John Hunt Morgan (1 June 1825 – 4 September 1864) was a Brigadier-General of the Confederate States Army during the American Civil War. Morgan led Confederate raiders during the war, leading an 1863 raid into Indiana and Ohio. Morgan was shot dead by a Union cavalryman on 4 September 1864 in Tennessee.
Biography[]
John Hunt Morgan was born in Huntsville, Alabama on 1 June 1825 to a prominent family; he was a direct descendant of Daniel Morgan, who himself was desceded from the pirate Henry Morgan, and he was also the brother-in-law of A.P. Hill and Basil W. Duke. Morgan's family moved to Kentucky in 1831, settling in Lexington. In 1844, Morgan was suspended from Transylvania University for engaging in a duel, and he decided to join the US Army during the Mexican-American War. Morgan fought at Buena Vista as a Lieutenant, and he became a militia artillery captain in 1852. Morgan was an opponent of the secession of Kentucky upon Abraham Lincoln's election in 1860, but he raised a militia company and joined the Confederate States Army when the American Civil War broke out. Morgan fought at the Battle of Shiloh and in the Confederate heartland campaign of June–October 1862, and Morgan made a name for himself as a great commander and a talented raider. On 11 December 1862, he was promoted to Brigadier-General, and he decided to embark on an ambitious raid in the summer of 1863. As the Battle of Gettysburg and the Siege of Vicksburg were being fought, Morgan and 2,462 Confederate raiders invaded Ohio and Indiana, pillaging local stores and drawing away tens of thousands of US Army troops. In July, they were forced to surrender near Salineville, Ohio, the high water mark of any Confederate force. He would escape from prison in November and return to active duty, but most of his men remained in prison, depriving him of his greatest troops. On 11–12 June 1864, he lost 1,000 of his 1,200 raiders at the Battle of Cynthiana in Kentucky, and he was shot in the back and killed by a Union cavalryman in Greeneville, Tennessee on 4 September 1864.