Page:Southern Historical Society Papers volume 35.djvu/287

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The Eleventh Kentucky Cavalry.
273

the enemy occupied one side of the fallen timber, while my men held the other, in almost a hand-to-hand fight. My force was a fraction of my regiment, consisting of 200 men, who fought gallantly. Our loss was six killed and twenty-three wounded. After the battle I received, under a flag of truce, a dispatch asking permission to bury their dead, which request was granted, promising to deliver them in front of our line."

After burying his dead at Green River Bridge, General Morgan marched away without making further attack upon the stockade. He promoted Lieutenant-Colonel Joseph T. Tucker to be colonel, and Major James B. McCreary to be lieutenant-colonel of the nth Kentucky Cavalry, after the death of Colonel Chenault, and they later were approved by President Davis and confirmed by the Senate and received their commissions.

The next day the command had a hot fight at Lebanon, Ky., where Colonel Charles H. Hanson was intrenched with his regiment, the 2Oth Kentucky Infantry, and had no alternative but to surrender, being overpowered by numbers. He and his men were paroled, and Morgan proceeded on his way, after destroying a vast amount of United States property that was stored at Lebanon. Colonel Tucker and Colonel Hanson were law partners at Winchester for years before the war, and were still so when the war began.

To give an account of the further deeds of the 11th Kentucky Cavalry would be merely to rewrite the history of the Ohio raid, with which nearly everybody in Kentucky is familiar. This regiment took full part and share in all the dangers and fatigues of that wonderful foray into an enemy's country, where Morgan's men, encompassed by an ever increasing array of hostile hosts, fighting every foot of the way, riding almost incessantly, and eating and sleeping in the saddle, established the world's high-water mark for distance accomplished in daily march, as well as for soldiery fortitude and endurance.

Most of Chenault's Regiment were taken prisoners at Buffington's Island, Ohio, on July 17, 1863. About two hundred of this regiment made a charge under Major McCreary and escaped at Buffington Island, but were surrounded by a large force of Federal cavalry the next day, and surrendered. A few of the men of the Eleventh were among the band of 300 troops who