The Battle of Corydon, Indiana: July 9, 1863
July 5, 2005

General John Morgan was in charge of a cavalry detachment operating in Tennessee and Kentucky for the C.S.A. under Braxton Bragg's army. Morgan and Bragg did not see eye to eye on how the war should be handled, and Morgan disobeyed a direct order from Bragg when he crossed the Ohio River.

Morgan was well prepared for the raid sending out two groups to bring him back intelligence from Southern Indiana on what they had as defenses and if there were groups supportive of the Confederate cause. One of those spies was Thomas Hines who had a reputation of being able to get out of tight jams. Hines did escape from the Home Guard, but his men were not as lucky and were captured on an Island in the middle of the Ohio River. Hines was not able to get his information back to Morgan in time for the start of his raid.

Morgan began his raid on July 1, 1863. He then crossed the Ohio River on July 8th where he did meet some resistance. Hines was waiting for Morgan and had already stolen a boat for his crossing. Morgan after meeting with Hines hijacked another boat, and then began to cross the river. The Home Guard put up some fight with one cannon, but they were not able to hold up Morgan long enough for the Union cavalry to catch up. Morgan then burned one boat, and let the other go on (because his brother-in-law knew the captain) so the Union cavalry could not use them to follow him across.

On July 9, 1863 around 11:30 AM the Home Guard of Corydon, Indiana received the word Morgan was approaching from up the Mauckport road. The Home Guard consisted of about 450 men under the command of Col. Lewis Jordan who formed a line of battle on a hill about one mile south of town. They waited on reinforcements from the New Albany's Home Guard, but because Morgan did such a wonderful job confusing the Union on which way he was heading they never came to Corydon's aid. So Corydon's Home Guard would have to stand alone, and about an hour after getting word about Morgan's whereabouts they did.

The enemy appeared in short numbers heading towards the Home Guards position on the hill, and the first wave of Morgan's cavalry was repulsed easily. When the rest of Morgan's forced arrived they attacked the Home Guard in the middle of their line and where able to hold, so Morgan began a flanking maneuver on both sides of the line. Because of the great disparity in numbers the flanks gave way so Col. Lewis raised the white flag so there would be no further loss of life. The battle lasted around twenty to thirty minutes and there were a total of eleven deaths on both sides and thirty five men wounded. The Home Guard hoped that they may have held them long enough for the Union cavalry in pursuit might close the gap.

Later that day Morgan received the news on both the loss at Vicksburg, and the repulse of General Lee's army at Gettysburg. The raid continued until Morgan and the rest of his men were captured on July 26, 1863. Eventually Morgan escaped from an Ohio penitentiary and was killed in another one of his Kentucky raids.

The information I used to write this summary came from: Corydon The Forgotten Battle Of The Civil War by W. Fred Conway, ISBN 0-925165-03-4.

LINKS:

Gettysburg Trip
April 22-24, 2005

TRIP SUMMARIES:

Greg and I took a long weekend to go and explore the Gettysburg Battlefield. I truly have to say it is an amazing experience to say the least and puts any reading on the subject into perspective. This is one of the biggest Civil War Battlefields and would truly take years to see everything, so we bought the TravelBrains Gettysburg Audio Tour Guide and spent two days with the battle highlights.

As you can see in the pictures the weather was going back and forth between rain and sun, so some of the pictures were not as high of quality due to the darkness. I have written summaries on each picture to give you some perspective of what you are looking at. I do hope to return to the battlefield several times and get more in depth with certain aspects of the engagement.