U.S.A. Brigadier General George W. Morgan and eight thousand men reached here on October 3, 1862, on their way to Camp Dennison, Ohio, after retreating more than two hundred miles from Cumberland Gap in sixteen days while being harassed by C.S.A. Morgan’s Raiders. U.S.A. forces had held the Gap, but Confederate operations based on Barbourville, twenty-four miles north of the Gap, had cut off Union supplies and made the retreat necessary.