Confederate Gen. Morgan likened to pirate ‘Blackbeard’

Confederate Gen. John Hunt Morgan, the mastermind of “Morgan’s Raid” through the Ohio River Valley during the Civil War, earned a reputation as a marauder and buccaneer.

Historian S.J. Kelly, former columnist for The Plain Dealer newspaper in Cleveland, Ohio, labeled Morgan as “Blackbeard with a bridle.”

 

Morgan earned the reputation as a “hit-and-run bandit.” By the summer of 1863, his calvary had plundered 52 towns in Kentucky, Indiana and Ohio, capturing 6,000 prisoners and damaging $10 million of property.

In so doing, Morgan exhibited “predatory instincts” similar to the infamous pirate Blackbeard, according to editors at Harper’s Weekly Harper’s, a magazine published in New York City.

 

As everyone in coastal North Carolina knows, Blackbeard was the name taken by the notorious Capt. Edward Teach, who terrorized mariners in the waters within the North Carolina Southern Outer Banks, basically between Beaufort and Ocracoke, during the early 1700s.

 

Perhaps a penchant for raiding, pillaging and horse thievery was in Morgan’s genes. He was a descendant of Sir Henry Morgan, the infamous Welsh privateer from the 1600s who took refuge in Jamaica while raiding settlements and shipping ports on the Spanish Main in the Caribbean region.

 

In the fashion of Blackbeard, Morgan used deception and disguise to create confusion. He had his telegraph operator George “Lightning” Ellsworth impersonate Union officers and disseminate false telegraph messages, causing chaos, disorder and havoc.

Morgan was dubbed “Thunderbolt of the Confederacy” and was viewed as a daring, cavalier, chivalrous Southern hero, while in the North, he was regarded as a ruthless outlaw. 

Morgan frequently acted “outside the direct orders” of his superiors, much like a pirate, and his men were seen as a “band of dare-devil vagabonds.”

As “Morgan’s Raiders,” they frequently destroyed Union-held railroad lines, bridges and supply depots…and stole horses…to disrupt transportation and the flow of materials.

Finally, in July 1863, Union armies commanded by Gen. Edward H. Hobson (shown above) and James M. Shackleford (shown below) closed in on Morgan’s troops at the community of Portland, located on the Ohio River in Meigs County, Ohio.

 

Severely outnumbered, Morgan hoped to lead his Confederate calvary forces across the river at Buffington Island to safety in West Virginia, but he was forced into battle on July 19, 1863, which resulted in a decisive Union victory. More than 1,000 of Morgan’s men were taken as prisoners.

Gen. Morgan and about 400 others managed to flee, prolonging the chase. On July 26, 1863, eight days after the Battle of Buffington Island, Morgan surrendered to Union Maj. George W. Rue, about 170 miles north of Buffington Island, outside of Salineville in Columbiana County, Ohio, near the Pennsylvania border.

 

The enlisted Confederate army personnel who served under Gen. Morgan were sent to Camp Douglas in Chicago, the Union’s massive, centralized Civil War detainment site.

However, Gen. Morgan and 69 of his officers “weren’t so lucky” to be confined at a military camp.

Union Gen. Ambrose Burnside (shown below) chose to classify Gen. Morgan and his key men as “criminal raiders, horse thieves and land pirates.” They were locked up inside the formidable Ohio State Penitentiary in Columbus, a place where escape was deemed “impossible.”

 

Or so it seemed. Civil War historian Lisa Ungemach said that Confederate Capt. Thomas Henry Hines began plotting an ingenious plan to bust out.

Before going off to war, Hines was a grammar school principal in LaGrange, Ky. One of his favorite authors was Frenchman Victor Hugo (shown below). 

In Hugo’s 1862 novel “Les Misérables,” the main character Jean Valjean escapes from prison “through the passages underneath Paris.” (Valjean had been found guilty of stealing a loaf of bread.)

Hines devised a way to “tunnel out.”

Confederate telegrapher gains notoriety for Civil War trickery

Confederate telegraph operator George A. “Lightning” Ellsworth was, by far, the best at his craft during the Civil War, consistently befuddling and outwitting his enemy counterparts and their Union generals.

Ellsworth was raised in Prince Edward County, Ontario, Canada, which is located on the northeast shore of Lake Ontario. His biographer said Ellsworth was totally “fascinated by the telegraph” and “as a young teenager, traveled to Washington, D.C., to study in Samuel Morse’s telegraphy school.”

 

Samuel Morse

Ellsworth found employment as a commercial telegrapher in Lexington, Ky., when he became acquainted with John Hunt Morgan, whose family owned and operated several sprawling horse farms.

Morgan formed and funded the “Lexington Rifles” a pro-South militia in 1857, comprised of about 60 prominent businessmen and community leaders. With the outbreak of the Civil War, Morgan and his men formed the core of a highly effective Confederate calvary warfighting unit.

 

Morgan’s grand plan was “to use the telegraph to spread disinformation” into Union territory. Realizing that Ellsworth, though still in his teens, was perfect for the job, Morgan recruited him to join his unit.

Ellsworth excelled as a telegrapher. Not only could he decode and read messages extremely quickly, he also could imitate the sending style of other telegraphers and he quickly mastered the “fist” of the Union telegraphers in Kentucky and Tennessee, wrote historian Dorris Alexander Brown.

“Ellsworth gained the nickname ‘Lightning’ in 1862 during Morgan’s first ‘Kentucky Raid,’ when he sat on a railroad cross tie in knee-deep water near Horse Cave, Ky., calmly tapping away at his telegraph key during a thunderstorm,” Brown said.

They made a good pair – thunder and lightning. Morgan was dubbed the “Thunderbolt of the Confederacy,” as he became legendary for rapid, hit-and-run raids, destroying railroads, capturing supplies and causing significant Union disruption.

 

Writing for the Civil War Times, freelance journalist Eric Ethier tells the story of Gen. John Hunt Morgan’s telegraph in 1862 from Somerset, Ky., to Union Gen. Jeremiah T. Boyle (shown below) in Louisville, Ky.

 

“Good morning, Jerry! This telegraph is a great institution. You should destroy it, as it keeps me too well posted. My friend Ellsworth has all of your dispatches…on file.”

Ethier said: “While Morgan was slashing through Kentucky that July, Ellsworth had been wreaking havoc on the wire.”

One anonymous historian posted online: “Ellsworth used the telegraph brilliantly to gather information and sow confusion in the enemy. He would learn the unique patterns of the enemy operators, then imitate them while sending false and misleading information to federal commanders about Morgan’s movements and the size of his force, sending them on wild goose chases or scurrying away in retreat.”

“After Morgan’s first raid, Ellsworth prepared an irreverent report detailing how he intercepted federal communications and how he deceived them with spurious messages. 

The report was widely printed in newspapers in both the North and South as well as in Europe. The London Times declared Ellsworth’s activities to be “the most striking and important innovation of the war.”

Gen. Morgan was almost a folk hero, portrayed as an “ideal romantic Southern cavalryman.” His troops, numbering about 2,500 men, covered thousands of miles on horseback, slashing their way through rural parts of  Tennessee, Kentucky, Indiana and Ohio .

 

Morgan’s strikes necessitated some 20,000 Union troops be detached from the front lines to guard communication and supply lines.

 

He surrendered on July 26, 1863, to Gen. Edward H. Hobson near Salineville in Columbiana County in eastern Ohio. 

Gen. Morgan and his officers were sent to the Ohio State Penitentiary in Columbus.

Ellsworth managed to get away by swimming across the Ohio River.

 

 

‘Telegraph warfare’ contributed to outcome of Civil War

Civil War historians are thoroughly convinced that the Union’s ability to master the use of telegraph network technology effectively turned the tide, enabling Union forces to ultimately win the war convincingly.

 

Dr. David Hochfelder, a history professor at the University of Albany (N.Y.), said that the Civil War (1861-65) was the first time in the history of warfare that “the telegraph helped field commanders to direct real-time battlefield operations, permitting senior military officials to coordinate strategy across large distances. These capabilities were key factors in the North’s victory.”

 

“The telegraph was an important part of Civil War military and political history for two major reasons,” Dr. Hochfelder said. 

“Most visibly, the telegraph proved its value as a tactical, operational and strategic communication medium, and President Abraham Lincoln spent countless hours in the Department of War’s telegraph office” where he was actively engaged, overseeing the entire game plan for the Union troop movements.

“By contrast, the Confederacy failed to make effective use of the South’s much smaller and vastly inferior telegraph network,” Dr. Hochfelder said.

Union Gen. William Tecumseh Sherman (shown above) said the telegraph allowed for a “perfect concert of action” between his forces and the command of Gen. Ulysses S. Grant (shown below).

 

Gen. Grant was also connected with Secretary of War Edwin McMasters Stanton in Washington, D.C. The two men “held frequent conversations over the wires about strategy some lasting two hours.”

 

One example about how the system worked effectively occurred in May 1864 during the Battle of Spotsylvania near Fredericksburg, Va. 

Dr. Hochfelder wrote: “Union Gen. George Gordon Meade (shown below) used the telegraph to reinforce Gen. Winfield Scott Hancock’s unit after it had come under heavy Confederate counterattack.

 

“Luther Rose, a telegrapher attached to Hancock’s headquarters, telegraphed Meade” to ask for help.

“Rose used a field telegraph that could be deployed within a few minutes from the backs of mules and could be strung almost anywhere. Such flexibility meant that Rose accompanied Hancock (shown below) closely, taking down and resetting his instruments if Hancock moved his headquarters more than half a mile.”

 

Dr. Hochfelder said: “Rose and a companion operator were so close to the front at Spotsylvania that heavy shelling frequently broke their wire. The two took turns splicing the breaks, with Rose remarking: ‘If I stop a shell, send my things home.’”

There were many unsung heroes among the civilian employees who labored as telegraph operators within the United States Military Telegraph Service (USMT), which was formed to support the Union’s war effort.

 The field generals relied on these men to tap the keys, cipher the messages and repair down lines in the face of enemy fire. Clearly, serving as a field telegraph operator was a hard and thankless job…and dangerous. 

 

Dr. Holchfelder said: “They encountered the constant threat of being captured, shot or killed by Confederate troops. Telegraph operators faced a casualty rate of 10%, a rate similar to the infantry men they served with.”

President Lincoln formed close bonds with the telegraph office operators who served at war headquarters in Washington, treating them as confidants. Stanton called a foursome of operators his “sacred four” out of respect for their vital, confidential work.

 These men were: David Homer Bates of Steubenville, Ohio; Albert Brown Chandler of Randolph, Vt.; Thomas Thompson Eckert of St. Clairsville, Ohio; and Charles Almerin Tinker of Chelsea, Vt. 

(They are shown in descending alphabetical order.)

  

 

Most likely, they were on duty when news of Gen. Grant’s capture of Vicksburg, Miss., arrived by wire in 1863.

Author Christopher Klein wrote: “Lincoln flouted regulations and bought beer for the operators, drinking a sudsy toast with the general’s telegram in his hand.”

  

This is a photo of the “nucleus” of the War Department Telegraph Office was taken in 1890 -- long after the end of the Civil War and after their active service days. 

Pictured, from left, are: Eckert, Tinker, Bates and Chandler.  

 

Telegraph spread news of Civil War…and then some

In 1858, Daniel Worth had two important jobs in the village of Company Shops in Alamance County, N.C. 

He was the postmaster and the station manager for the North Carolina Railroad (NCRR).

The late Walter Whitaker, an author and Alamance County historian, wrote: “Company Shops was a quiet, complacent little village until the telegraph came through (in late 1850s).”

Telegraph lines were installed parallel to the 223-mile NCRR line between Charlotte and Goldsboro as well as along the 96-mile extension known as the Atlantic & North Carolina Railroad that connected Goldsboro and Morehead City.

The telegraph lines in North Carolina were built and owned by private companies like the Washington and New Orleans Telegraph Company (later absorbed by Western Union Telegraph Company).

Daniel Worth and the other railroad station managers assumed additional duties as telegraphers, requiring them to learn the dots and dashes of Morse code.

 

“Citizens began to drop in at the Company Shops railroad office to inquire about the news. Gradually, in 1861, they became aware of the trouble that was brewing in the outside world – the gathering of war clouds,” Whitaker said.

“Abraham Lincoln had become president. South Carolina and several other Southern states seceded from the Union.”

 

“Then…on a quiet morning in April 1861, the clanking telegraph instrument brought an ominous message,” Whitaker said. “Fort Sumter (S.C.) had been attacked…the Civil War had begun.”

 

From the outset, it was clear that the Union forces held the upper hand with the new technology offered by the telegraph, and it helped in a major way to determine the outcome of the conflict.

At its peak in 1865, the Union forces were served by more than 15,000 miles of line that were operated and maintained during the war by about 1,200 telegraphers and linemen who were part of the United States Military Telegraph Service (USMT). They were civilian employees rather than soldiers.

The USMT operation reported directly to Secretary of War Edwin McMasters Stanton and President Lincoln, rather than to the military command structure. This was by design to “safeguard civilian control over military operations.” 

Stanton relied on the military telegraph to monitor the actions of his generals in the field.

 Author Christopher Klein (shown below) said President Lincoln was so taken with the telegraph’s rapid messaging capability that he “sometimes slept on a cot in the telegraph office (located in the War Department Building adjacent to the White House in Washington, D.C.) during major battles.”

 

He referred to the room as “his sanctuary.” Essentially, Lincoln was America’s first “wired president” – embracing the original electronic messaging technology, Klein said.

Lincoln wrote nearly 1,000 bite-sized telegrams during his presidency. “They helped win the Civil War by projecting presidential power in unprecedented fashion,” Klein wrote.

For Lincoln, “the telegraph was both his ‘Big Ear,’ to eavesdrop on what was going on in the field, and his ‘Long Arm’ for projecting his leadership,” commented historian Tom Wheeler.

 

Klein remarked: “The telegraph allowed the president to act as a true commander-in-chief by issuing commands to his generals and directing the movement of forces in nearly real time. For the first time, a national leader could have virtual battlefront conversations with his military officers.”

“The paucity of interstate telegraph lines in the South precluded Confederate President Jefferson Davis from doing the same,” Klein commented. Clearly, the Confederates were seriously at a disadvantage in the communications department.

As the war progressed, Union navy warships blockaded southern ports, so vital telegraph industry supplies like wire, insulators and battery acid became even harder for the Confederates to obtain. 

As Union armies advanced southward, they commandeered the telegraph network.