William Marion Buster: The Rough and Tumble of Johnny Reb

Elizabeth & William M. Buster

The Rough and Tumble of Johnny Reb

Experience of 1861-1865. From the time he left his home, south of Rockport, MO until the close of his service in the Army. Became a POW for 2 years

First Missouri Calvary, C.S.A.
(1838-1923)

I left my home in Atchison County, Missouri near where Langdon now stands and started for Dixie Land under the leadership of John Thraikill.  Our first stop was at Jim Gilkerson's somewhere north of the city of Fairfax now stands where we got our supper and our horses fed and then departed for parts unknown to me.  We followed the bottom road to Mound City and arrived at a point somewhere on the Nodaway River sometime in the early hours of the morning and camped in the heavy brush along the stream.  But secured our meals and horse feed from James Thraikill, an uncle of our leader.  When darkness again shrouded the earth we mounted and left our friend and started on our way and came very near to coming upon a regiment from St. Joe.  Had this happened, I am unable to say what would have occurred as our leader was a man who was never known to run from any fight.  We passed five or six miles to the left of St. Joe and made our next stop between Platte City and Plattsberg, where we remained until darkness again fell around us.  Then departed and rounded up, the next stop being at Memphis on the Missouri River, where we remained in the woods in hiding all day and crossed the river in a flat boat in the darkness of the night.

Gen. Price

After we had crossed the river, we began to think that the Kansas Jawhawkers were afraid of us so began to travel in the day time, and could see squads of men in the rear who did not seem over anxious to overtake us which they could have easily have done had they any desire to do so as our horses were pretty badly used up by this time.  We traveled about as we pleased as we felt we were among friends and I guess we were as no one seemed to have any desire to cause us trouble.  We at last arrived at Old Pap Price's headquarters on the Noosha River near Sedalia where the next morning where we pulled up stakes and departed for Springfield, Missouri, where we went into encampment for the winter and we had a good time with plenty to eat.  (William officially enrolled in Springfield in December 25, 1861.) 

In the Spring of 1862 the Yanks began to think they wanted a little blood-spilling and started a squad of Calvary toward Springfield. The came within fifteen or twenty miles of us one bright shiny morning when we were ordered to saddle our horses and mount, and away we went to meet them and held them in check until Pap Price could get his provisions and war supplied hold.  We succeeded in holding them by resorting to skirmishes until we were ready to retreat to Springfield where we [sic] and marched to within one hundred yard of their lines which were formed in the neck of the prairie and fired a broadside at them.  I never learned how many were killed, if any, but do not think there were any killed on our side, but our leader, John Tharikill, had a holster (Army pistol) shot from his hand and was disable a few days.  We then fell back to Springfield where Gen. Price had his provisions and supplied packed and the Army then started on its march to Boston Mountains.  Our regiment fell into the rear of the Army and was the rear guard during most of the march, a distance of about one hundred miles.  I have since met one of the Yanks who followed us from Springfield, and many and funny are the stories they tell about capturing our supplies.  But I tell them they never did capture any of our supplies as we were the rear guard most of the way and they never crowded us either.

We remained at this camp without disturbance until a few days before the Battle of Elkhorn, when we were ordered to strike our tents and start north, the Yanks coming south, and we met [Franz] Siegel and Bentonville, Ark., who would fight a while and then fall back.  We followed him until we got to the place where the battle Pea Ridge, Ark., was fought, where we were ordered to fallback, and I never knew why that order was given, unless it was because we had lost two commanding officers on our extreme left at the Battle of Pea Ridge. (Our regiment was on the right.)  Siegel's Army would fall back every time we came up to them and they did not follow us as we fell back to Desark, Ark.  During this march we never caught sight of a Yank, nor heard a gun fired.  At Desark we were dismounted and our horses sent to Texas and we never saw them again, but we were paid for them.  We were placed on a boat in the White River, the boat was almost as wide as the river and we wound up at Memphis, Tenn., where we remained about 2 weeks, then placed aboard (railroad) cars and sent to Corinth, Miss. It was the intention of our superiors to get us to Shiloh, but the battle of Shiloh was fought on the day we arrived at Corinth so we were unable to take part in the scrap.

We remained at Corinth, as I remember it, for a month or two, when the Federal troops began to advance on Corinth and were met by Confederate troops at Gun Town, north of Corinth. The part of the Army, to which I belonged, was marched out six to eight miles east of Corinth, then north, the intention being to come in behind the advance and cut off from the main Army and take them prisoners to Corinth, but the learned of our intentions and we only succeeded in exchanging a few shots with them as they retreated to the main Army.  After which we went back to Corinth and got ready to evacuate, which we did in a week or two, and went south thirty to forty miles to Tupelo, where John Sharp Williams resides, where we remained two to three weeks. We then went on a raid to Hallow Springs, and from there to Iuka, taking everything we came to but the Federal troops, who could outrun any Johnny in the Command.  At Iuka we got more army supplies than we knew what to do with for the time we had to stay, but we held the place for about a week and then succeeded in getting most of provisions away.

When [William Starke] Rosencrans came back we had one of the hardest fights we had ever been in, but succeeded in driving him back about half a mile, as had been our habit, but he refused to be driven further, so we lay on the battle field with the dead and dying between our lines, neither side being able to help them.  But we finally got most of our men cared for as we did the driving back. our wounded were carried from the field of battle and were cared for, as were many of the Union soldiers who were wounded during the advance.  Along towards morning Price began to take us out and we fell back to Iuka, while Price's Missiouians were left to bring up the rear.  The Federals ran a battery up on a hill, about half mile from us, and opened fire, but they got high and hurt us very little. So we got started away at last and ran pretty lively about all day, they followed pretty lively too.  

Fort Robinette, Corinth, MS

We arrived near Tupelo and rested for a week or two then started towards Memphis, and as the Union Commander was in the dark as to where we were going, Memphis, Bolivar, or Corinth, which were in a semicircle, we made a move as if going to Bolivar, where General [Edward] Ord was in command, but turned and went to Corinth where Gen. Rosencrans was in command of the Federal Troops.  We took two lines of breastworks [temporary fortification made of wood and mud breast high, allowing soldiers to shoot in standing position,] when night came on and stopped the battle until 9 o'clock the next morning.  When the signal gun boomed forth the command, away we went for the fray.  Fort Robinette lay directly in front of us, and it being the best fortified place on the line, we took it and captured their cannon and we thought we had everything our way, but the division on our right failed to come up in time and we were forced to give up everything we had captured and fell back, it being far worse going back when it was coming up, we retreated over the very same ground that we had advanced over the day before. 

Gunboat 1861

When we got back to Hatchery River, Gen. Ord was there with his Army from Bolivar so after giving him a few rounds, Price took his Army thru the brush, down through the river and crossed on a hill-dam and got away from the Federals.  We finally rounded up at Jackson, Miss., and were not bothered by the Federals for a long time.  We lay back of Vicksburg, Mississippi all the winter of '62 and were there that the time the Gun-boats for for Vicksburg.  We often went to Vicksburg and looked at [Ulysses S.] Grant's Army that lay just across the river in Millikan's Bend, where, in the spring of '63, Grant made his attempt to charge the course of the river which he failed.  Sometime along about the first of April he pulled up stakes and started down the west side of the river to Bumont, or some such place, where he crossed over.  We were ordered down on the east side of the river to try and stop him, but he succeeded in crossing.  The Gun-boats succeeded in running past our batteries after a sharp fight, and one boat, on which Admiral Dewey of Manila fame [from the Spanish American War], was stationed was sunk. That was the place where he received his first lesson in warfare. 

Another of the boats was disabled but they killed Captain [William] Wade of the Second Missouri Battle of the Confederate troops. The first place where we struck any of Grant's forces was at Port Gibson, where we had a sharp engagement, but he, being in command of plenty of men, was able to send a detachment around our flank.  We fell back and skirmished with him all the way to Edwards Station, between Jackson and Vicksburg, where he flanked us again and then moved toward Raymond and captured the town, then marched to and captured Jackson, after which he turned towards Vicksburg.  We again set part of his Army at Baker's Creek, of Champion Hill as some call it, where we fought him all day.  But he kept sending his men, that were not engaged, around us, so we started to fall back about sundown and fell back to Black River and camped on the west side of the river until morning.

During the engagement and retreat from Baker's Creek, Lt. Billy Hope of Co. E, Second Missouri Infantry, C.S.A., a Rockport boy, was wounded and, in the retreat, was carried on a litter for twenty-five miles into Vicksburg where he died pf his wounds. We were ordered back to the east side of the river the next morning to hold Grant in check until Pemberton could get everything into Vicksburg but we were unable to hold them for any length of time as they formed the line and charged us, capturing everything on the east side of the river. This was the 17th day of May 1863.  The went right on and encircled Vicksburg, their lines extending from the river above to the river below the town.  They charged two or three times in an effort to take the city by storm, but were repulsed every time with heavy loses.  They finally decided to starve us out, which they did, and on the 4th day of July Pemberton surrendered Vicksburg and we, as prisoners, were then taken across the river to the place where Grant had quarters the winter before.  

Confederate POW

We were kept there for about a week and then put on a boat and started upriver for Cairo, where we put on (railroad) cars and went through Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, & Pennsylvania to Fort Delaware, below Philadelphia, where we were kept for about six months, with about half enough to eat, and from there we were taken to Point Lookout, Md., on the Chesapeake Bay, which was a very nice place and where we fared a little bit better.  We remained there for about seven months, then being sent to [Elmira], NY.,  where we remained about eight months.  At [Elmira] they concluded to exchange us.  We were then, in February 1865, sent south to Richmond, Virginia, where we remained about a week. 

On this trip we went thru North Carolina, South Carolina and Georgia, and on arriving at Mobile, had only time to shake hands with the boys and then ordered across the bay and try to hold A. J. Smith in check. He was advancing on Fort Blakeley. We had not been officially exchanged as of yet, but they came after us about the first of April and we were kept pretty busy, day and night, until the 9th day of April when they charged us and took us all in again.  We had crossed the bay in a pretty lively skirmish. But this 9th of April was also the day Lee surrendered his forces to Grant, so the business part of the scrap was almost over. [The Battle of Blakeley was the final major battle of the Civil War, with surrender just hours after Grant had defeated Lee at Appomattox on the morning of April 9, 1865. African-American forces played a major role in the successful Union assault. Mobile, Alabama was the last major Confederate port to be captured by Union forces, on April 12, 1865.  After the assassination of President Lincoln on April 15, 1865, other Confederate surrenders continued into May 1865.]  After our capture, we were taken back over the battle field and formed in a hallow square, and so kept that first night, during which your humble servant walked out of the square and thought he was on the road to freedom again, when a Yank you possessed a pretty good pair of eyes succeeded in perusing me to return to the square and wait for daylight.  

Ship Island, Mississippi

We were then sent to Ship Island, out in the Gulf of Mexico, where we were kept for two or three weeks, then placed onboard a Mississippi steamer and taken to New Orleans.  While we were on Ship Island we carried the wood to do our cooking a distance of six miles, through sand six inched deep, and every guard was a nigger.  Several of our boys were shot without any cause and we were at Ship Island when Lincoln was shot, which made matters worse than they otherwise would have been. The officers of the guard were white, and several of our officers, being with us, told them that if we were going to be shot down like dogs, then we would be all shot together.  They, very soon, put a stop to the shooting.

On arriving at New Orleans we lay on board the boat all day and at night fall were started up the river.  An Army friend and myself planned to make an escape, the only mean of so doing this was to jump overboard and swim to shore, which looked like jumping into a grave.  About midnight we plunged, just behind the wheel of the boat, a side-wheeler, and swan to shore.  Here we thought our troubles were over for we knew that most everything living around there were our friends.  So we went out across the fields until we came to a swamp, which we waded around in until we made up our minds that we could not cross it, so my partner, and three others who had swam out after us, held council and decided to go to a farm house and get the landlord to pilot us across the swamp.  We slipped up and found him out doing his chores and we made known our business.  We were told by him that we had better give up for escape was impossible, the swamp being ten miles across and practicably impassable, that every place that could be crossed was heavily guarded by Union troops. But we refused his advice and wadded up river and made our way for about six miles when we were captured & put in jail for the night.  The next day we were taken up river about ten miles and placed in a guardhouse with some of their own soldiers.  We were treated well and everything was done for our comfort.  

After two days we were put on a boat and sent up river towards Vicksburg where we heard that Johnson had surrendered our department.  We were taken to Black River and given our parole, within half a mile of where we had been taken prisoner two years before.  We were turned loose without money, clothes or food, and were hard pressed to guess What to do.  But we learned here that if we were to take the oath, we could get transportation home.  I told my partner that I thought this the best thing to do, but he declared that he would never do anything of the kind, so we parted company in the streets of Vicksburg and I have never seen or heard of him since.

I went up to Provost Marshall's office to take the oath and get my transportation, but he wanted me to put my name down as a deserter from the Confederate Army, which I refused to do, my friend was gone and I felt very much alone, but was not, as there was a lot of Confederate soldiers in town who were in the same condition as myself.  They finally decided to give us transportation to the mouth of the White River, to get us out of town, and so we boarded the first boat that came up the river, but on arriving at White River, instead of getting off the boat, we hid on the lower deck and stayed there until we got to St. Louis, which was as far as the boat was going, so we were compelled to get another boat to bring us up the river.  

We went aboard the Emma, which had a few crew of white men, hunted up the Captain, told him where we had been and the financial condition we were in, and promised to do anything that we could do for transportation.  We were told to come aboard and finally arrived at Leavenworth sometime in the early part of the night.  May of '65, where I thought I was all right, I had plenty of friends just across the river on the Missouri side.  So I got up early the next morning and went down to the ferry to cross, but was told by the guard on the boat that I would have to get a pass before he would let me cross.  I went to the Provost Marshall's office, told him where I had been and what I wanted, but could not get a pass without someone to vouch for me, but I had not been there for some time and knew no one in  Leavenworth.  I was up against it again, but a friend of mine on the Missouri side heard that I was on the boat and he came across as soon as he could get there and offered to get me a pass.  But I declined to have him do so as I knew some horse robbers who lived over in Platte County, who were continually annoying returned Confederate soldiers, and I would not allow a friend to compromise himself by vouching for me under the circumstances.  As the boat [sic] upriver from St. Louis was going to land at Weston, I again boarded it and landed on the Missouri shore and walked back to my friend's house, opposite Leavenworth.  His name was R.B. Sissle. He died last fall, one of the heaviest landowners of the west.

In conclusion, I want to say that the Missouri Army never went into engagement, either against breastwork or a line of battle that the enemy was not compelled to fall back, except of Franklin, Tenn. where we went up against breastworks which we could not go over, but we stayed until the Union forces left, about midnight, and left us in possession.

I wrote this article at the request of my good friend, John G. Sutton, who, at the time I was thinking of joining the Army, strongly advised against such action, advising me that it was going to be a hard long fight and that I would face many hardships, and probably lose my life, and I never would have joined the Army had it not been for the fact that the part of Missouri from which I went to war was at that time overrun by a damnable set of robbers as ever run loose. [The Jawhakers.]  Taking advantage of the squally conditions of the time to ply their depredations, and many were the dastardly acts that can be testified to by some of the older settlers of that community.  So I entered the service and stayed until the "Battle of the Blakeley Sea," near Mobile, Alabama, in which it is claimed, the last cannons of the war were fired.  I found that the advice, which I failed to heed was true, and many were the hardships endured by the boys on both sides who started out for a vacation of a few weeks, and to put a stop to the War of the Sixties. 

retrieved from Ancestry.com, published Nov. 20, 2013

A House Divided: Kentucky during the Civil War

Senator Judge Milton Pope Buster (1824-1864)

When the next senator did not want to replace the void in the Kentucky senate house, Milton, who was already a judge, stepped-up and was sworn in by autumn of 1861, just six months after his father's death. (His father was Joshua Buster, who also was a senator of Kentucky during the 1830's-1850's, and according to the 1860 census, he had 7 people still enslaved.)  Although having Union loyalties during this period, Milton had 3 children enslaved—ages of 4-11— and he served the senate until his death in 1864.  He was not quite 40 years old at the time of his death.  In the Journal of the Senate, he was mentioned as such: "we are called to mourn the loss of another friend and companion—Judge Milton P. Buster, Senator from Wayne county, departed this life yesterday morning.  In respect for his memory—therefore... the death of Judge Buster the legislator has lost one of its most valuable members and the State a patriotic and enlightened citizen."  The legislature in June 3, 1865, appropriated money to erect a headstone at the grave of Milton Buster.

Private John David Buster (1826-1909) 6th Company Calvary, 3rd Regiment

John was shot in his left foot and received a pension of $12 per month beginning in 1889. The 3rd Regiment Kentucky Volunteer Infantry was an infantry regiment that served in the Union Army during the American Civil War. It was organized at Camp Dick Robinson and mustered in for a three-year enlistment on October 8, 1861 under the command of Colonel Thomas Elliott Bramlette. The regiment lost a total of 301 men during service; 6 officers and 103 enlisted men killed or mortally wounded, 192 enlisted men died of disease. It mustered out of service at Louisville, Kentucky by company beginning October 13, 1864 and ending January 10, 1865.  After the war, John did not return to Kentucky, moving to Illinois, Missouri, and finally to Kansas where he was finally laid to rest.

BY GARRY ADELMAN WITH MARY BAYS WOODSIDE; HALLOWED GROUND MAGAZINE, SPRING 2010

Situated between three slave states and three free; connected by railroad arteries into Tennessee and Ohio; and bounded by rivers accessing the Deep South and the East Coast, Kentucky was where North and South converged — where, as historian Bruce Catton said, they “touched one another most intimately.” But when those two philosophies collided over slavery in 1860, the impact shook Kentucky to its core.

The presidential election of 1860 deepened a growing chasm between divided Kentuckians. Southern Democrat and Kentucky son John C. Breckinridge won 36 percent of the state’s vote with a pro-slavery platform and Northern Democrat Stephen Douglas, champion of popular sovereignty, received 18 percent, while Constitutional Unionist John Bell, who stood simply for preserving the Union, carried the state with 45 percent. Abraham Lincoln, promoting Republican opposition to slavery’s expansion swayed less than one percent of Kentucky voters. But when Lincoln’s victory brought secession and war, the state was too divided to rally behind either side. Torn geographically, ideologically, economically, politically and militarily between North and South, Kentucky was the physical embodiment of the Civil War era’s “brother against brother” strife.

Slave or Free

Slavery was first introduced to Kentucky during its territorial days, and for nearly the first 40 years of its statehood, Kentucky’s population of slaves grew faster than that of whites. By 1830, slaves constituted 24 percent of all Kentuckians, although this ratio dropped to 19.5 percent by 1860. Slave owners in Kentucky numbered more than 38,000 in 1860, the third highest total behind Virginia and Georgia. Like most slave states, Kentucky was not a land of large plantations: 22,000 of its slave holders — or 57 percent — owned four or fewer slaves.

Kentucky’s most ardent proponents of slavery came from the state’s south and west sections, where the lifestyle most resembled that of the Deep South. The primary differentiation came in terms of crop distribution. In the Deep South, slavery-based cash crops such as cotton, rice and sugar were the norm; in southern and western Kentucky, tobacco was the cash crop, accounting for one quarter of the nation’s tobacco output and requiring nearly year-round labor to produce. Another prominent crop was hemp, the growing of which involved the hardest, dirtiest and most laborious agricultural work in the state, making it desirable for slave labor. Together, tobacco and hemp firmly bound southern and western Kentuckians to the preservation of slavery.

In the north and east, Kentuckians were ideologically and economically moving away from slavery. Economically, the area was diversifying. More and more of these Kentuckians broadened their traditional tobacco-and-hemp livelihoods by cultivating grains and cereals, breeding horses and livestock and manufacturing goods. By 1850, they had given Kentucky the South’s second broadest economic base. Generally, a more diversified economy meant less reliance on slavery, which helps to explain Kentucky’s rising emancipation ideology. Already, diversified Kentucky had a profitable market in the excess slaves sold to the Deep South. It was only a step further, then, to support emancipation, which called for a gradual and compensated end to slavery.

A third faction of Kentuckians was ambivalent about slavery. Although not economically bound to the institution themselves, they justified it for several reasons. Some called it a “necessary evil” for life in an agricultural state. Others, prejudiced against or wary of a large free-black population, regarded slavery as a means of control.

Kentucky v. Kentucky

As one southern state after another seceded between December 1860 and May 1861, Kentucky was torn between loyalty to her sister slave states and its national Union. One month after the opening shots at Fort Sumter in April 1861, Gov. Beriah Magoffin issued a formal proclamation of neutrality and advised Kentuckians to remain at home and away from the fight. Although Magoffin did not believe slavery was a “moral, social, or political evil,” he opposed immediate secession on two fronts. First, he believed the sectional differences could be worked out through mediation. Second, he feared an invasion of Kentucky if the state seceded.

 At the individual level, Kentucky Unionists, largely those who supported Bell and Douglas in the 1860 election, favored neutrality because they disapproved of both southern secession and northern coercion of southern states. Confederate sympathizers backed neutrality because they feared that if Kentucky chose a side, she would choose the Union.

But neutrality in principle was much less complicated than neutrality in practice. Army recruiters from both sides entered Kentucky to enlist volunteers, and each army amassed troops along the state’s borders. Within Kentucky, the rival factions organized militias — Confederate sympathizers called themselves the State Guards, while Unionists became the Home Guards.

Lincoln, meanwhile, governed Kentucky with a light hand during her neutrality. He worried that any demonstration of force would prompt her secession. For a time, Lincoln even turned a blind eye as Kentucky allowed horses, food and other military supplies and munitions to enter the Confederacy. But just a month after Magoffin proclaimed neutrality, Kentuckians delivered important political victories to the Unionists, when those candidates won nine out 10 of the state’s congressional seats. Later, on August 5, Unionists also won control of the state legislature. Their success was partially due to outspoken claims that the South only wanted Kentucky to stand between it and danger. However, the success was also bolstered by a boycott by pro-Confederates, who refused to participate in elections for a government they did not recognize.

In response to the Unionists’ growing political power, the state’s Southern sympathizers formed a rival Confederate government. On November 18, 200 delegates passed an Ordinance of Secession and established Confederate Kentucky; the following December it was admitted to the Confederacy as a 13th state. The state capital was at Bowling Green, and George W. Johnson — who only supported Kentucky’s secession because he hoped the new balance of power would end the war — became governor. Governor Magoffin eventually resigned and cast his lot with Confederate Kentucky, as did John C. Breckinridge.

Kentucky’s dual governments and military forces caused many divisions between Kentucky families. Kentucky-born statesman John J. Crittenden’s son George was a general in the Confederate Army; his son Thomas was a general for the Union. Robert Breckinridge, John C. Breckinridge’s uncle, had two sons fighting for the North and two for the South. Three grandsons of the late Kentucky statesman Henry Clay fought in Union blue while four fought in Confederate gray.

In total, about 100,000 Kentuckians served in the Union Army. After April 1864, when the Union Army began recruiting African American soldiers in Kentucky, almost 24,000 joined to fight for their freedom. For the Confederacy, between 25,000 and 40,000 Kentuckians answered the call of duty. Their most celebrated unit was the First Kentucky “Orphan” Brigade. The Orphans fought hard on many western battlefields, and their heavy losses — especially in commanders — may have led to their nickname. In mid-1862, Benjamin H. Helm took command of the brigade and led it until his death the following year at the Battle of Chickamauga. Helm was President Lincoln’s brother-in-law.

Partitioning the State

For the first few months of war, the Union and Confederate armies stayed out of Kentucky. That changed when Maj. Gen. Leonidas Polk ordered a Confederate invasion of Columbus for September 4, 1861. Columbus was a port town on the Mississippi. Its high bluffs and railroad terminal made it valuable militarily — so valuable that Polk seized it to preempt a Union occupation. Two days later, Brig. Gen. Ulysses S. Grant responded by occupying Paducah and then Smithland. Because the Confederates invaded first, they were branded the aggressor. Although Governor Magoffin called for both sides to leave Kentucky, the Unionist legislature only asked the Southerners to withdraw. All pretenses of neutrality were gone.

After staking their initial claim, Union soldiers came down from Cincinnati to take control of northern Kentucky, while Confederates moved in through Tennessee to claim southern Kentucky, including the Cumberland Gap situated near the convergence of Kentucky, Tennessee and Virginia. With nearby railroads and access to ardently Unionist East Tennessee, the Gap was a strategically important site, but the ambitious Brig. Gen. Felix Zollicoffer, who seized the Gap, was discontent to remain there. Accordingly, he planned to extend his line further north and west into central Kentucky. As Zollicoffer and his men moved north along the Wilderness Road, they encountered a Union force sent to halt their progress. On October 21, the two sides clashed at Camp Wild Cat, and the Union troops sent Zollicoffer backtracking in defeat.

After another retreat, Kentucky was in Union hands for the remainder of the war, but Confederate raiders continued to wreak havoc and foster division behind enemy lines. One of the most famous raiders operating in Kentucky was Brig. Gen. John Hunt Morgan. Though born in Alabama, Morgan spent most of his life in Kentucky. He had no formal military education but was immensely successful with hit-and-run strikes to disrupt the Union supply line, occupy Union troops away from the front and secure supplies for the Confederacy.

In December 1862, Morgan undertook his famous Christmas Raid. During this two-week period, he rode 400 miles in central Kentucky, tore up 20 miles of railroad, destroyed an estimated $2 million worth of supplies and took nearly 1,900 prisoners. Another of Morgan’s exploits was less successful — his Kentucky- Indiana-Ohio Raid of July 1863. Granted permission to raid Louisville but not to cross the Ohio River, Morgan disregarded orders at great cost to his men. Morgan was captured in Ohio (though he later escaped), and only a few hundred of his more than 2,400 men made it home.

Invasions, raids and guerilla warfare worsened toward the war’s end as defiant Confederates rebelled against the Union presence in their state. When Confederate armies finally surrendered in April 1865, one Kentuckian recalled that “pandemonium broke loose and everyone acted as if the world was coming to an end.” But the South’s surrender did not unite a divided Kentucky. Many Kentuckians balked at freedom for blacks, and hatred often prevailed. For the first five months after the Confederate surrender, U.S. troops imposed martial law in Kentucky. Even after the military left, the state was a violent place through the 1860s and beyond. The war’s political aftermath also left the state deeply divided as former Unionists, former Confederates and former Whigs fought bitterly for power.

Post-war Kentucky needed healing. Families, communities and entire regions of the state had been ripped apart by the war, and more than simple animosity was prevalent throughout. Yet as the North and South healed their wounds and settled their differences, surely Kentucky would, as well. For in Kentucky, where such division had resulted from North and South’s convergence, there was also great promise, because, as historian Bruce Catton wrote, “where North and South touched one another most intimately” was also where they “came closest to a mutual understanding.”


Garry Adelman is the author, co-author or editor of numerous Civil War books and articles. He is a senior historian at History Associates in Rockville, Maryland, vice president of the Center for Civil War Photography, and a longtime Licensed Battlefield Guide at Gettysburg. Mary Bays Woodside serves as a consultant to History Associates.

Resource: Journal of the Senate 
Resource: http://genealogytrails.com/ken/wayne/chapter_5.html
Resource: https://www.civilwar.org/learn/articles/house-divided