Morgan's Great Raid

From July 2-26, 1863, while the great battles at Gettysburg and Vicksburg captured the attention of the American people, Confederate brigadier general John Hunt Morgan led nearly 2,500 cavalrymen on a daring raid into the North. Morgan’s objective was to distract the Union forces under Major General William Rosecrans and Major General Ambrose Burnside from building up enough momentum to wrestle the mostly pro-Union East Tennessee region from its Confederate occupants and push General Braxton Bragg’s Army of Tennessee beyond its supply base at Chattanooga. Morgan’s incursion into Indiana and Ohio would produce the effect he desired, but it would end with disastrous results for his famous division.

A military operation unlike any other on American soil, Morgan's Great Raid, alternately known as the Indiana-Ohio Raid or the Ohio Raid, was characterized by incredible speed, superhuman endurance, and innovative tactics. Covering nearly one thousand miles, the raid was one of the longest offensives of the Civil War. The effort produced the only battles fought north of the Ohio River and reached farther north than any other regular Confederate force.

With twenty-five maps and more than forty illustrations, Morgan's Raid historian David L. Mowery takes a new look at this unprecedented event in American history, one historians rank among the world's greatest land-based raids since Elizabethan times. David’s book titled Morgan’s Great Raid: The Remarkable Expedition from Kentucky to Ohio (Charleston, SC: History Press, 2013) hit the shelves in February 2013. The book is available for purchase online at Amazon.com and BarnesandNoble.com and can be found on the shelves of several local bookstores (such as Joseph Beth Booksellers, Barnes & Noble, and the Parks of Hamilton County (OH) bookstores). ISBN # 978.1.60949.436.0.

David L. Mowery, a native resident of Cincinnati, Ohio, and a graduate of the University of Cincinnati, has lived at various points along the path of Morgan’s Raid for most of his life. The American Civil War piqued his interest at an early age. Since childhood, he has researched and visited over six hundred American-history-related battlefields across fifty states and eight countries. In 2001 David joined the all-volunteer Ohio Civil War Trail Commission as its Hamilton County representative, but over the years his role expanded to include the final design and historical validation of the entire length of the John Hunt Morgan Heritage Trail of Ohio. With Lora Cahill, he co-authored Morgan’s Raid Across Ohio: The Civil War Guidebook of the John Hunt Morgan Heritage Trail (Columbus: Ohio Historical Society, 2013), which will be available for purchase later in 2013. All proceeds from the guidebook go to the Ohio Historical Society for the maintenance of the John Hunt Morgan Heritage Trail in Ohio. David’s thesis titled “A Study of John Hunt Morgan’s Ohio Raid Route from Reedsville to Creola, Ohio, July 19-22, 1863” (Columbus: Ohio Historical Society, 2011) was the first comprehensive study of Morgan’s whereabouts during the three controversial days following the Battle of Buffington Island, Ohio. Since 1995 David has been a member of the Cincinnati Civil War Round Table, for which he has written various papers on Civil War subjects. He has also served with the Buffington Island Battlefield Preservation Foundation, the grass-roots organization working to preserve Ohio’s only Civil War battlefield. David’s author web site can be found at http://www.amazon.com/author/davidlmowery .