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.”