Civil War Action At "Ashland"

While Confederate armies were retreating from Kentucky after the Battle of Perryville, Colonel John Hunt Morgan operated behind the pursuing Union army with Colonel Basil W. Duke's Second Kentucky Cavalry Regiment, Colonel Richard M. Gano's Cavalry Battalion, Colonel William Campbell Preston Breckinridge's Cavalry Battalion, and a two-gun section of artillery under Sergeant C. C. Corbett. Morgan rode from Bryantsville through Lancaster to Gum Springs and Richmond, then toward Lexington. After scouts reported that two battalions from the Third and Fourth Ohio Cavalry Regiments were camped in a woodlot behind the Clay Mansion near Lexington and that some were in town, Morgan divided his command. Gano's and Breckinridge's battalions, with the artillery, crossed the Kentucky River at Clay's Ferry and approached Ashland by way of the Richmond Road, while Morgan, with Duke's Second Kentucky, crossed the river below Clay's Ferry, took by-roads to the Tates Creek Pike, and approached Ashland from the south, while directing two companies toward Lexington to arrest any movement of enemy cavalry there. At dawn on October 18, 1862, Breckinridge's dismounted troopers attacked the Ohioans camped in the woods ahead, with Gano's battalion, mounted, forming behind, and Corbett's artillery opening fire. At the same time Duke's Second Kentucky arrived, dismounted to the right, and opened fire on the Ohioans' rear. The Ohioans broke in confusion; those not killed were captured or scattered. Morgan's cousin, Major George Washington Morgan, was mortally wounded nearby and died at Hopemont in Lexington. Morgan's men captured two companies of the Fourth Ohio Cavalry at the Phoenix Hotel and the courthouse in town. Morgan paroled 290 captured Union officers and men at the Clay Mansion, and his command left Lexington that afternoon to return to Tennessee. Confederate forces engaged numbered 1800, with killed, wounded, and missing unknown. Union forces engaged numbered 294; 4 were killed and 290 captured, of whom 24 were wounded.

Lexington-Fayette, Kentucky · United States