''The Union pickets didn't know what to think of soldiers fighting as naked as jaybirds," Confederate Lt. Bennett H. Young wrote in an unusual report to his superiors about a skirmish between Union and Confederate forces on the Cumberland River in western Kentucky on July 2, 1863. Still, it was an accurate description of what happened.
Confederate Gen. John Hunt Morgan was dashing, handsome, bold and brave, a beloved, trusted leader to the young men who rode by his side. That summer Morgan impatiently waited for an assignment to disrupt the buildup of Union forces aiming to split Tennessee into pieces. Morgan lobbied for permission to raid behind Union lines, but his timid commander, Gen. Braxton Bragg, approved only a small raid into Kentucky.
In late June, Morgan's men scouted the rain-swollen Cumberland River marking the border between Tennessee and Kentucky. The normally placid river was now half a mile wide, choked with floating logs and other storm runoff. Anxious to get his raid on the road, Morgan began crossing his men on July 2 when the river was still overflowing its banks. He had more than 2,500 with him, 1,000 more than his orders authorized.
The impetuous Morgan should have waited for the swirling river to fall, as it was an impediment to keeping his men together, but because of the flood conditions, the Federals on the Kentucky side had relaxed their patrols. The Federals believed no one would try such a dangerous crossing.
Morgan's men carefully wrapped their cap-and-ball weapons and paper cartridges in rubber blankets and tossed them into make-shift rafts and leaky boats. Many forgot modesty, stripping off their clothes to keep them dry. They jumped into the river, literally swimming bareback or holding onto their horses' tails.
It is hard to hide 2,500 men, scores of wagons and hundreds of mules swimming a river. Union patrols discovered the crossing and rushed to the bank to start shooting at the men in the boats that they could see. What they could not see was that hundreds of Confederates had already landed and were now hidden from view by the bank's slope and trees.
Nineteen-year-old Lt. Bennett Young of Morgan's command, who would gain fame the following year for leading a raid on St. Albans, Vt., remembered: "Those who had clothing on rushed ashore into line. Those who swam with horses, unwilling to be laggard, not halting to dress, seized their cartridge boxes and guns and dashed upon the enemy. The strange sight of naked men engaging in combat amazed the enemy."
Bennett's assessment was accurate. Although the Federals on the Kentucky side of the Cumberland were superior in numbers and had heard reports of large numbers of Confederate cavalrymen approaching from the south, Morgan's crossing at several locations had confused them. By the time the Union forces had organized, Morgan was already in Kentucky and moving north.
Morgan and his men would later cross the Ohio River, clearly against Bragg's orders to bring supplies back from Kentucky, and spend the next three weeks raiding southern Indiana and Ohio. Many of the men, including Morgan himself, would be captured and imprisoned. The Confederate high command was enraged at Morgan's insubordination, but the raid entered Civil War history as one of the boldest ever attempted by a cavalry command.
July 1863 must have been a hot month as another nude battle was fought in North Carolina within weeks of Morgan's skirmish in Kentucky.
The July 26 Battle of Boon's Mill, a few miles east of the important railroad bridge crossing of the Roanoke River at Weldon, pitted a few score Confederates against two regiments of Union soldiers trying to take and burn the bridge. Had the Federals succeeded, the steady stream of supply trains coming up from Wilmington, N.C., bound for the Confederate depot at Petersburg, Va., would have dried up.
Learning of the impending Union raid, Confederate Gen. Matt Ransom rushed from Richmond to take command of the troops in the area. Ransom was scouting the approach the Federals would take to the bridge when he saw them and they saw him. He rushed back toward the Boon's Mill pond, yelling for the soldiers to take up the planks of the bridge behind him. As he rode over the bridge, Ransom realized a large number of his men were skinny-dipping, having ignored the rumors that Federals were on their way.
The outnumbered Confederates had only two cannons to the Federals' nine guns, but they held out all day until the demoralized Federals retreated, giving up the opportunity to rob the Confederacy of those vital supplies.
The lesson learned from these two nude battles still applies today - never fight naked Southerners armed with pistols, rifles and cannons.
*****
Don't forget swords, knives.
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