John Hunt Morgan

John Hunt Morgan (June 1, 1825 – September 4, 1864) was a Confederate general in the American Civil War. In April 1862, he raised the 2nd Kentucky Cavalry Regiment, fought at Shiloh, and then launched a costly raid in Kentucky, which encouraged Braxton Bragg's invasion of that state. He also attacked General William Rosecrans's supply lines. In July 1863, he set out on a 1,000-mile raid into Indiana and Ohio, taking hundreds of prisoners. But after most of his men had been intercepted by U.S. Navy gunboats, including the USS Moose, Morgan surrendered at Salineville, Ohio, the northernmost point ever reached by uniformed Confederates. Morgan carried out the diversionary "Morgan's Raid" against orders, which gained no tactical advantage for the Confederacy while losing the regiment. Morgan escaped prison, but his credibility was so low that he was restricted to minor operations. He was killed at Greeneville, Tennessee, in September 1864. Morgan was the brother-in-law of Confederate general A. P. Hill. Various schools and a memorial are dedicated to him.

John H. Morgan was born in Huntsville, Alabama, the eldest of ten children of Calvin and Henrietta (Hunt) Morgan. He was an uncle of geneticist Thomas Hunt Morgan and a maternal grandson of John Wesley Hunt, an early founder of Lexington, Kentucky, and one of the first millionaires west of the Allegheny Mountains.^{[citation needed]} He was also the brother-in-law of A. P. Hill and of Basil W. Duke. His first cousin, twice removed, Abijah Hunt, an important early merchant and slave trader in the Natchez District in Mississippi, was killed in a duel with Mississippi Governor George Poindexter in 1811. The man we know today as John Hunt Morgan never used his middle name of Hunt during the war – it is a post-war appellation.^{[citation needed]}

John Wesley Hunt, Morgan's grandfather, was a leading landowner and businessman in Kentucky and was the first millionaire west of the Allegheny Mountains. "His business empire included interest in banking, horse breeding, agriculture, and hemp manufacturing. Among his business associates were Henry Clay and John Jacob Astor."^{[citation needed]}

Morgan's paternal grandparents were Luther and Anna (Cameron) Morgan. Luther Morgan had settled in Huntsville, but a downturn in the cotton economy forced him to mortgage his holdings. His father, Calvin Morgan, lost his Huntsville home in 1831 when he could not pay the property taxes following the failure of his pharmacy. The family then moved to Lexington, where he would manage one of his father-in-law's sprawling farms.

Morgan grew up on the farm outside of Lexington and attended Transylvania College for two years but was suspended in 1844 for dueling with a fraternity brother. In 1846, Morgan became a Freemason, at Daviess Lodge #22, Lexington, Kentucky. Morgan desired a military career, but the small size of the U.S. military severely limited opportunities for officer's commissions.

In 1846, Morgan enlisted with his brother Calvin and uncle Alexander in the United States Army as a cavalry private during the Mexican–American War. He was elected second lieutenant and was promoted to first lieutenant before arriving in Mexico, where he saw combat in the Battle of Buena Vista. On his return to Kentucky, he became a hemp manufacturer, and in 1848, he married Rebecca Gratz Bruce, the 18-year-old sister of one of his business partners. Morgan also hired out and occasionally sold the people that he enslaved. After the death of John Wesley Hunt in 1849, his fortunes significantly improved as his mother, Henrietta, began financing his business ventures.

In 1853, Morgan's wife delivered a stillborn son. She contracted septic thrombophlebitis, popularly known as "milk leg", an infection of a blood clot in a vein, which eventually led to an amputation. They became increasingly emotionally distant from one another. Known as a gambler and philanderer, Morgan was also known for his generosity. It is rumored that he had one slave son, Sidney Morgan, by an enslaved woman and was the grandfather of African American inventor Garrett Morgan (1877–1963). No historical documents exist to prove that John Hunt Morgan was the father of Sidney Morgan, or the grandfather of Garrett Morgan. He was an enslaver and an investor in the Lexington slave-trading business of Lewis C. Robards. Further, Sidney A. Morgan was said to have been born in 1834, when Morgan was 9 years of age.

Morgan remained interested in the military. He raised a militia artillery company in 1852, but it was disbanded by the state legislature two years later. In 1857, with the rise of sectional tensions, Morgan raised an independent infantry company known as the "Lexington Rifles" and spent much of his free time drilling the company.