Benson J. Lossing, Pictorial Field Book of the Civil War. Volume 3.

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From Green River Morgan moved rapidly upon Lebanon, then occupied by a thin regiment, under Colonel Hanson. His demand for a surrender being refused,. the raiders tried for several hours to capture the place. Then they charged into the town, set it on fire, and captured Hanson and his men,, with a battery. In this conflict Morgan's brother was killed. At dusk, the Confederates left the ruined village, pushed rapidly northward, by way of Bardstown, in a drenching rain, and, on the evening of the 7th,

July, 1863.

their advance reached the Ohio, at Brandenburg, about forty miles below Louisville. Morgan had fought and plundered on his way from Lebanon, and his ranks had been swelled by Kentucky secessionists to more than four thousand men, with ten guns. The advance of Rosecrans against Bragg at about this time had prevented the co-operation of Buckner, and Morgan determined to push on into Indiana and Ohio, in an independent movement.

At Brandenburg, Morgan captured two steamers¹ (McCombs and Alice, Dean), and, on the 8th,

July.

proceeded to cross the river upon them, in spite of the opposition of some Indiana militia, and two gunboats that were patroling the Ohio. When his rear-guard was ascending the Indiana shore, and one of the steamers was a blazing ruin in the stream, a force, equal to Morgan's, under General Hobson,² which had been pursuing, reached Brandenburg. Steamboats were procured, and, before daylight on the morning of the 9th, Hobson and his little army were on Indiana soil. At the same time, a greater portion of General Judah's division, stationed in the section of Kentucky between the Cumberland and Barren rivers, had been concentrated and put in motion for the capture of Morgan. These consisted chiefly of Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, and Kentucky cavalry, and went up the Ohio River in boats to intercept the raiders.

Morgan pushed northward to Corydon, the capital of Harrison County, before which he appeared on the afternoon of the 9th. There he was resisted by the Home Guards; but these were overpowered, the town was pillaged, citizens were murdered, three hundred horses were seized, and a new system of plunder was inaugurated, by demanding of the owner of each mill and factory one thousand dollars in currency, as a condition of the safety of his property from the flames. Having completed his work at Corydon, Morgan pushed on to Salem, the capital of Washington County, the next morning, captured between three and four hundred militia, pillaged the place, destroyed railway property, and received a thousand dollars each from three mill-owners. In this way he went on, from village to village, in the direction of Ohio, plundering, destroying, and levying contributions on the inhabitants almost without hinderance, until the evening of the 12th, when near Vernon, on the Madison and Indianapolis railway, he encountered stout resistance and defiance from about twelve hundred militia, under Colonel Lowe.