresh light green near the river, dark green on the farther ridge.
The enemy’s big gun flashed again, the shell whistling across, a piece of it wounding one of the 1st Brigade’s quartermaster officers. Through his field glass Basil Duke found the gun; it was an ancient cannon mounted on the chassis of a farm wagon, propelled by hand. The riflemen were dressed in a mixture of militia uniforms and rough farm clothing. They fired another volley, but their range was less than the river’s width.
From the hilltop where Morgan had his headquarters, Captain Byrnes opened up now with blasts from his Parrott guns, followed by repeated barks of the howitzers. As the Indiana defenders broke and ran for the ridge in their rear, the steamboats were signaled to move out. Paddle wheels churned on the Alice Dean; she shuddered briefly and slid away.
On board at that moment, Major Tom Webber was entering the pilothouse. He curtly instructed the pilot as to where he wanted the 2nd Regiment landed, warning the man that any attempt at delay or sabotage would be dealt with severely. The pilot tipped his cap respectfully, then as he turned to watch Webber leave, he saw a Kentucky giant looming in the doorway, a sun-scorched soldier with an axe slung over his shoulder, a long rifle in one arm, a big navy revolver in his belt. This was Tom Boss of C Company. “I’m here as guard to see you act right,” Boss growled sternly. “I don’t want no nonsense.”
Boss found a seat in a corner, hitched his revolver into reach, and placed his rifle across his knees. As the Alice Dean chugged across the river the pilot attended strictly to business, easing the bow in for a perfect landing. As soon as the plank was pushed out and the first platoon of cavalrymen began hurrying ashore, the man breathed a sigh of relief. He turned to Boss and said: “My name is Smith. Would you object to telling me yours?”
“Oh, no,” replied Boss affably, “I don’t mind who I make acquaintance with. My name’s Tom Boss.”
To make conversation the pilot asked: “How long do you remain on your post when you’re on guard duty?”
“Well,” Boss answered, “we cavalry stand four hours on and eight off. The webfoot infantry stand two on and four off. But we generally do twice as much work as they do so we need twice as long rest.” The big Kentuckian raised up to see how the boys were doing ashore. They were forming lines and keeping a close watch on the wooded ridge where the Indianians had disappeared. Everything was quiet. “Mr. Smith,” Boss drawled, “you got anything on this boat to drink stronger’n water? I’m beginning to feel powerful dry.”
“Certainly,” replied the pilot. “I’ll get it for you.” Mr. Smith excused himself, dropped down the ladder to the ship’s bar and returned after a minute or so with two strong toddies. He intended to drink one of them himself, feeling an acute need for a restorative after the strain of crossing with that fierce-looking giant at his back.
But when the pilot came within reach of his guard, Boss thrust out both long arms, grasped a glass in each hand, and drained one after the other with scarcely a pause between drinks. Smacking his lips, he thanked the pilot, then added casually: “You needn’t bring any more, Mr. Smith, until just before I’m relieved. I don’t like to drink too much while I’m on duty.”
Tom Boss’ comrades, meanwhile, had established a bridgehead on the sloping riverbank, and the Alice Dean was reversing engines to make room for the McCombs which was coming in with the 9th Tennessee.
The Dean had scarcely recrossed to the Brandenburg landing when an unexpected intruder appeared in the bend of the river, the gunboat Elk, a snub-nosed craft boarded up tightly with heavy oak planking, three howitzers thrust out of embrasures. “A bluish-white, funnel-shaped cloud spouted out from her lefthand bow and a shot flew at the town, and then changing front forward, she snapped a shell at the men on the other side.”
Horse-holders of the 2nd Kentucky who were waiting at the Brandenburg landing to load the regiment’s animals drew them hurriedly back out of view. Across the river the dismounted cavalrymen, feeling lost and helpless without their horses, took cover in the forested ridge.
From his headquarters vantage point, General Morgan had been watching the approach of the Elk for several minutes. He now ordered Captain Byrnes to change the position of his biggest guns, and shortly thereafter solid shot was skipping all around the Elk, followed by bursting shells. After about an hour’s dueling the Elk turned and headed back upriver toward Louisville to spread the alarm and summon reinforcements.
As soon as the gunboat was out of range, the 2nd’s horses were led aboard the Alice Dean, and the work of crossing the regiments was resumed. About sundown, Duke’s brigade was on the Indiana shore, and Adam Johnson’s regiments began moving across.
By midnight the rear guard was landing on the Indiana bank. When the last man stepped ashore, Morgan issued orders to burn both boats, but Basil Duke intervened and saved the John T. McCombs, Captain Ballard being an old acquaintance. Ballard promised to take his boat upriver to Louisville so that it could not be used to ferry pursuing Union troops, who already were beginning to appear on the Brandenburg wharf.
As the flames of the Alice Dean lighted the river, a few of these advance enemy troops fired a futile round of rifle fire toward Indiana. The alligator horses in Morgan’s rear guard only laughed, waved their hats, and rode off into the dark woods.
There is no record of how John Morgan felt as he watched the last of his men come ashore into Indiana, knowing that he had successfully invaded the enemy’s country. But as he watched the Alice Dean burning brightly and the McCombs splashing away toward Louisville, he knew there was now no turning back. He was cut loose from Kentucky, he was acting against orders, but he had accomplished what other western commanders had only dreamed of doing, and there must have been elation with that realization.
Sergeant Henry Stone, the boy from Greencastle, Indiana, who was attached to Hines’ scouts, recorded that he “experienced some peculiar sensations as I set foot on Indiana soil.” Stone found time to write a letter to his father, beginning it “On the Ohio River 30 Miles Below Louisville, Wednesday 8th July 1863.” After describing the crossing, he wrote: “Wake up old Hoosier now. We intend to live off the Yanks hereafter and let the North feel like the South has felt of some of the horrors of war—horses we expect to take whenever needed, forage and provisions also. In fact it is concluded that living is cheaper in Indiana and Ohio than Tennessee.…I hope I’ll get close enough to pay you a visit. This will be the first opportunity of the Northern people seeing Morgan and they’ll see enough. I just imagine now how the women will bug their eyes out at seeing a Rebel army.”
Crossing with the 2nd Regiment, Stone helped establish the first bridgehead, then moved on into the deserted countryside—the morning’s defenders on the riverbank having completely vanished. They burned a flour mill, marched inland six miles, and went into camp in a meadow, waiting for the other regiments to build up behind them. As twilight came on, the liquid July heat intensified, became heavy with the smell of horses and smoke from cooking fires. Fireflies blinked in the dark foliage; bugles rang in the summer night. Voices of many men mingled as they sought their proper outfits in this strange Yankee country.
“Some of the boys gave champagne parties that night,” said Kelion Peddicord, “which doubtless was taken from the stores of one of the steamers, as also were a few other luxuries that had so mysteriously come into their possession. After satisfying their unnatural appetites, all took a sly snooze, dreaming of home and of the fair fields beyond the waters.”
5
Before daylight of the ninth, bugles were blowing boots and saddles. Although Colonel Adam Johnson’s 2nd Brigade led the order of march, out in front was that short-lived scouting regiment, the 14th Kentucky Cavalry, which contained a number of men and officers from the 2nd Regiment. General Morgan had formed the 14th as a special command for his brother, Dick Morgan, who had recently transferred from Virginia.
Operating with the 14th were the scouts, now under Tom Hines, along with other veterans from the 2nd Regiment’s Company A. In addition there were twenty men from Billy Breckinridge’s 9th Regiment, which had been serving as a delaying force far in the raiders’ rear, and failed to reach Brandenburg in time to make the crossing with Morgan. Several of these men were originally members of the 2nd Kentucky.
Among the scouts that morning who rode in the van singing, “Here’s to Duke and Morgan,” were Kelion Peddicord, Henry Stone, Winder Monroe, Leeland Hathaway, Jack Messick, and the shifty James T. Shanks. Each of them was riding into strange adventures which would extend far beyond the few days of the great raid—into events involving espionage, dramatic prison escapes, gallantry, romance, dungeons and betrayal.
This summer morning, however, they were chiefly concerned with discovering the presence of the enemy as they rode straight northward toward the town of Corydon past alternating patches of woodland and cornfields, carefully scouting farmhouses from which the occupants had fled, seemingly vanished from the earth, leaving doors wide open in their precipitate haste.
About ten o’clock that morning they met the first resistance point, a party of home guards—the same force which had appeared on the shore opposite Brandenburg the previous morning—who were posted behind a heap of fence rails on the Corydon road. Bringing up his regular regiments, Colonel Johnson overran these inexperienced defenders, pursuing them all the way to the outskirts of Corydon.
Here, Johnson found a solid barricade of logs, rails and underbrush piled high across the road. A cavalry charge was out of the question, and after the first dismounted company was repulsed with several casualties, he waited until the 2nd Kentucky and 9th Tennessee came up. “A flank movement to the right and left,” Johnson reported, “gallantly led by the 2nd Kentucky on the right and Ward’s on the left caused the enemy to disperse in confusion.”
One of the Corydon defenders describing this action said “the enemy opened upon our forces with three pieces of artillery, making the shells sing the ugly kind of music over our heads.…In the meantime the enemy had completely flanked the town…the fighting was very sharp for the space of 20 minutes.…After the field was taken by the enemy they moved forward, and planted a battery on the hill south of town, and threw two shells into the town, both of them striking near the center of main street, one exploded but did no damage. Seeing the contest was hopeless…Col. Jordan wisely hoisted the white flag and surrendered.”
According to the Corydon Weekly Democrat, the raiders lost eight killed and thirty-three wounded in the attack, and took their revenge by seizing “everything they wanted in the eating and wearing line and horses and buggies. The two stores were robbed of about $300 each and a contribution of $700 each was levied upon the two mills in town.”
Morgan arrived in Corydon in time for lunch, and during a casual conversation with the hotelkeeper’s daughter learned the startling news that General Lee had been defeated at Gettysburg and was in retreat. If this were true—and the newspapers he was shown corroborated the story—he knew he must now abandon plans to march into Pennsylvania.
As he rode northward out of Corydon he found small comfort in reports from some of his officers that a few houses along the way were displaying the lone-star flag of the Knights of the Golden Circle, and that his own picture had been seen in one or two windows. John Morgan had little use for Copperheads. If these so-called Northern friends of the South really wanted to help, he reasoned, they should join the Confederate Army and fight.
By nightfall his regiments were within sixteen miles of Salem. He ordered the men into camp, with pickets doubled. Lee may have been beaten at Gettysburg, but John Morgan was resolved to continue the raid as planned.
Using all his tricks of deception, he had already spun an intricate web of confusion as to his intentions. In Brandenburg he had permitted known Union sympathizers to overhear elaborate plans for marching to Indianapolis to burn the State Capitol and release Confederate prisoners at Camp Morton. He also spread a story that General Nathan B. Forrest with two thousand more Confederates was close behind him. All day the telegrapher, George Ellsworth, had ridden beside Morgan, and at every telegraph line Ellsworth swung aloft with his portable set, tapping the wires and transmitting misleading reports as rapidly as Morgan could dictate them. Wires were always cut behind them, so that nowhere in southern Indiana could Union forces check the raiders’ whereabouts or coordinate their own movements.
It was no wonder that as the day wore on terror rolled northward across Indiana, newspapers printing extra editions, every rumor increasing the size of the invading force. (Although Morgan crossed only two thousand men at Brandenburg, no Northern paper during the raid ever used a figure of less than four thousand, and often it was increased to as many as twenty thousand.)
By nightfall every city and town in the Middle West was looking for Morgan’s terrible raiders, and even three hundred miles away on the Illinois prairies a village became panic-stricken when a charivari party serenaded a bride and groom with trumpets and tin pans. Residents not in on the affair were certain the noise heralded the advent of Morgan’s bloodthirsty raiders, and ran helter-skelter in their night clothes to hide in the cornfields until daybreak.
6
Unaware of the widespread panic they were creating, Morgan’s men awoke that same morning (July 10) in the peaceful dewy fields below Salem, Indiana, and resumed their steady march straight northward. In Indianapolis, Governor Oliver P. Morton had declared a state of emergency and was posting warnings throughout the city: “In order to provide against possible danger it is requested that all places of business in Indianapolis be closed this afternoon at 3 o’clock, and that all ablebodied white male citizens will form themselves into companies and arm themselves with such arms as they can procure, and endeavor to acquaint themselves with military tactics.” At Brandenburg that morning, pursuing Union cavalry began crossing the river in strength, still twenty-four hours behind the raiders.
As there were two roads running north to Salem, one through Greenville, the other through Palmyra, Morgan separated his brigades. Tom Hines’ scouts led one column, the 2nd Kentucky the other, and the march turned into a race along parallel roads between these old regimental comrades. Occasionally during the morning they could see each other’s dust trails across the green countryside, and rival flankers met each other as they sought provisions and fresh horses at farms off the main roads.
As Sergeant Henry Stone had written his father in Greencastle, they intended “to live off the Yanks hereafter.” Regimental quartermasters had already worked out a method for procuring rations. Thomas M. Coombs described the system in one of his letters: “Every morning the Captains of Companies would appoint a man for each mess to go ahead and furnish provisions. They would all go ahead of the command and scatter out to the farmhouses for miles on each side of the road, and by ten or twelve o’clock they would overtake us with sacks full of light bread, cheese, butter, preserves, canned peaches, berries, wine cordial, canteens of milk and everything good that the pantrys and closets of the hoosier ladies could furnish.”
As on the previous day, the forward parties saw very few people, but they knew the driving columns had been observed and warnings passed on far ahead. From every village to the right and left of them, church bells were tolling urgently. By the time they sighted Salem, that town was a bedlam of church bells, fire bells, and shrieking whistles. It was as if the townspeople somehow believed that a vast amount of noise might frighten these devil raiders away.
