History of Morgan's Cavalry. Duke Basil Wilson
and the authorities had been completely tricked and baffled.
The loyal citizens who had calculated upon witnessing the discomfiture of the "Rifles," and of all their backers, were disappointed, and had the farther mortification of learning that the wagons containing the coveted prizes had passed the night before, in the sight of them all, to a place where they dared not follow. Of course many taunts were flung at the fooled spies, and disappointed patriots; and at length the angry discussions brought on a shooting affray between some of the "Rifles," and a part of the troops and Home-guards. The regiment stationed at the fair grounds, was brought into town to quell this affair, and two pieces of artillery were planted to sweep the principal streets – and from that date, for four years, Lexington was under military rule.
Captain Morgan, for whose arrest an order was immediately issued, communicated during the day with such of his men as desired to follow him, and at nightfall left Lexington with them and rejoined those who had gone before. He passed through Anderson county to Nelson, and halted a few miles from Bardstown. Here he was joined by Captain John Cripps Wickliffe, subsequently Lieutenant Colonel of the Ninth Kentucky Infantry, and a very gallant officer. Captain Wickliffe had determined also to save his guns and take his company, or all that would follow him, to the Confederate army. The greater portion of his company, one of the finest in the State-guards, elected to go with him. Desirous, while about it, of doing a brisk business in guns, he confiscated those of a neighboring Home-guard company, and brought them to Morgan's camp – they were immediately placed in the hands of the unarmed men, who, finding an organized force making for the Confederate lines, attached themselves to it. Many such men, anxious to go South, but afraid to go without a leader, came to this camp during the four or five days that it was maintained.
On account of the kindness and liberality of the people who lived in that neighborhood, and who supplied its inmates with provisions of all kinds, this camp was entitled "Camp Charity," and long will it be remembered.
By the common wish and consent, Morgan took command of all the forces, and when, on Saturday evening, September 28th, he resumed his march, he was at the head of some two hundred men. He encountered no enemy. The Home-guards, who mustered strong in the region through which he passed, thought his force too formidable to attack and kept out of his path. When he would hear of two bodies of them, likely to give him trouble if united, he would pass between them and scare both.
After two days and nights hard marching, he reached Green river on Monday evening, September 30th. He received an enthusiastic welcome from the Confederate troops stationed there, most of whom were Kentuckians, and many of them knew him well.
Colonel Roger W. Hanson, the officer in command, was himself from Lexington, and was a warm personal friend of Morgan.
There were, at Green river, encamped on the Southern side of the stream, at this date, the Second Kentucky Infantry (Hanson's own regiment), six or seven hundred strong, Byrne's Battery, and four companies of Tennessee cavalry.
Colonel Thomas Hunt, an uncle of Captain Morgan, was also there with two companies of the regiment he was then organizing. Of all the general officers (he was made a General) which Kentucky gave to the Confederate service, least justice had been done by fame to Roger Hanson, and it is strange that such should be the case. Not only was he well known, constantly talked of, greatly loved, and ardently admired by the Kentuckians, but his name was familiar in all parts of the army. It is true that his early death blighted the reputation he was rapidly winning, but it is hard for those who knew him to understand how such a man could have failed to attract more general and more lively interest. While a very young man, he served with distinction in Mexico, returning home he indulged for a short period in an erratic career which astonished even the Kentuckians, and suddenly quitted it to beat all rivals at the bar, and become a leading politician. Friends and opponents agreed in pronouncing him one of the most effective speakers in the State. His youth was too much occupied in more agreeable pursuits, to admit of his employing profitably the educational advantages which were offered him, but his mind, although unused to the discipline of study, mastered all that it grappled with. He read less and comprehended more law than any member of the profession in Kentucky. His vigorous native intellect and acute sense, were perhaps more formidable, for this reason. Want of science made his method of attack more original and irresistible. In the contests of the bar and the hustings, he was a sort of heavy armed partisan, his irregular, rapid onslaught crushed opposition. The learning and eloquence of his ablest antagonists availed little against his manly logic, and often sounded like the merest folly after having been subjected to his telling ridicule. All of his ideas seemed clearly defined; his mind was never in a mist. His insight into character was extraordinary, and he had the most remarkable faculty of accurate observation and life-like reproduction, especially of ludicrous traits and scenes. His command of humorous, graphic, forcible expression was unequaled. He had very many noble traits of character. He was candid and truthful to bluntness. His scorn of dissimulation and affectation of any sort, gave his manner and speech a bluffness, and apparent want of sympathy with the feelings of other men, which caused him often to be misunderstood. I believe that he would rather that the whole world should have thought him a scoundrel, than have seemed for one moment, in his own eyes, a hypocrite. His will was dauntless, his resolution inflexible, his courage high. He had little opportunity, during his military life, to show the stuff that was in him, and to prove that he possessed other qualities befitting an officer beside courage and the strictest attention to the instruction, the comfort, and the discipline of his men. Notwithstanding that he was a very strict disciplinarian – and Kentucky troops have little love of discipline – he was very popular with his men. They retaliated by nick-naming him "Bench-leg," or "Old flint-lock," and admired him all the more intensely, the more frequently that he showed them that they could never deceive him nor attempt it with impunity. Once, thinking that the health of his regiment was getting too bad, and that many cases of illness, reported as severe, were but ruses to escape doing duty, he published an order that from that date "there should be but two sick men at the same time in each company," and caused it to be rigidly enforced. No one who ever saw Hanson can forget him. In stature he was a little under the medium hight, and he was powerfully but ungracefully built. His bulky and ungainly form indicated great but awkward strength. His shoulders were huge, round, and stooping, and he sat on his horse in the attitude in which a sick man bends over the fire. His head was large and perfectly round. His complexion was fair and florid, and his eyes gray and full of light. His strong and marked features, when he became excited, worked strangely and apparently without being moved by the same influences, and the alert movement of his head, at such moments, was in singular contrast to his otherwise heavy inactive manner. His face, when he was calm and giving careful attention to any thing said to him, wore a look of exceeding sternness, enhanced by a peculiar twitch of the muscles of the mouth and eye. He had a German face with all the Irish expressions. A wound received in a duel had shortened one leg and gave him a singular gait, something between a jerk and a roll. His voice was deep and guttural, and his utterance rapid, decided, abrupt, like that of a man who meant all that he said, and knew that it would produce an effect. No one could look him in the eye and fail to perceive that he was every inch a man – a strong, brave, manly nature looked out in every lineament of his face. Captain Wickliffe attached his company to the regiment which Colonel Hunt was organizing. Of the stragglers who had come out with Captain Morgan, some went one way and some another – only eight or ten remained with him. Although not yet in the Confederate service, he at once commenced the active and daring work which laid the foundation of his celebrity and brought him at once into general notice. The cavalry which had been stationed there previously to his coming, had confined themselves to doing picket duty, and had never sought or been required to do other service. This monotonous work, altogether devoid of excitement, did not accord with his nature, which demanded the stimulus of adventure; he, moreover, intuitively understood then, and declared the fact since so completely demonstrated, that cavalry can be employed to far better advantage, if kept well out upon the front or flanks of the army to which it belongs, and close upon the enemy, than by exacting of it the sort of duty which can just as well be performed by infantry. The Federal advanced forces were then stationed at Elizabethtown, and were soon pushed to Nolin Creek, distant about twenty-one or two miles from Munfordsville. Captain Morgan had at first not more than twenty mounted men of his own company, but with these and with volunteers from the other cavalry who were inspired by