The Capture of Capt. Kendrick's Detail

Capt. William G. Kendrick (WGK)

On May 2, 1862, Capt. William G. Kendrick (bio), the regiment's senior line officer, and his detached detail serving with the the telegraph corps near Pulaski, Tennessee, were interrupted by Confederate cavalry under the notorious John Hunt Morgan (bio).  The rebel horsemen approached unrecognized to within twenty yards of the detail before leveling their rifles at Capt. Kendrick, who was in no position to resist.  Kendrick recounted

The first thing I knew twenty rifles were leveled at me by a desperate gang of Guerillas swearing they wold kill me if I moved.  One snapped his piece.  Had it gone off I might not be now writing this letter.  Such is the fortune of war.  I took supper with Capt. Morgan.  He and all his officers treated me as a gentleman.  I had not one unkind word spoken to me after I got in the town by the Rebel soldiers.  The ladies were very jubilant over our Capture.  I had my album and the little boys ambrotypes with me.  An old lady asked if I had children.  I showed the little boys.  She shed tears over them saying poor, dear little fellows, their father a prisoner and so far from them.  There was quite a rush of ladies to see them, nearly all pronouncing them the handsomest of children they ever saw.  I soon had a number of friends amongst the women, who pitied me for the sake of my dear little boys.  [WGK 5/3/1862]

John Hunt Morgan (Source)

Word of the capture of Capt. Kendrick and ten or fifteen others from the Lancaster County Regiment quickly got back to Negley's brigade camp thirty miles north in Columbia and caused much excitement.  Around midnight, four companies--Companies C, E, I, and G--of the 79th Pennsylvania with some cavalry and artillery set out in the darkness to find out what was going on.  As a corporal in Company E, correspondent Elias H. Witmer made the forced overnight march of thirty-one miles.  When the expeditionary force came within five miles of Pulaski, they ran Kendrick and the others, who had been lumped in with 200 prisoners from Gen. Mitchell's division and paroled.  

The incident clearly elicited the fighting spirit of the men in the 79th Pennsylvania.  Witmer, the Mountville storekeeper, concluded his letter by creatively asserting, "A dead codfish could as easily climb a greased sapling, tail foremost, with a loaf of bread in his mouth, as a band of these marauders to whip the Lancaster Co. Regiment."  His entire letter describing the expedition, published in the May 14, 1862, Daily Evening Express, is here: (alternate link)


As paroled prisoners, Capt. Kendrick and the other men returned from the front lines. I'm not sure how the exchange process worked, but Kendrick sat out the rest of 1862 and would rejoin the army as a key staff officer for Gen. Negley.

Better Know an Enemy: John Hunt Morgan

General John Hunt Morgan (Source)

Name: John Hunt Morgan (bio)
Birth: June 1, 1825 in Huntsville, Alabama
Notable Events: Many significant raids in Kentucky in 1862,  Led major raid into Ohio during the summer of 1863
Death: September 4, 1864, shot dead during Union cavalry raid in Greeneville, Tennessee

Around this time in late 1861, one Confederate officer entered the consciousness of the men of the 79th Pennsylvania and the rest of the Union regiments slowly crawling their way down the Louisville and Nashville Railroad.  Captain John Hunt Morgan, leader of an irregular company of Confederate cavalrymen, began a series of daring raids in the area that confounded the Union advance and made picket duty in rural Kentucky a lot more interesting for soldiers in McCook's Division.

With the success of his raids in Kentucky through 1862 and the national attention they received, Morgan's rank in the Confederate army rose so that he became the colonel of a cavalry regiment and then a brigadier general, eventually leading a raid deep into Ohio (which ended in the capture of him and his command) in the summer of 1863.  Through 1862, Morgan's operations often intersected with the 79th Pennsylvania's operations, and resulted in the Lancaster County Regiment spending much of the year running around the back roads of Kentucky and Tennessee trying to protect infrastructure and supplies from Morgan. 

Officers of Morgan's Cavalry, photographed while imprisoned at the Western Penitentiary in Allegheny City, Pennsylvania (now Pittsburgh), after their capture in July 1863 in Ohio (Source)

Morgan even gained enough notoriety that his name became a verb in the Lancasterians' lexicon, as in many of the wounded members of the 79th Pennsylvania in field hospitals after the Battle of Perryville, Kentucky, were "morganized" when Morgan's cavalry captured and paroled them in October 1862 [INQ, 10/29/1862].  A large detail of the 79th Pennsylvania was captured by Morgan while building telegraph lines in May 1862, and Captain William G. Kendrick of Company A even got to eat dinner with his captor, but that's another story for another time.

If you're interested in learning more about Captain Morgan and his strategy and tactics in late 1861 and early 1862, you can read an 1867 book entitled History of Morgan's Cavalry by his brother-in-law, Basil W. Duke.  Pages 94-109 cover this time period, and shed light on a couple aspects of the 79th Pennsylvania's experience at this time:

1. McCook's division had no cavalry or no effective cavalry and was basically blind at this time.  This meant the men of the 79th Pennsylvania spent many of their days on company-sized scouting expeditions with 100 or 200 men going out a couple miles into the countryside to investigate rumors or see what they could find.  Also, any shots heard in the distance or rumor had to be taken seriously as there was no way to tell if it was just a couple Confederate cavalrymen causing trouble or the whole Confederate army marching up the road.  
2. Both sides relied on civilians as a system of information and alarm.  Morgan even played a sort of repeated cat-and-mouse game on his raids with civilians who would see him and dash back to Union lines.