THE OLD HOME WEEK BOOK
History of the Village of Prospect, PA
Transcribed and Donated by Robert A. Stumpf
Chapter XIII
Morgan's Raid
On the 26th of July, 1863, Colonel Shackleford sent to headquarters at
Cincinnati, the following message: "By the blessing of Almighty God, I have
succeeded in capturing General John H. Morgan, Colonel Clark and the balance
of his command, amounting to about four hundred persons."
Th Union officer, under Colonel Shackleford, to whom Morgan handed his revolver,
resides at Hutchinson, Kansas. He is Captain Robert T. Cassidy, now a retired
farmer, a man over seventy years old, with a robust constitution, fine color,
a clear voice and alert brain. He enlisted at the age of twenty-one and served
until the cessation of hostilities. The revolver which General Morgan handed
over to Captain Cassidy is still in his possession. It is a heavy navy Colt's
revolver, cap and ball, with holster, belt and cartridge box.
Without consulting the many accessible histories of the Civil War which contain
full and complete accounts of Morgan's raid as regarded from a miltary point
of view, the above data, giving the date of his capture and the actors in
the episode, will be sufficient for our purpose, which is to give some account
of how Prospect was affected by it. But first it will be in order to introduce
General Morgan.
He was born in Alabama, but, when four years old was taken by his father
to Lexington, Ky., where he settled with the family. At the age of nineteen
he enlisted in a cavalry regiment and served eighteen months in the Mexican
War. Returning to Lexington he married, entered into business, and at the
opening of the Civil War was one of the leading men of the city.
Four years before, he had organized and been elected captain of a company
of volunteer militia, composed principally of young men whose sympathies
inclined toward the Confederacy. The State Guard, which this company had
joined, received an order from a Union general to disarm. Morgan determined
that his men should not be deprived of their arms. The company met at night
in the Lexington armory as if for regular drills. He kept them marching with
a heavy tread so that passers by might not suspect anything unusual. In the
meantime all the guns and military stores, ammunition and supplies were loaded
on wagons and sent south under guard. Morgan remained in Lexington.
The next day, when the seizure of the arms was discovered, the citizens,
most of whom were unionists, were furious and a warrant for Morgan's arrest
was issued. But he escaped in the night with a band of picked men and ten
days later joined the confederate force at Green River, at the head of two
hundred men. This was the nucleus of the cavalry force that harassed the
federal armies in the west for the next three years.,BR>
Morgan and his men were evolved by the Civil War. Neither he nor they were
trained for their work. The tactics which he adopted were those of General
Marion, the "Swamp Fox" of the Revolution, revolutionizing the system of
cavalry tactics. For regular cavalry duty, such as contesting an enemy's
advance, breaking a line of infantry, or covering a retreat, Morgan's Squadron,
as it came to be known, was not efficient. Morgan was more a strategist than
tactician. His methods were sudden attacks, swift advances in unexpected
quarters, daring surprises and rapid retreat. He could so distribute his
small force, which seldom amounted to much more than five hundred men, that
the enemy was either baffled as to his whereabouts or lulled into false security,
which often terminated in disaster.
One of the most successful of his early raids may serve as an illustration
of his method of warfare; this was the raid at Bacon Creek, five miles from
the main Federal cavalry outpost of the army of General Alexander McCook,
December 4th, 1861. The advance force of the Union army had been steadily
pushing south along the line of the railroad and was now at Nolin, Hardin
County, Kentucky -- the county, by the way, in which Lincoln was born and
the town in which George W. Roth died. The confederate troops concentrated
around Bowling Green, held the territory south of Green River which was crossed
by the railroad at Mumfordville. It was in this territory that Morgan was
operating. His object was to destroy the Bacon Creek bridge and thus render
the advance of the Union army impossible until it was rebuilt. Leaving camp
at dusk with a force of less than one hundred and fifty men, the daring leader
rode with his men all night and at daybreak came in sight of the stream,
thirty- five miles north of their own army and within less than a mile of
the Union pickets. Opposite was the town of Mumfordville in which most of
the people were loyal to the Union. Fearing that these Union men might send
word to the Union army, Morgan and his men lay hidden through the day. In
the evening the residents of Mumfordsville saw six horsemen leisurely crossing
the ford. No suspicion was aroused until they entered the main street, when
two of them suddenly unslung rifles and covered every person in sight. The
other four put spurs to their horses and galloping wildly along the turnpike
so stationed themselves as to intercept any messenger from the town to the
Federal commander. Then the main body crossed the river, dashed through the
town and swept forward to the Bacon Creek bridge, four miles away. The bridge
was not guarded and in a few minutes it was in flames and Morgan and his
men in swift retreat. Falling back over a circuitous route, the band eluded
pursuit and after their three day's raid in front of the Union line, returned
to camp without the loss of a single man. The bridge was, of course, soon
rebuilt by the Federal engineers, but the advance of the army was for the
time delayed, which was the object contemplated. The main value to the South
was to give the raiders greater confidence in Morgan and a bold spirit which
enabled them to win laurels under his leadership in later years.
But the boldness thus inspired, allied to the desperation engendered by the
failing fortunes of the Lost Cause, led Morgan and his gallant riders at
last too far, and there our history of Morgan's Raid begins.
"Be bold, be bold, be not too bold", is good advice. Morgan was bold to conceive
but too bold in attempting a raid into the North, far outside the confederate
lines. His primary object was to re-mount his command. Their horses were
wornout and he started out to steal fresh ones. After his capture and
incarceration in the penitentiary, it was said of him, that he begged, with
tears in his eyes, that he might be let out just long enough to steal one
more horse. But that was only a way of putting his ruling passion into words.
We cannot follow him in his wild course through Indiana, where, if we remember
correctly, outrages were committed on innocent and unoffending non-combatants,
one of them being the murder of an aged Lutheran minister, who was shot dead
in his doorway for expressing Union sentiments; nor can we tell just where
he rode through Ohio until he came to the spot where he and his exhausted
force were captured. The spot was marked by a monument erected and dedicated
with appropriate ceremonies, within very recent years, near Irondale in Jefferson
county, Ohio, about thirty miles north of the river, above Steubenville and
East Liverpool.
And now for the local history as detailed by our co-worker, A.W. McCulloch.
"John Kennedy", who kept the store on the Diamond, the contractor who built
the Butler jail, a fine horseman, brave as a lion and as cool as brave, had
been in NewCastle and it was he who brought the startling news from there
that the dashing Southern Cavalry officer, with his band of guerillas, was
across the Ohio river and was heading for New Castle. It was in the night
but John awakened up the people in the village and dispatched messengers
on horseback to give the alarm all through that section north, south, east
and west, and to tell the men to start to Prospect and Portersville, with
their guns, the objective point of rendezvous being New Castle. The advance
guard from Prospect got enroute about or before midnight and had reached
Princeton, in Lawrence county, when they met men returning from New Castle
who brought the intelligence that Morgan and his men had been captured --
if my memory is not at fault -- at or near Steubenville, Ohio.
The village was full of people when the "minute Men" returned from the trip
to New Castle. By that time the crowd was considerably increased by the squads
that had gathered in from the surrounding country, and the bibulously inclined
filled their tanks with the fire-water from the bars, and when the steam
was up some of them proceeded to test their physical strength and prowess
by trying to lick the fellows they didn't like, and as a result it was a
day of fights and personal encounters; some of them serious and some of them
serio-comical. The first couple to lead off infighting was Nellis McClinker,
son of Swamp Blackbird McClinker and Nephew of Billy O, the Phrenologist,
and Benhadad McWhorter. That fight started others among the on-lookers and
Billy T. McClinker and Bill Hurry had a scrap. When Harry seemed to be getting
the better of McClinker, the Phrenologist, who always wore curls and a high
hat and carried a cane, felt called upon to hit Hurry a swipe over the back
with his stick. That started a general melee among the interested observers,
and but for the interference of Rev. Waters and myself, the Phrenologist
would have received rough handling by the excited crowd. As it was, he came
within one of being mobbed. The squabble was just in front of our store and
we got him into it and I pushed the door shut and locked it. The store was
fortunately empty, the people having gone outside to witness the row. Mr.
Waters and I hurried the Phrenologist upstairs the back way and hid him there
among the sacks of wool.
In the meantime other scraps were under way outside and that gave Mr. Waters
and me a chance to slip the thoroughly frightened Phrenologist down the back
stairs and over into Marshall's meadow and to liberty. When we reached the
back end of the meadow adjoining Dr. L.M. Roth's lot, the Phrenologist, overcome
by fright and excitement, had to sit down on the ground to rest a few minutes
and to catch his breath and then he wanted to go back and engage in the melee
again, saying that his head was shaped exactly like Napolen Bonaparte's and
that he was a born and bred fighter. But we persuaded him now that he was
free -- to "make tracks" for his habitat beyond Muddycreek Swamp.
The crowd that forenoon was in a frenzy and might have killed him. I remember
that James McElhenney was angry at Rev. Waters and me for sheltering the
poor, weak man and that he pounded the store-door demanding that we produce
McClinker -- and James McElhenney was not the kind of man that usually makes
up mobs.
Toward evening of that eventful day Bob Headstrong and Billy T. McClinker
began fighting down on the pavement in front of our store. I was alone in
the store all that day and was just locking up to go to supper and was starting
up home with "Uncle Billy," (W.W.) Dodds, when McClinker yelled at the top
of his voice, "Take him off! Take him off! He's gougin' me! Me eye, me eye,
me poor eye! I can stand anything but gougin'!" I said to Mr. Dodds, "Oughtn't
we to pull Headstrong off?" They were both pretty well under the influence
-- and he replied, "Let them fight it out, it is only a fight between
rattlesnakes and thistles anyhow and it makes no difference to you and me
which exterminates," laughingly quoting a saying of Artemus Ward, the humorist
of that day.
We donated the ammunition to the crowd that morning "free gratis and not
a cent to pay." We set out what percussion caps and bar lead and powder we
had and every man with a gun helped himself.
Old Mr. Finley, the father of James, brought an old musket with him and when
he got to town some one noticed that there was no flint in it -- it was a
"flint-lock" and he had probably lost the flint on the way. When his attention
was called to it he looked at the gun with an air of disappointment and then
said, "Flint or no flint, I'm going anyway!" and climbed into Mr. Thomas
Critchlow's wagon and made the trip with him. That was one of the notable
days for Prospect during that notable epoch.
Revd. Asa Waters deserves special mention for his patriotism, and loyalty
during the war period. I remember that when Abraham Lincoln's last call came
for more soldiers, Rev. Waters took a prominent part in urging the recruiting
of the company that went into the service under the command of Captain Pillow.
And when the last day came for reporting companies to the War Department,
he and Alex. Walker drove all night to get to Pittsburgh in order to report
that a company was about filled at Prospect and Centerville. It was not yet
determined who the officers were to be, but Revd. Waters said, "The company
must go if he had to go out himself as its captain. Captain Pillow was chosen
and Revd. Waters was, therefore, not called to lay aside his clerical garments
and to put on a U.S. uniform; but he would have done it, if it had been
necessary.
He was brave, loyal and conscientious, faithful, just and true in all things.
That is my opinion of this servant of God. When he left Prospect and came
to bid us good-bye, Squire John Greer, when he took his hand -- wept like
a child, a man whom none of us had ever seen shed a tear.
And now the recollections of the writer shall be set down in order, as they
pertain to Morgan's Raid and the chapter shall be closed.
It was Sunday night in July,1863, the 26th, when the sound of galloping hoofs
and the loud voice of a man shouting something came across the broad meadows
from the road through the open window and awakened him from his sleep. Listening
he heard the cry over and over as the man galloped northward in the silent
night, "Morgan is coming! Morgan is coming! Turn out! Turn out!" And the
boy turned out. Other noises, unusual in the village on a Sunday night, the
ringing of the church bells late after church services were over, and firing
of guns, sounds of shouting and the roll of drums, awakened alarm and excited
curiosity, as they mingled in strange confusion. The boy's drum was in the
village and after obtaining permission from his parents to go, find out what
the disturbance was, with the promise (which he broke) to return as soon
as it was known, away he started to be joined by his chosen companion Ben
Lepley, on the way to the village. What an excitement under the light of
the lanterns and around the bon-fires that had been kindled in the streets!
The "Nine Months Men" and the "Three Months Men", soldiers returned from
the war after their terms of enlistment had expired, were there, some of
them in uniform; and that was all that was in the least degree military.
The rest was all alarm and confusion. Men came hurrying in with guns of all
sorts, from every direction, eager, excited, feeling their unpreparedness
for war but ready to do their best. The young fellows ere laughing as they
bid their best girls, "Good-Bye", as they said, "Maybe for the last time"
and the girls were bravely trying not to cry.
When Ben heard what the trouble was he said he was going home for his gun.
He had a heavy rifle but he said he had no bullets moulded and was afraid
he would be left if we didn't hurry. So we started on the run to his house
more than half a mile, calling to old Fuller as we passed his house, to get
up -- "the rebels are coming", and as he made a noise, Ben said, "There,
do you hear him? He's getting his shoes." When we got to his house his sister
Emily moulded bullets, like the women in the Revolutionary War, while Ben
got his things together and cleaned his gun. When we got back to the village
we got our drum and fife and took our place in the band -- It seemed someway
wrong to us to make the noise of military music on Sunday, but the contagion
of excitement carried us along.
Sixteen wagons were started loaded with men, armed with such weapons as could
be secured, to meet Morgan. The boy with the drum forgot his promise to come
back -- consoling himself with the thought -- when he did recall his promise
-- that he did not know yet and was going to find out what the trouble really
was. Thomas Critchlow's wagon carried barrels of bread, old Mr. Finley with
his flintless musket, and the band. The boy with the drum did his best, after
he jumped in, to keep up the music, for now it was Monday -- being after
midnight. The dogs along the road came out that night to bark at passers
by at the peril of their lives. Every now and then some fellow along the
line took a shot at a dog or something. What a racket! Morgan and his four
hundred would have stampeded us or killed us without any trouble. But when
we got to Portersville we met the men coming back with the news that Morgan
was captured, so we turned back too, as our object was accomplished.
That was the first time in his life the writer was up all night!. When he
returned, tired and sleepy next morning, to his home, he was put to hoeing
corn and as he faithfully though sleepily did his work, he saw the Phrenologist,
high hat, cane and long tailed coat, edging his way, with unaccustomed speed
and furtive mien, down the back fence below the Lutheran graveyard, headed
for the North. |
