At this site Confederate Colonel John Hunt Morgan began his famous First Kentucky Raid with the objective of destroying the Union force in and around Tompkinsville. Riding through the night, Morgan and his raiders left Celina, Tennessee on July 8, 1862, crossed the Cumberland River, and surprised Union forces in the early morning hours of July 9. Cannon fire awakened the small village of Tompkinsville, and by many accounts the fall of the Union forces took only two hours. The Confederates captured the garrison along with logistical supplies and many Union soldiers, including the commander of the Union forces, Maj. Thomas J. Jordon of the 9th Pennsylvania Cavalry, whom Morgan later paroled along with his command. After the battle, Morgan's raiders marched northward through Kentucky, and in twenty-four days Morgan and his men traveled over one thousand miles, captured seventeen towns, destroyed government supplies and arms in them, and paroled nearly twelve hundred Union troops. Months later Morgan returned to Tompkinsville as a brigadier general, and this time he and his raiders only bivouacked in the village as they began their next Kentucky raid, the Christmas Raid of 1862-63. Before attacking the Union garrison in Tompkinsville, Morgan dismounted his men, reflecting the common Civil War cavalry practice in which both Union and Confederate horsemen often fought on foot while one of every four men stayed behind holding his horse and those of three others.