Covered Bridge photograph

This image shows a covered bridge near Chester, Ohio, where John Morgan made his escape. John Hunt Morgan was a prominent Confederate cavalry officer in the American Civil War. The Northern soldiers took Morgan and most of his captured men to Columbus after an attempted raid into Ohio. The enlisted men were confined in the Camp Chase Confederate prison camp. Morgan and several of his officers were held at the Ohio Penitentiary. Morgan arrived there on October 1. He and several of his men immediately made plans to escape. They tunneled out of a cell into an airshaft on November 13, 1863. They remained in their cells until November 27, when Morgan and six of his soldiers used the airshaft to reach the prison yard. They then fashioned a rope from their prison uniforms and scaled the wall. Utilizing some of the one thousand dollars that his sister had smuggled into the prison inside a Bible, Morgan purchased a train ticket to Cincinnati. He then made his escape across the Ohio River into Kentucky. After his escape, Morgan returned to the Confederate army. He led cavalry forces in Tennessee and Kentucky. On September 4, 1864, Northern soldiers surrounded a farmhouse near Greenville, Tennessee, where Morgan was staying. The Confederate general attempted to escape from the house, but was shot by the Union soldiers. Morgan died from his wounds. General John Hunt Morgan is buried in Lexington, Kentucky