On May 11, 1862, Col. John Hunt Morgan and his advance guard seized the Cave City depot and captured the next train that stopped there, after which his entire command arrived and destroyed the train, including four passenger cars, a locomotive, and forty-five freight cars, by filling the firebox with wood, setting it ablaze, firing each car, and sending it racing down the tracks toward Bowling Green. Morgan later recalled the burning train speeding to destruction, and for weeks travelers through Cave City saw the aftermath where the locomotive had exploded, with burned grass and underbrush, uprooted trees, and wreckage scattered for a hundred yards on both sides of the track. The next day at noon, Morgan's men stopped another passenger train bound for Nashville from Louisville by blocking the tracks and preventing it from reversing, confiscated $6,000 in cash from the express agent, and captured two Union officers and several enlisted men before allowing the train to return safely to Louisville. Stories of the raid became associated with a romantic image of chivalry because of Morgan's treatment of female passengers, including his reported remark that Southern gentlemen did not inspect ladies baggage or trunks. After Morgan's defeat in Lebanon, Tennessee, he had set out on a brief raid into Kentucky's Green River country, where he had begun his military career, and, finding Bowling Green too well guarded, rode north to Cave City. After the Cave City Raid, Union Gen. George W. Morgan deployed infantry to guard trains and stations in Central Kentucky; George W. Morgan and John Hunt Morgan were not related.