John Hunt Morgan Raid

For those interested in the Civil War period, I am in the process of enjoying a book entitled "The Longest Raid of the Civil War" by Lester V. Horwitz. It is an excellent look at the raid into Kentucky, southern Indiana and Ohio in July of 1863 by Confederate General John Hunt Morgan. It is a day by day and often hour by hour account of the raid. All is carefully documented and has a lot of photographs and maps. It is a history book that reads like a novel. Having lived in that area of Indiana, I knew of the raid but none of the particulars. For instance, the raiders stole horses as they needed them and they took food but they treated all of the indigenous people with respect as long as they did not take up arms against the raiders. They burned railroad stations and bridges but not homes. In most cases, they actually paid for what they took. Excellent reading. I highly recommend it.

:wink:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wDPzz20riGY

First, HAPPY BIRTHDAY, BILL !!!

Perhaps to the surprise of some, there was a lot of support for the Southron Cause in Indiana during the WBTS, though of course it was well advised not to go public with it most of the time.

Gus

I was aware of the southern sympathies in Southern Indiana. Actually, had the southern part of Indiana had their way, Indiana would have been a Confederate state. However, the northern industrial part of the state had a greater population and was inclined to be part of the Union. The northern part of the state carried all of the state into the Union.

I had family members who were southern sympathizers but another part of my family, the Whites, were Quaker abolitionists. I was shocked when I found that my Quaker ancestors, while being abolitionists, owned a slave family. Quaker abolitionists who owned slaves..???? A bit of further research revealed the truth. My family had come from North Carolina, a slave state, where they had bought a slave family. They brought the slave family to a free state, Indiana, where they allowed them to live free. The Whites retained title to the slave family to protect them. There was a law that allowed escaped slaves to be recovered and returned to their owners. Often slave chasers would capture a free black and take them back to a slave state where they would sell them and pocket the money. That's what happened in the book "Twelve Years a Slave". To protect the slave family that they had brought to Indiana, the retained title to them even though they allowed them to live free. That way, a slave chaser could not illegally capture them and take them back to a slave state to be sold. If they had been captured, that would amount to theft of property, particularly livestock and they would have essentially been treated as rustlers. No slave chaser who valued their hide would steal such a black person. Therefore, that family safely lived in Indiana as free slaves. Following the war, they were safely set free. That slave family took my family's name of White. I'm kind of proud of that bit of family history.