John Hunt Morgan and his men arrived in Mackville on Saturday evening, July 12, 1862, after raids on Lebanon and Springfield. Soon after they arrived, a skirmish broke out between Morgan’s men and the Home Guard. The Home Guard captured two Confederates and severely wounded another, while Morgan took two local Union men prisoner. Eyewitness accounts later recorded by local historian Marshall Hall say the Confederates entered town wearing ladies’ hats with plumes and streamers stolen from a millinery shop. Morgan and his men spent time at the Old Hotel, where bartender Bob Reed served them whiskey, and they even poured whiskey from barrels into large buckets and tried to make their horses drink it. When women preparing food at the Methodist Church for an all-day service the next day heard Morgan had arrived, they fled and left everything behind, and Morgan’s men ate the abandoned food. Morgan was later overheard saying that he and his men had heard of the land of milk and honey but this was the first time they had found it. Before leaving Mackville the following morning, the Confederates and the Home Guard exchanged prisoners, and Morgan then rode north to Harrodsburg.