| Show organ f morgan the raider lender by ELMO SCOTT WATSON owr YOU are a northerner you probably think of gen den john hunt morgan as 88 a fierce bewhiskered leader ot of equally leeree bewhiskered horsemen it guerilla a highwayman and a horse thief that mental image Is compounded of one or all of three items you remember the stories your grandfather told you of how he be and his bis neighbors in indiana or ohio seized their squirrel rifles or muskets back la in the summer of 1863 and rushed forth to defend their home land from being ravaged by a party of rebel raiders you recited at school a poem called kentucky belle by constance fenimore woolson with those unforgettable lines morgan morgan the raider colder and morgans I 1 terrible men with bowle knife and pistol are galloping up the glen your childish eyes studied with fascinated interest the illustrations in some old book probably harpers illustrated history of the civil war and you saw for yourself how terrible morgan and hla his terrible men looked it you are a southerner you probably think of gen john hunt morgan as a combination of beau and prince rupert as the veritable symbol of the antebellum ante bellum south in which all the women were lovely and all the men were modern knights errant riding forth to brave and daring deeds on the backs of the finest horses la in the world and whether northerner Norl hernor or southerner it if you ever read the little shepherd of kingdom come by john fox jr you remember remember in it the glimpses of what seemed to be one of the most lashing dashing romantic figures in american history tills this same gen john hunt morgan somewhere between those two extremes lies the true picture of this man and it Is that sort which howard whose book the rebel raider A biography of jolin john hunt morgan has just been published by the bobbs merreil company his has tried to paint both northerners and southerners as described at the beginning of this article will find much to in mr Swig getts book to confirm their views but no on one e except an extreme partisan can SPA bously v arel with his bis conclusions about morgan nor doubt that this biography Is as honest as fair and as accurate a portrait of him as can be painted from the evidence available after the 70 years rears which have elapsed since he died in brief this Is the life story of john hunt morgan born in huntsville ala june 1 1825 he be grew up in lexington ky under the code of the young gillI gallants ants of the blue grass aristocracy who learned the arts of riding fencing gunnery and how to scale a fortress or a nunnery A student at transylvania college at the age of sixteen he was twenty one when he enlisted la in the first kentucky cavalry to serve in the mexican war lie he was at buena vista but saw little other fighting before lie was mustered out the next year and returned to lexington to engage in tho the manufacture of hemp and the general merchandising business left him by his grandfather in 1843 1848 he married rebecca gratz bruce named tor for her ancestress rebecca gratz whom washington irving described to sir walter scott and who was the model for the character of rebecca in ivanhoe in 1857 morgan founded the lexington rifles a militia company of the young bloods of that town at the outbreak of the war between the states kentucky as a state tried to remain neutral but not so her high spirited young men some of them joined the union army and others the confederate before the war was over she was to know to the fullest the horrors of a civil war with members of the same family arrayed against each other and once more to become a dark and bloody ground after the firing on fort sumter morgan began drilling his lexington rifles la in the armory la in that city and all through the summer of continued to drill them under the suspicious eyes of union troops stationed at camp dick robinson which had been established near lex Ington then one moonlight night in september some of the lexington rifles eluding the vigilance of union watchers slipped away down the pike toward the confederate camp of gen simon bolivar buckner at bowling green almost as romantic figures as morgan himself were some of the men who rode with him there were his five eve brothers the youngest key morgan named for their famous relative who wrote the ille star spangled banner there were two others who symbolized the two sides of morgans nature basil duke long his second in command chivalrous generous soldierly and T H hines a scholar and wit charming to hla his comrades dangerous to his big enemies insolent to his captors twenty one when he be joined the army a year older than john wilkes booth to whom he bore so extraordinary a physical resemblance that the vitality of the story that booth was alive after 05 arose from people seeing captain hines and thinking it was booth lines was perhaps the most recklessly competent mart man in tins the Cun confederacy and the only mind at work in the conspiracies his hig manner of war was secret service plot escape the very antithesis of duke then there was the english soldier of for fortune tyne st legor leger grenfell Gren feH a roan man out of a book by G 10 A henty rather than life an incredible ible figure who had been a chasseur dA frIque and became inspector general at sixty years of age la in braggs army and that arlel ariel of the brigade ellsworth the telegraph operator whose malicious military comedy was to cause havoc in northern headquarters ills face had bad the tragic mask of the great comedian after joining buckners Buck Buc knees ners army morgan and his lexington rifles engaged in scouting and patrol work in it te he began that career of swift sudden raids gobbling up yankee pickets and in every way possible harassing the union lines which laid the foundation for his reputation in the north of being a guerilla lender leader it was a reputation which northern propagandists sedulously bously promoted even though he was a regularly commissioned officer in the confederate army first us as colonel of the second kentucky kentuck y cavalry and later as a brigadier general commanding ni a brigade of horsemen from that state rj P 3 the spring of 1802 lie he was already on his 4 4 T cjohn Hunt Morgan ball i du k e 4 i williams youse Where Borgan N in greensville greeneville Gree neville tenn 1 A gen hunt Mor morgan garl pictures from Swig getts the rebel raider courtesy bobbs merrill company way to fame in both the north and the south at shiloe lie showed great courage under fire and when beauregard fell back after that battle batile it was morgans cavalry who covered his retreat then came his first great raid into tennessee during which he proved to the federals that ho he was a tricky as well as a brave adversary on more than one occasion tie he and his men succeeded in passing themselves them seres olt off as union cavalry and fooled not only northern sympathizers in that region but the men in blue as well ills next raid took him into kentucky as a part of the movement made by gen kirby smith to threaten cincinnati a movement which had the state of ohio in something of a panic for awhile lexington morgans home town was their first objective they rode north for the beloved bluegrass blue grass through green forests and beside the clear tennessee waters there was nothing like it again the long column singing from end to end delirious with the glowing september weather and the beauty of their beloved state duke was intoxicated with the romance of the rendezvous and wrote the song of the squadron on the march thus the romantic kind of warfare which fits so well into the southern version of the morgan myth another element of the same kind came the follo following winter during the christmas season morgan was married again rebecca gratz cruce bruce morgan had died in 1861 this time to martha ready heady a young girl scarcely halt ills his age president jefferson davis himself came to murfreesboro for the wedding and they were married by leonidas polk the bishop general who wore his episcopal robes over ills his lieuten ant generals uniform of tills this wedding more later for it marked a turning point in morgans career in 1863 came the great raid into indiana and ohio which has been the subject of so much legend and upon which ills his fame Is principally based it ended disastrously with his captora near east liverpool and the imprisonment of morgan and his bis officers in the state penitentiary at columbus from which he and six of his officers escaped a few months later making his bis way through the lines morgan went to where he was given a great ovation and a new command but his next raid into kentucky was not only a failure but brought down upon him suspicion of incompetence or worse the star of john hunt morgan was waning fast and it set forever on september 3 when he was killed by union troopers in the garden of the williams home in Gree greensville greeneville neville tenn dashing and romantic a figure as morgan was and successful as he be was vas in the short swift raiding type of warfare lie he may have been a magnificent fighter in battle but he was not a great soldier says his biographer A technical military book asserts that he permanently altered cavalry tactics and operations by giving up the saber and fighting his command as riflemen the final judgment ot of the confederate high command however was pretty much that ot of braxton bragg who said that it he came back at all from one of his raids it would be as usual after severe losses and with a demoralized command for morgan allowed himself to be surprised and defeated by the enemy too often to be considered a great soldier and the way in which he alienated his best lieutenants and eventually lost the confidence and respect ot of his men weakens any claim lie he may have to being a great commander although he way may have altered cavalry tactics he seems to have been lacking in an understand ing of 0 of strategy and unable to view the conflict in which he was fighting in its larger aspects some of his raids were not only futile but foolish and apparently based solely upon his vanity in the early bals dals da a of the war hp he experienced the thrill of riding in triumph at the head of ills troopers into hla his home town of lexington there to be given a tremendous ovation after that he tried above almost anything else to make a triumphal entry into lexington cost what it might in military advantage cut but morgan Is not to be entirely blamed for the futility of his famous raid of 63 into indiana and ohio according to the evidence presented in this book he be made this raid under direct orders from president jefferson davis as a part of the copperhead conspiracy in the old northwest it was timed to correspond with lees advance into pennsylvania and if as davis hoped southern sympathizers rallied to the stars and bars as lee crossed the mason and dixon jine fine and morgan crossed the ohio the norths support of Lincol ns prosecution of the war would collapse and there would be a demand for peace which the northern president dare not disregard cut but davis undoubtedly had been deceived as to the power of the copperheads Copper heads la in the north and they did not rally to the confederate flag as he had hoped morgan pushing shing on through ohio found the populace celebrating the victories at gettysburg and vicksburg and most certainly not in a receptive mood toward him and his raiders so he became the victim of davis mistake although he must bear some of the responsibility of his failure because he allowed his men to get out of hand and their looting of the property of southern sympathizers as well as northern a mistake that was later repeated in kentucky and tennessee probably would have doomed the expedition tion to failure it if nothing else had bad however morgans connection with the copperhead con had one important result for him later it aided him to escape from the columbus penitentiary tent iary lary by means of bribery and not by tunneling his way out under its walls as the fa familiar millar leid has it there are a number of factors in morgans failure as a military leader according to tills biographer it appears that during the months from april to july there began in morgan a subtle decay of will hlll ue he had to compromise with himself lie ile seems to lack all balanco balance of mind lie ile la Is one time too gay another too depres depressed in july 1801 1 he was going to pieces rapidly ills mental instability was now close to mania ills his whole career followed the tragic pattern of those lives which never effectively emerge from the irrational and imaginative ideas of a child the great issues or of the war became personalized for him so that like a child he thinks himself the center of it all ile he la Is occupied with impossible fantasies there Is seldom assurance that lie he can hold to a decision there Is no doubt of his vast attraction for both men and women but gradually even these relations turn to conflict and antagonism so that in the end ills whole command turns away from the place where here he Is dying after the war his body was brought back to lexington to lie in the lot with the morgans the hunts the dudleys dudlets and the dukes morg morgan an lies in the inner ring of standing stones next to his mother the ring of stones Is very close and curves curves slightly outward as though all tho the great clan had bad rallied close around him against his enemies d A hv fotr X owoola TIM |
