Morgan's Raid (also the Calico Raid or Great Raid of 1863) was a diversionary incursion by Confederate cavalry into the Union states of Indiana, Kentucky, Ohio, and West Virginia during the American Civil War. The raid took place from June 11 to July 26, 1863. It is named for the commander of the Confederate troops, Brigadier General John Hunt Morgan. Although it caused temporary alarm in the North, the raid failed.
The raid covered more than 1,000 miles (1,600 km), beginning in Tennessee and ending in northern Ohio. It coincided with the Vicksburg and Gettysburg campaigns. It was meant to draw U.S. troops away from those fronts by frightening the North into demanding its troops return home. Despite his initial successes, Morgan failed to recross the Ohio River and eventually surrendered what remained of his command in northeastern Ohio near the Pennsylvania border. Morgan and other senior officers were held in the Ohio Penitentiary, but they tunneled their way out and took a train to Cincinnati, where they crossed the Ohio River into Kentucky.
General Morgan and his 2,460 handpicked Confederate cavalrymen, along with four artillery pieces, departed from Sparta, Tennessee, on June 11, 1863. The expedition intended to divert the attention of the Union Army of the Ohio from Confederate forces in the state and possibly stir up pro-Confederate sentiments in the North. General Braxton Bragg, the regional Confederate commander, intended Morgan's cavalrymen to distract U.S. forces by entering Kentucky. Morgan, however, confided to some of his officers that he had long desired to invade Indiana and Ohio to bring the terror of war to the Union. Bragg had given him carte blanche to ride throughout Tennessee and Kentucky, but ordered him to under no circumstances cross the Ohio River. On June 23, the Federal Army of the Cumberland began its operations against General Bragg's Confederate Army of Tennessee in what became known as the Tullahoma Campaign, and Morgan decided it was time to move northward into Kentucky.
On July 2, hoping to disrupt Union communication lines, Morgan rode into Kentucky, where sympathetic citizens openly welcomed his cavalrymen. Crossing the rain-swollen Cumberland River at Burkesville, Morgan's division advanced to the Green River, where it was deflected by half of a Union regiment (the 25th Michigan Infantry Regiment) at the Battle of Tebbs Bend on July 4. Morgan surprised and captured the garrison at Lebanon. He trapped 400 men from the 20th Kentucky in the town's railroad depot, but the well-fortified building provided considerable protection. In a six-hour fight, Federal troops killed Morgan's youngest brother, Thomas, during the Confederate's final charge. Morgan finally captured and then paroled the U.S. troops.
The American Civil War (1861–1865) was the deadliest conflict in American history, killing an estimated 620,000 to 750,000 soldiers and an unknown number of civilians. The Confederate States of America, formed by eleven seceding Southern states, faced the Union in four years of warfare across 23 states and territories. Major engagements included First and Second Bull Run, Antietam (the bloodiest single day in American history, September 17, 1862), Chancellorsville, Gettysburg (July 1–3, 1863), Vicksburg (surrendered July 4, 1863), and Sherman's March through Georgia and the Carolinas (1864–1865). President Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation on January 1, 1863, transforming the war's stated purpose to include the abolition of slavery and enabling the enlistment of approximately 180,000 Black men in the United States Colored Troops. Confederate General Robert E. Lee surrendered to Ulysses S. Grant at Appomattox Court House on April 9, 1865. The war resolved the question of secession and ended American slavery, though Reconstruction would face sustained resistance in its attempt to secure civil rights for formerly enslaved people.
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