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From
Green River Morgan moved rapidly upon
Lebanon, then occupied by a thin regiment, under
Colonel Hanson.
His demand for a surrender being refused,. the raiders tried for several hours to capture the place.
Then they charged into the town, set it on fire, and captured
Hanson and his men,, with a battery.
In this conflict
Morgan's brother was killed.
At dusk, the
Confederates left the ruined village, pushed rapidly northward, by way of
Bardstown, in a drenching rain, and, on the evening of the 7th,
their advance reached the
Ohio, at
Brandenburg, about forty miles below
Louisville.
Morgan had fought and plundered on his way from
Lebanon, and his ranks had been swelled by
Kentucky secessionists to more than four thousand men, with ten guns.
The advance of
Rosecrans against
Bragg at about this time had prevented the co-operation of
Buckner, and
Morgan determined to push on into
Indiana and
Ohio, in an independent movement.
At
Brandenburg,
Morgan captured two steamers
1 (
McCombs and
Alice, Dean), and, on the 8th,
proceeded to cross the river upon them, in spite of the opposition of some
Indiana militia, and two gunboats that were patroling the
Ohio.
When his rear-guard was ascending the
Indiana shore, and one of the steamers was a blazing ruin in the stream, a force, equal to
Morgan's, under
General Hobson,
2 which had been pursuing, reached
Brandenburg.
Steamboats were procured, and, before daylight on the morning of the 9th,
Hobson and his little army were on
Indiana soil.
At the same time, a greater portion of
General Judah's division, stationed in the section of
Kentucky between the
Cumberland and
Barren rivers, had been concentrated and put in motion for the capture of
Morgan.
These consisted chiefly of
Indiana,
Illinois,
Michigan, and
Kentucky cavalry, and went up the
Ohio River in boats to intercept the raiders.
Morgan pushed northward to
Corydon, the capital of
Harrison County, before which he appeared on the afternoon of the 9th.
There he was resisted by the Home Guards; but these were overpowered, the town was pillaged, citizens were murdered, three hundred horses were seized, and a new system of plunder was inaugurated, by demanding of the owner of each mill and factory one thousand dollars in currency, as a condition of the safety of his property from the flames.
Having completed his work at
Corydon,
Morgan pushed on to
Salem, the capital of
Washington County, the next morning, captured between three and four hundred militia, pillaged the place, destroyed railway property, and received a thousand dollars each from three mill-owners.
In this way he went on, from village to village, in the direction of
Ohio, plundering, destroying, and levying contributions on the inhabitants almost without hinderance, until the evening of the 12th, when near
Vernon, on the Madison and Indianapolis railway, he encountered stout resistance and defiance from about twelve hundred militia, under
Colonel Lowe.