Christmas
Raid Surprised Union Outposts
By Darrell Bird
Assistant Editor of The News-Enterprise
Dec. 26, 1992
General John Hunt Morgan, with 4,000
cavalrymen, set out from Alexandria, Tennessee to capture and destroy bridges
and telegraph lines on the Louisville and Nashville Railroad in Kentucky. His goal was to cut off Union communication
and supply lines.
Second Regiment Kentucky Infantry Re-enactors
The Rebels made camp a few miles south of Upton on Christmas night. They had already had success at Glasgow and
Bear Wallow, near Cave City. On the 26th,
some of the soldiers captured and burned a large railroad bridge at Bacon Creek
(now Bonnieville).
John
Allan Wyeth, 17, recalled how Upton
was taken.
“As we struck the railroad at Upton, we saw several Union soldiers
walking along the track, each with his gun on his shoulder. Under orders, we spurred our horses rapidly
forward. Captain Tom Quirk, pistol in
hand, shouted to them to surrender, at the same time firing over their
heads. Before anyone else could shoot,
the men threw up their hands.”
“Attached to the general’s staff was a telegraph operator, an
attractive, quick-witted, clever young man, apparently about 25, named
Ellsworth, better known in the command as “Lightning.’”
Earlier in the war, Ellsworth had tapped a telegraph line, but the crude
bypass caused a ticking sound that aroused suspicion. When questioned by a Union operator down the line, Ellsworth
instantly replied, “OK, lightning,” which meant a storm was interfering with
transmission. The Union soldier bought
it and unknowingly supplied Ellsworth with valuable strategies, and eventually
his nickname.
At Upton, ‘Lightning’ tapped into the telegraph line and Morgan concocted a succession of exaggerations for the Union’s benefit.
“I sat on the end of a crosstie within a few feet of General
Morgan,” Wyeth wrote, “and heard him dictate messages to be sent to General
Boyle in Louisville, making inquiries as to the disposition of the Federal forces
in Kentucky and telling some awful stories in regard to the large size of his
own command and its movements.”
The
guise enabled Morgan’s men to march merrily up the L & N toward Nolin,
where another bridge awaited.
Destroying rail line and culverts “just to keep in practice,” the Rebels
arrived only to discover a Morgan detachment under command of Col. Basil Duke
had already taken the Nolin garrison in less time than the battle at Bacon
Creek.
Second Regiment Kentucky
Infantry Re-enactors
With
the wooden bridge ablaze, the intoxicating confidence of victory allowed
Morgan’s men time to fashion some “neckties,” a trademark of the general’s
campaigns. Soldiers would heat sections
of rail line, then bracing them against a tree, would bend the line into a
horseshoe rendering them useless to repair crews.
Morgan
"Neckties"
Courtesy
of The News-Enterprise
By
dusk, the biting sleet from Christmas night had given way to clearing
skies. Though still quite cold, troops
were warmed by a day of unqualified successes as they made camp just a few
miles from their next target, the largest town on the march and one protected
by more than 600 entrenched Union soldiers—Elizabethtown.