09/07/2026
In the summer of 1863, Confederate General John Hunt Morgan led a force of 2,400 cavalrymen on a raid through southern Indiana and Ohio, panicking much of the Midwest and generating sensational headlines in newspapers across the county. After being pursued for over six weeks, Morgan and the remnant of his command were cornered and captured in Columbiana County, Ohio. Morgan and his officers were sent not to a POW camp, but to the state penitentiary in Columbus instead, in retaliation for allegations that Federal officers had been so treated.
Six months before launching his raid, Morgan, a widower, had married 22-year-old Mattie Ready, of Murfreesboro, Tennessee. A few months later, as east Tennessee fell to Federal forces, a pregnant Mattie was forced to flee her home, eventually being taken in by the family of Colonel Robert Withers in Danville, Virginia. While in Danville, under the stress of her husband’s imprisonment, Mattie gave birth to a baby girl on November 27, 1863. The child died the next day and was buried in Grove Street Cemetery.
On the very day of his daughter’s death, Morgan and six fellow prisoners escaped, having tunneled out of their cells and scaled the prison wall, using ropes made of bedsheets and a grappling hook made from a fireplace poker. Hopping trains, traveling at night, and with the assistance of Confederate sympathizers, Morgan made his way south. By Christmas he was in Danville with Mattie, his daring escape having elevated his already folk-hero status.
But even as Morgan was being feted, wined, and dined by admirers, his star was not shining brightly among the military command, who recognized that his flamboyant (and unauthorized) raiding had little military benefit and did not justify the cost in men and material. After another disastrous, undisciplined, and unauthorized raid in June 1864, Confederate authorities quietly began preparing charges against Morgan, in anticipation of removing him from command.
In the meantime, in August Morgan was assigned to take command of Confederate forces in southwestern Virginia and eastern Tennessee, areas with strong pro-Union sentiment and deeply divided loyalties. He moved to his new headquarters in Abingdon, Virginia and immediately began preparing to raid Knoxville. On September 3, Morgan and his force of 1,600 men moved into east Tennessee.
On the first night of the raid, Morgan made his headquarters at the home of Mrs. Catherine Williams, in Greeneville, Tennessee, with the rest of his men camping nearby. Mrs. Williams, a widow, had two sons in the Confederate army and one in the Union army.
That evening Confederate foragers stopped a Greeneville boy who was bringing home cornmeal from a nearby grist mill and took the meal from him. The angry boy then rode to the headquarters of Federal Colonel Alvan Gillem and told him there were Confederates in the area. Gillem, assuming them to be the sort of small force he was accustomed to dealing with, immediately gave orders to attack. Riding through the night, the sound of their approach being muffled by the heavy rain, Gillem’s force launched a surprise attack against the Confederates at first light, having no idea what they were actually up against.
Soon after the fighting began a Greeneville citizen rushed out to the Union lines shouting, “For God’s sake get out of here! Morgan is here with thousands of men and if you do not retreat now, he will kill every one of you!” Pressed for more information, the man said that General Morgan was at Mrs. Williams’ house. Even as they began to withdraw, a Federal officer sent a detachment to the Williams house with instructions to bring back Morgan, dead or alive.
Morgan, who was still in bed when the gunfire began, thought nothing of it until Mrs. Williams rushed in, exclaiming that there were Yankees in the yard. Morgan flew out of bed, pulled on his trousers over his nightshirt, stepped sockless into his boots, and dashed out of the house with pistols in his hands. He ran into a vineyard, where he was spotted by Private Andrew Campbell.
Campbell, a native of Ireland, had enlisted in a Confederate regiment of Arkansas infantry when the war began, before later deserting and enlisting in a Union regiment of Tennessee cavalry. Seeing a man in boots and a nightshirt, darting in and out of the grape arbors with pistols in his hands, Campbell raised his gun, fired, and missed. He quickly dismounted, laid his r***e across the top of a fence, took careful aim, and fired again. This time his shot went through the man’s heart, killing John Hunt Morgan instantly.
There was much controversy attendant to the death of General Morgan. Southern newspapers printed claims that he had been betrayed by Mrs. Williams’ daughter-in-law (whose husband was a Federal soldier), that he had been shot while surrendering, and that his body had been mutilated and abused. Although there is still some room for doubt, the events as described above are probably accurate.
Seven months after her husband’s death, Mattie gave birth to a daughter she named Johnnie Hunt Morgan. In 1873 Mattie remarried and she and her second husband had five children, before she died at age 47 of tuberculosis. Six months after her mother’s death, at age 23 Johnnie married a Presbyterian minister in Alabama. A few weeks later she died of typhoid fever.
John Hunt Morgan was killed on September 4, 1864, one hundred sixty-two years ago today. The image is a photo of him and Mattie.
