General deception

Military Images, Jul/Aug 1999 by Horwitz, Lester

Are you sleeping?

Are you sleeping?

Brother John.

Brother John.

Richard Curd Morgan, C.S.A., served in the early years of the war on the staff of his brother-inlaw, General Ambrose Powell Hill. In 1863 he raised the 14th Kentucky Cavalry and, as the regiment's colonel, joined the cavalry division of his brother, General John Hunt Morgan.

In the summer of 1863, the elder Morgan led a force of nine cavalry regiments (including the 14th Kentucky) on the longest raid of the Civil War -- over a thousand miles, most of it through Union territory.

On Sunday, July 19, 1863, Col. Richard Morgan was one of seven hundred Confederate riders captured in the aftermath of the fight at Buffington Island, near Portland, Ohio. Also captured was another brother, Charlton Morgan. (A fourth brother, Thomas, had been killed in action at the start of the raid two weeks previously.) John Morgan was himself taken prisoner a week later. The three Morgan brothers and about sixty other Confederate officers were incarcerated in the Ohio Penitentiary at Columbus.

Four months later, General Morgan and six of his captains successfully escaped over the prison walls using a a rope fashioned by the General's brothers from bed sheets. Richard Morgan had switched cells with the General so it would appear that the General was still sleeping when the alarm was sounded. Seen from the rear lying on a cot, the two men looked enough alike that the guards were fooled. By the time they discovered that Richard Morgan was not the General, John Hunt Morgan was safely back on southern soil.

Richard Morgan, who stayed behind that his brother might escape, survived the war, living until 1918.

Lester Horwitz is the author of The Longest Raid of the Civil War, recently released by Farmcourt Press. More information is available at 800-441-1199 or on his website, www.longestraid.com