Confederate raider John Hunt Morgan’s raid into Ohio in the summer of 1863 is considered by most to be the deepest penetration by Confederate troops into Union territory.
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As General Robert E Lee and his Army of Virginia approached Pennsylvania in June 1863, he was receiving some help from another much smaller Confederate force, several hundred miles away. General John Hunt Morgan and 2500 Confederate cavalry troops were approaching the Ohio River, which separated Kentucky from Indiana. Morgan intended to launch a raid towards Indianapolis and Cincinnati that would force the Union to pull some of its forces from Pennsylvania, away from Lee’s army. After wreaking whatever havoc he could in Indiana and Ohio, he planned to then move his troops to Pennsylvania to join up with what he presumed would be Lee’s victorious Confederates.
But after the Battle of Corydon, Morgan found himself isolated and pursued deep in enemy terrain, with no way to return to friendly territory. For over two weeks, Morgan and his remaining troops were forced to retreat further and further north, away from Confederate territory, in a desperate move to evade the Federals and find a way across the Ohio River. They passed through over a dozen towns. According to legend, in one village a few Confederate troopers looted a local Masonic Lodge, stealing some gold coins and jewels: Morgan, himself a Freemason, had them arrested and returned the pilfered booty.
At Buffington Island, about 250 of his cavalry troops managed to escape across the Ohio River into Kentucky, but another 1,000 were captured by the Federals, leaving Morgan with just 400 troops, and pursued by several thousand Union soldiers and militia commanded by General Edward Hobson.
Finally at about noon on July 26, 2600 Union cavalry under Major George Rue intercepted Morgan’s force at Salineville and surrounded it. After less than an hour of fighting, Morgan realized that his position was hopeless. He retreated from the battlefield and made his way to the nearby town of West Point, where he decided to give up and offered his surrender to one of the people he had captured, a man named Burbridge who claimed to be an Ohio Militia Captain. Burbridge and Morgan reached an agreement in which parole was granted to the Confederates once they had lain down their arms (which would have removed them as combatants and allowed them to return safely to Confederate territory as civilians).
But when Major Rue arrived, he discounted this informal agreement, insisted that Morgan formally surrender his forces to him, and then refused to grant parole. (Later, it was discovered that “Captain” Burbridge was actually just a civilian with no military office and no authority.) Most of Morgan’s force was sent to the Union POW center at Camp Chase, near Columbus OH, and the officers, including Morgan himself, were kept in the Ohio Penitentiary.
Then, in November 1863, using kitchen utensils as tools, Morgan and six of his officers tunneled their way out of the jail yard and escaped: wearing civilian clothes, they boarded a train and made their way to Cincinnati, then crossed the Ohio River into Kentucky. But Morgan’s freedom was short-lived; after rejoining the Confederate Army, he was killed during the fighting at Greeneville TN less than a year later.
After the war, a memorial stone obelisk was erected at the Buffington battle site. In 1929, the Ohio Historical Society obtained a 4-acre section of the battleground, and today, this small portion of the battlefield at Buffington Island is run by the Society as a historical park. The other 600 or so acres where the fighting occurred are in private hands, and much of the battle site has been lost to a quarrying operation. While some archaeological excavations have taken place near the site, the location of the mass graves where the Confederates were buried on the battlefield remains unknown.
Photos from a visit.