Morgan's Great Raid Around Cincinnati: America's Longest Cavalry Ride

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. Mowery’s presentation will discuss Morgan’s Great Raid as it passed through three Union-held states and circumvented Cincinnati, which at the time was the seventh largest city in the United States and which served as the headquarters for Burnside’s department. Morgan’s special-forces operation represented the pinnacle of Morgan’s strategic and tactical skills and the best of his division’s raiding capabilities. No other American mounted infantry division on horseback would ever achieve what Morgan’s raiders accomplished on the Great Raid of 1863.

Recorded on April 12, 2018

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