Civil War Fortifications

Reports of Kirby Smith's CSA troops approaching Cincinnati caused panic in September 1862. Gen. Lew Wallace led Union troops and volunteers from rural Ohio, known as Squirrel Hunters, across the Ohio River on a hastily constructed pontoon bridge made of coal barges. Marching south to Kentucky hills, they fortified the area at Newport, Covington, and Forts Mitchell and Wright. Some 50,000 guarded the approaches to Cincinnati. After CSA Gen. Henry Heth tried this strong defensive line, the Rebel army retreated. Lew Wallace later wrote Ben Hur, published in 1880. The pontoon bridge was laid in the shadows of the stone piers of the John Roebling Suspension Bridge, prototype of his Brooklyn Bridge.

Covington, Kentucky · United States