John Hunt Morgan - Early life and career, Civil War

Confederate guerrilla leader, born in Huntsville, Alabama, USA. He joined the army in 1846 and saw action in the Mexican War. During the 1850s he ran a business, but enlisted in the Confederate army in 1861, attaining the rank of captain. He led the Morgan raiders in a series of raids on Union supply lines, and was promoted to colonel and then brigadier-general. He is remembered for his attacks in Indiana and Ohio (1863), the farthest N a Confederate force penetrated during the Civil War. He was killed in action.

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.

Early life and career

John Hunt Morgan was born in Huntsville, Alabama, the eldest of 10 children of Calvin and Henrietta Hunt Morgan, and uncle of geneticist Thomas Hunt Morgan. Morgan's father lost his Huntsville home in 1831 due to an inability to pay the property taxes after the failure of his apothecary. In 1846, Morgan joined the Freemasons, as had his father before him. Morgan, still interested in a military career, raised an artillery company in 1852 in the state militia, which was disbanded two years later. Becky Morgan contracted septic thrombophlebitis, an infection of a blood clot in a vein, which eventually led to an amputation. In 1857, Morgan raised an independent infantry company known as the "Lexington Rifles," and spent much of his free time drilling with them.

Civil War

An invalid, Becky Morgan died July 21, 1861. In September, Captain Morgan and his militiamen joined the Confederate States Army. During operations near Selma, Alabama, in August 1862, Morgan's partisans killed a wounded Union general, Robert L. The incident was widely described as "murder" in Northern newspapers and brought Morgan's reputation under question. Also that December, Morgan married Martha "Mattie" Ready, the daughter of Tennessee congressman Charles Ready and a cousin of Tennessee congressman William T.

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 his operation, which would become known as the Great Raid of 1863 by Confederates, or derisively as the "Calico Raid" by Federals. 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 in Ohio, when approximately 700 of his men were captured while trying to cross the Ohio River into West Virginia. Near Salineville, Ohio, on July 26, exhausted, hungry and saddlesore, Morgan and his remaining troops were forced to surrender to pursuing Union forces.

On November 27, Morgan and several of his officers, most notably Thomas Hines, escaped from the Ohio State Penitentiary—the only successful escape from the prison in the 19th century—and returned safely to the South. Ironically, that same day his wife gave birth to a daughter, who died shortly afterwards before Morgan could return home.

Although Morgan's Raid was breathlessly followed by the Northern and Southern press at the time and caused the Union leadership considerable consternation, most historians now consider it to have been little more than a showy but ultimately futile sidelight to the war. Despite the Raiders' best efforts, the Federal massing of nearly 110,000 Union militia in Illinois, Indiana and Ohio, dozens of U.S. Navy gunboats along the Ohio, Mississippi and Tennessee rivers, and strong Federal cavalry forces doomed the raid from the beginning. When taken in conjunction with the defeats that month at Vicksburg and Gettysburg, the loss of Morgan's Raiders dealt another serious blow to Confederate national morale.

After his return from Ohio, Morgan was placed in command of Confederate forces in eastern Tennessee and southwestern Virginia. (His men charged that he had been murdered to prevent a second escape from prison, but this seems unlikely.) Morgan was buried in Lexington shortly before the birth of his second child.