American Journey: Lineage, Legacy, Pride and Change

By Gregory J. Ewing

Information gives us the power to paint a colorful picture of our predecessors as individuals, and the times in which they lived. This 21st Century man has endeavored to capture and contextualize the life and times of one 19th Century man, and the national catastrophe in which he played a part.

Understanding the past is to unde

• Language: English
• Publisher: Gregory J. Ewing
• Release date: Aug 25, 2022
• ISBN: 9781088040928

Book preview

Chapter One

Freedom: The absence of necessity, coercion, or constraint in choice or action.

---

Three men crossed the river in a small flatboat on a warm summer day. Three shotguns were hidden on the floor. It was a large river, a half-mile wide.

The river was swollen from powerful thunderstorms the night before. When the three men pulled up to a small town along the north edge of the river, they tied up the boat, picked up their shotguns and walked directly to a warehouse nearby. Just a few minutes behind them was a ferryboat carrying more than thirty armed men.

The thirty men were not pursuing the three men who crossed over first. Rather, they were in league with them. Together, they would carry out the most daring raid of the war so far. Their actions would bruise the pride of an entire state, causing a reaction much larger than the raid itself. Once the raid was over, people throughout the state would be enraged. Many were determined to exact revenge.

In a matter of hours, thousands of men with guns would mobilize to protect river towns like this one. Hundreds would cross the river southward to catch or preferably kill the raiders and their supporters. Young men would heed the call to arms to protect the honor of their state, and to avenge the dishonor inflicted by the raid. Thousands would volunteer for military service for their state and for their country. Many would fight and many would die participating in the greatest conflict in American history.

The American Civil War was not foremost in my mind as a child. After all, I was born ninety-nine years after the conflict ended. Like most children, I simply didn’t care about such things.

As a child in the early 1970s, I had little use for the historical accounts or other stories handed down about the Civil War. Neither did my friends. By the time I became aware of the war between the United States of America and the Confederate States of America, the Civil War seemed little more than ancient history. As a White boy growing up on the north side of the Mason-Dixon Line, I only knew that we Northerners had won the war, and that we had freed the slaves.

The town in which I grew up was just across the river from a former slave-state. From this vantage, the Civil War was actually always present, even if I couldn’t see it. As children in this border town, we’d look southward across the river at the tree-lined lowlands on the other side. We didn’t think about the river as a border between slavery and freedom. The Civil War was usually the furthest thing from our minds, even though it was always there, out-of-focus and in the background.

In the late third quarter of the 20 th Century most American children were thoroughly free-range, even at a very young age. I was one of those free-range kids. So were my friends. Although inconceivable in later times, children as young as six or seven would often roam around among themselves, sometimes far and wide, and nearly always without adult supervision. By the time we were older preteens, our mobility during the summertime was only limited by the distance we could travel on our bicycles, and the requirement that we had to be home for supper.

We would roam around this little river town on bicycles. Other than avoiding busy streets when we could, we had little or no fear for our personal safety. We free-range kids would keep our own company. We would ride our bicycles in groups ranging from several to as many as ten individuals. We would explore the town and the rural areas on the outskirts of town. We would also explore the riverfront. Exploring was the order of the day virtually all summer long.

We didn’t care about the adult-inspired conventions of private property. Fences were climbed, gates were opened, and vacant buildings were entered. Our fearlessness and curiosity were facilitated by one reality we all knew. There is safety in numbers. As long as there were several of us along for the ride, we were invincible.

We especially enjoyed the dilapidated riverfront in the oldest part of town. Next to the river was a small historic marker. The little sign proclaimed that this was the first town in the North to be captured by Confederate forces. The American Civil War was proclaimed right there for all to see. We saw the sign. We knew what it said. We mostly ignored it. We had a lot of things on our minds, and the ancient history of this little town was not one of them.

We’d search the river’s edge for discarded glass soda bottles or beer bottles which were littered along the shore. There was always plenty of trash along the river in those days. If a soda bottle was in good condition, we’d save it for the five-cent bottle return at the grocery store. If a bottle was in poor condition, and most were, we would run upstream and throw it into the river.

We threw bottles in the river to see if we could sink them. A bottle, bobbing along in the current, would be subjected to a violent aerial assault. We’d hit the bottle with a virtual hail-storm of rocks, dirt clods or even pieces of other broken bottles. In this way the trash bottles were thoroughly abused, much the same as river gunboats more than a century earlier during the Civil War. Under the right circumstances, the 20 th Century bottles were just as vulnerable as the Civil War gunboats. Land-based fixed artillery could wreak havoc on them.

Just like the river gunboats, the bottles would usually float by without sinking. Each bottle received multiple hits, but they were rarely sunk. When a bottle would sink or, better yet, shatter from a direct hit, we would all celebrate. The sight and sound of a bottle shattering in the river only made us want to throw in another bottle and begin the assault all over again. Sinking bottles had an addictive quality. The more bottles we sunk, the more we wanted to keep trying to sink. We learned early that few things are more fun than winning.

In plain sight of the historic marker describing the Confederate raid, we would sink bottles, skip rocks, and use our individual and collective imaginations while we played along the shoreline. Mostly boys, although the occasional sister would join, we would play-act great and heroic moments of valor along the river shore, or in the woods, or in the fields. Sometimes we’d pretend to protect the town from the Confederate invaders described on the sign. We would shoot our imaginary machine guns, each carefully crafted from selected sticks found as driftwood along the shoreline. We’d gun down imaginary Confederates as they came ashore. The only thing we knew about the Confederates was that they were the bad guys, and that they lost the Civil War.

As we fired our imaginary machine guns, our imaginary enemies would fall dead in heaps along the shore, every single time. We were always victorious in every battle against whoever we selected as our enemy of the day. When we played in the woods, sometimes our imaginary enemy was the Communist Viet Cong from the evening news, although we just called them Vietnamese. When we played in the fields, sometimes the enemy was the Germans or the Japanese from World War II movies. Occasionally, one or more of us would pretend to be wounded, throwing ourselves down in the most dramatic ways. Even when we were pretending to be wounded, we still prevailed in battle. We would bend against our imaginary enemies, but never break. We were always winners.

Probably more than one of these 20 th Century free-range kids playing by the river had genealogical links to the actual Civil War, but none of us knew it at the time. I would discover much later in life that my own lineage extended deeply into the conflict. I had ancestors who fought on both sides.

During the late 20 th and early 21 st Centuries, looking back as an adult, I marvel at the freedom of independent movement that was afforded us as young children back in the day. Sometimes it makes me sad to consider the loss of innocence, the loss of childhood independence, and the loss of freedom to explore without fear.

As an adult, it is inconceivable that I would have given such freedoms to my own kids when they were that young. Our culture has changed dramatically in the years since I was a kid. Much of that cultural change has been undoubtedly good. Social progress has been made in so many ways. Some of that cultural change, however, has clearly tended toward the negative.

During the last two decades of the 20 th Century, the provocative mass media began to gradually force-feed fear into the national psyche. The old newsroom adage, if it bleeds it leads, became the daily standard in a never-ending mission to increase advertising revenue, subscription numbers, and ratings. Before long, a largely irrational sense of personal danger was ingrained into most Americans. If local violent crime wasn’t bloody enough, newspapers and network television affiliates could always feature a fearful story from somewhere else. Displays of violent crime eventually became a mainstay in many forms of media presentation, sometimes obliterating the line between news and entertainment.

The stoking of parental fear concerning the safety of children resulted in a sort of cultural revolution in which childhood independence and freedom were gradually revoked all across America and beyond. Granting children such extreme and independent freedom of movement became not only inconceivable, but even illegal in some instances. Free-range kids became an extinct species. The replacement of childhood freedom with fear helped to create a 21 st Century antisocial subculture with potentially dangerous consequences for all of us. However, with this knowledge, we have the power as individuals and as a community to change the narrative, to live without fear, or at least minimize it.

In the middle of July 1862 more than thirty Confederate guerrillas from Kentucky crossed the Ohio River and came ashore at Newburgh, Indiana. They terrorized the population of the small river town. Their plan was first to shock the locals in order to strike fear into all those who might otherwise resist.

The raiders’ plan included the use of guile, surprise and deception to force a quick surrender of the town. Their primary objective was to confiscate a cache of Union weapons from a riverfront warehouse. They also planned to seize any other useful items which might help to fortify a growing number of Confederate guerrilla fighters across the river in Kentucky.

In 1862 the population of Newburgh, Indiana was around twelve hundred. Decades earlier Newburgh on the Ohio River had been the largest and most prosperous town for many miles up and down the river. But when the railroads came and by-passed the town some years earlier, another town about twelve miles downriver had grown into a full-fledged city.

Evansville, Indiana had a population of about twelve thousand by 1862. Although the river town of Newburgh was only about twelve miles from the River City of Evansville, without a railroad connection, Newburgh was mostly inconsequential to Evansville. From an economic perspective at least, Newburgh was a far cry from the growing city of Evansville, Indiana.

On the day of the Confederate raid in 1862, for reasons unknown, the telegraph providing communications from Newburgh to Evansville was inoperable. Whether the result of thunderstorms the night before, or the result of nefarious conspirators on the north side of the river, the inoperable telegraph would prove especially helpful to the Confederates.

With a population of around twenty-three hundred in 1970, Newburgh had not grown much in the century since the Confederate raid. The 1970 population number may be a little deceiving since Evansville had grown substantially during the same period. By 1970, suburban development had pushed the east side of one, Evansville, much closer to the west side of the other, Newburgh.

In the late third quarter of the 20 th Century Newburgh’s historic riverfront area consisted of a mish-mash of old, dilapidated commercial buildings, some dating back to the antebellum period. These old buildings were mixed with architecturally uninspiring commercial and public buildings from later periods. A few large and beautiful antebellum homes were still located a block or two off the riverfront. Some of those historic homes were in good condition and some would have to wait a few more decades before being properly restored. There were also newer homes which had been built a short bike ride upriver on higher ground, some with excellent river views.

In the early 1970s, much of the core of the old commercial riverfront had a generally abandoned and desolate look about it. We free-range kids were drawn to this dilapidated riverfront in the oldest part of town because it had very little traffic of any kind, whether pedestrians or motorists, and virtually no river traffic at all except for coal barges which seemed to be constantly passing by. From the perspective of most adults in those days this part of old Newburgh, right along the riverfront, was simply run-down and generally to be avoided. Decades of disinvestment had taken a severe economic and aesthetic toll.

Most people at the time didn’t value old commercial riverfronts anywhere in the United States. Newburgh, Indiana was no exception. Most people didn’t recognize the beauty of the old riverfronts, and their economic potential for reinvestment, until decades later. In the early 1970s, in Newburgh at least, most adults could only see multiple layers of peeling paint throughout the exterior, and interior, of many of the older buildings. Some buildings had their windows bricked up. Some old buildings were more or less vacant, and there were empty, weedy lots scattered about.

From the perspective of us free-range kids, however, the old Newburgh riverfront was the perfect place to explore, play, imagine, and create fantastical adventures. The old, nearly abandoned, riverfront was ready-made for us. We loved it, but we were not entirely alone. There was another group for which the old, abandoned and run-down riverfront was a perfect fit. Sometimes we would see and hear the unique sights and sounds of the Grim Reapers.

The leader of the 1862 Confederate raid was an opportunistic, dedicated and determined Rebel named Adam Rankin Johnson. As the self-appointed leader of the raiders, the twenty-eight-year-old Adam Johnson was brimming with confidence.

Johnson had recently led a nighttime hit-and-run attack on Union soldiers relaxing in and around their quarters in Henderson, Kentucky, another Ohio River town about twenty-five miles downstream. In that assault, Johnson with only a few men managed to fatally ambush Union soldiers, causing the federal authorities to fortify Henderson with additional forces. It also gave Johnson what he wanted most of all, a following among those in Western Kentucky who supported the Confederate cause for Southern independence.

Beyond his notable boldness, Adam Johnson was a self-promoter seeking glory and notoriety. At the onset of the Civil War Johnson was a lowly scout for the famous Confederate cavalry commander, Nathan Bedford Forrest. Adam Johnson fought with Forrest at Sacramento, Kentucky in December of 1861. Sacramento was Nathan Bedford Forrest’s first victory over a Union cavalry force, his first victory of many yet to come. Johnson also participated in the daring Rebel cavalry escape from Fort Donelson, also led by Forrest, on the night before the Confederate surrender of the fort in February of 1862.

Just five months after the Confederates surrendered Fort Donelson along the Cumberland River near the Kentucky-Tennessee border, Johnson would boldly lead the Newburgh raid directly into Union territory. Adam Rankin Johnson had been promoted to Colonel, a title of which he was very proud. However, Colonel Johnson was not given a command. As was fairly common, particularly for the Confederates, Johnson would be required to find and recruit his own command. He was not assigned soldiers as part of a standing Rebel army. Johnson worked hard to recruit his own men. To do so, he would need to inspire like-minded men to join him, a task he was eager to pursue.

When the Congress of the Confederate States of America issued their Partisan Ranger Act in 1861, the initiative shown fifteen months later by Colonel Johnson at Newburgh must have been exactly the type of operation they had in mind. Johnson would have understood the Confederate Partisan Ranger Act gave him the authority to raid border towns, to confiscate his enemy’s weapons and supplies, and to give Northerners a reason to question their own military position at home. Plus, the weapons and supplies in the warehouse in Newburgh were sorely needed by Johnson’s growing cadre of Confederate guerrillas in Kentucky. As a bonus, confiscating these weapons and supplies would also remove them from the stockpiles of weapons and supplies which would otherwise be used by Johnson’s sworn enemy, the United States of America.

In a sort of intelligence coup, Colonel Johnson’s men were very familiar with the potential value of little Newburgh and what the town had to offer. At least one of Johnson’s band of guerrillas had recently lived there. The knowledge he and others provided meant that Newburgh was a temptation Johnson could not resist. The Confederate guerrillas knew that Newburgh hosted a warehouse stocked with weapons. They knew the Home Guard in Newburgh, the local volunteer defense force, was non-existent. They knew the warehouse was just steps from the river and, even better, that it was unguarded.

The Confederate raiders came ashore in 1862 along the same stretch of riverbank where we would sink bottles more than a century later. The Confederate raiders came ashore along the same stretch of riverbank where the Shawnee people had routinely come ashore only eighty years earlier. The Shawnee lived in this area for generations before they were driven northward, away from the Ohio River and away from White settlements near the river. Long before the arrival of the Shawnee, the people of the Mississippian mound-building cultures had come ashore here as well. The Mississippian mound-building peoples hunted and fished along these shores on-foot or by canoe as early as one thousand years before the American Civil War.

Looking further back in time, the Native American predecessors of the Mississippian mound builders lived in this area for thousands of years. Evidence of this long-standing human activity is clear. In the late third quarter of the 20 th Century, my free-range friends and I would occasionally find ancient projectile points. We called them arrowheads. We knew the arrowheads were old, but we had no idea how old. We knew the arrowheads were used for hunting or warfare.

We also knew these projectile points were essential to the survival of the Native American people who employed them in earlier times. We just couldn’t imagine how ancient they actually were. We assumed they were hundreds of years old. We were off by a long way. Some had been crafted by people living here between five and ten thousand years ago.

In 1862 Colonel Adam Rankin Johnson knew that a cache of modern weapons was unguarded in a warehouse near the river in Newburgh, Indiana. He also knew there were eighty sick and wounded Union soldiers recuperating in a makeshift hospital nearby, a bit too close for comfort. Most of the convalescing Union soldiers were in the town’s only sizable hotel, converted to a hospital, while some were in a large private home around the corner.

Johnson also knew that the town’s militia, or Home Guard, was basically non-existent. He knew he didn’t need to devise a plan to deal with them. After all, that’s precisely why the weapons were in a warehouse in the first place. These weapons had not been distributed to the local militia, or Home Guard. Colonel Johnson knew that most of the town’s young men were hundreds of miles away, fighting for the Union army. Johnson had the initiative and desire to seize the cache of weapons in the warehouse. He had the military intelligence necessary to accomplish it. He understood the disposition of the town, its residents and its hospitalized Union soldiers.

Once all the Confederate raiders were ashore, they quickly dispersed into smaller groups according to Johnson’s plan. Once the raid was underway, the convalescing Union soldiers and the other townsfolk had no idea how many Rebels were in their midst. There was something else the people of Newburgh didn’t know, something that Johnson would reveal when the time was right. Colonel Adam Rankin Johnson understood that the use of deception would hold the key to success in his raid on Newburgh. After all, from time immemorial deception has proven to be the deciding factor between success and failure in all manner of competitive endeavors, especially military conflict.

Chapter Two

Pyrrhic: Costly to the point of negating or outweighing expected benefits.

---

As the Confederates fanned-out to their assigned locations in Newburgh, Indiana, Colonel Johnson and two of his men entered the warehouse near the river. What they found was exactly what they hoped to see, two-hundred rifled muskets, seventy-five swords, and one-hundred thirty brand new pistols with holsters.

As expected, the warehouse was completely unguarded. Once the Confederates confirmed the existence of the weapons, the second phase of the raid began in accordance with Johnson’s plan. Several men were assigned the task of carrying the weapons to the ferryboat, while others were stationed at key intersections approaching the riverfront. Men were charged with securing the private home used as a hospital for sick and wounded Union soldiers. Meanwhile, Johnson headed to the hotel-hospital where most of the eighty Union soldiers in town were convalescing.

By the time Colonel Johnson reached the hotel-hospital, several of the town’s citizens already understood what was happening. They alerted others, who in turn passed along the news to more people. False rumors and actual facts quickly circulated around town, neighbor to neighbor, house to house, building to building. Many of Newburgh’s residents could also plainly see that armed men were posted at various intersections. As citizens peered out of their windows, it was obvious that Newburgh was in the midst of some sort of armed occupation.

When Colonel Johnson arrived at the hotel-hospital, he was met by a number of Union soldiers who had been tipped off moments earlier. When Johnson opened the door, he was greeted by a group of armed Union soldiers, each taking aim. Johnson was thoroughly outmanned and outgunned. In typical Adam Rankin Johnson fashion, however, he presented his most confident self, and continued with the next phase of his audacious plan. Johnson identified himself and informed the Union soldiers in no uncertain terms that they were outnumbered, that they were outgunned, and that they were surrounded by a superior military force. All of these statements were lies. Johnson demanded their immediate surrender. At about this time, a prominent local businessman arrived at the hotel-hospital.

Union Bethell and his brother, Thomas, were relatively wealthy businessmen, dealing in tobacco, cotton and other dry goods from the river trade. Union Bethell also just happened to own the riverside warehouse where the weapons were stored. With an appropriate first name, Union Bethell was the leader of the local Home Guard, functioning as the military authority for the town, despite the presence of eighty hospitalized federal soldiers. At first, Union Bethell was unwilling to accept the Confederate raiders as more than a handful of robbers and thieves descending on the honest, hard-working citizens of Newburgh. Union Bethell also had a strong personality. His initial response was to openly curse Johnson and the Confederates and to strongly object to Johnson’s demand for surrender.

Although the Confederates were actually outmanned and outgunned, Johnson began the third phase of his plan. With supreme confidence, Johnson reiterated his false statements. He once again informed everyone in the vicinity that they were surrounded by a much larger Confederate force. He told them that surrender was their only reasonable option. Johnson informed Union Bethel and the Union soldiers that he had the means to destroy the town and perhaps kill everyone in it, and that he would do exactly that if they did not immediately surrender.

Colonel Johnson’s threat appeared to be legitimate. The evidence was in plain sight. Johnson directed their attention to two field guns, also known as artillery pieces or cannons, located in a clearing on the Kentucky side of the river. Both cannons were pointed directly at the town. Also visible near these artillery pieces were the Confederates’ horses. Some horses were out in the open and some appeared to recede into the nearby woods.

From the vantage of Newburgh, across the Ohio River, it was impossible to count all the horses. From the looks of things, there might have been as many as fifty or perhaps one hundred horses, which meant there were probably as many Confederates on the north side of the river. Once Union Bethel and the Union soldiers saw the field guns and all those horses at the edge of the woods across the river, Johnson reissued his demand that they either surrender immediately, or he would order his artillery to fire on the town. Colonel Johnson then assured Union Bethel that his artillerymen, when so ordered, would maintain a constant barrage until the town was completely razed.

Union Bethell later stated that the safety of the town’s civilian population was foremost on his mind at this time. With most of the town’s younger men away, many serving in the Union army, Bethell was concerned for the safety of the citizens and the soldiers in the hospitals. Since the town was otherwise mostly occupied by women, children and older men, Bethell believed he had no choice. Once Union Bethel decided to surrender, so did the Union soldiers in the hospital. After all, many of the convalescing Union soldiers were in no condition to put up much of a fight anyway.

While medical supplies were confiscated from the hospital, a few Rebel sympathizers volunteered to help the Confederates load the weapons and other goods onto their boats. Some even directed the raiders toward additional opportunities for booty, whether from businesses or from private homes in the vicinity. After Union Bethel and the Union soldiers surrendered the town, there was no rule of law in Newburgh, except for Colonel Johnson himself. Once all the weapons were loaded, the Rebels began to confiscate anything of value that might support their operations back in Kentucky. This is when the Confederate guerrillas transformed into common thieves running roughshod over the town of Newburgh.

Predictably, military discipline broke down and for several hours the Rebels simply looted anything and everything of value they could lay their hands on, provided it could be loaded on their boats. Once they had taken just about everything they could carry, and then some, the Confederates commandeered a few additional small boats and made their way southward across the river.

After the Confederates were out of town, the residents emerged from their homes and businesses, watching in disbelief as the Rebels loaded their booty onto wagons on the Kentucky side of the Ohio River. The citizens of Newburgh watched silently as the Rebels mounted their horses and disappeared southbound out of sight on rough woodland roads. Oddly enough, they left their two cannons behind.

In 1780, during the American Revolutionary War, eighty-two years before Colonel Johnson’s Confederate raid on Newburgh, Indiana, Colonel William Washington, a distant cousin of George Washington, engaged in a masterful deception to great effect. Colonel Washington with a much smaller force of patriots surrounded Loyalist Colonel Rowland Rugeley and his one-hundred twenty-five armed men. Colonel Rugeley’s loyalists were in a strong position, fortified in his house and barn in Camden, North Carolina.

The only hope for Colonel Washington to dislodge a larger and well-armed force behind such fortifications would be to employ artillery, but he had no artillery. He had no cannon. After some thought, Colonel Washington ordered his men to build a Quaker Gun which was, in this instance, a darkened pine log placed among carriage wheels made to look just like a cannon, especially from a distance. Once Colonel Washington presented the Quaker Gun at a reasonable distance, he offered Colonel Rugeley one last opportunity to save his men and himself, but only if they immediately surrendered.

Convinced of certain destruction otherwise, Colonel Rugeley surrendered his entire command to Colonel Washington in 1780. Not a single shot was fired.

Deception is a key element in many, if not most, competitive endeavors. In games of competition such as chess or poker, deception is front and center. In many team-oriented contests the use of deception can be a vital determinant of success. In baseball, for example, the batter doesn’t know if the next pitch will be a fastball, a curveball, a slider, a knuckleball or a change-up. The batter doesn’t know if the next pitch will be in the strike zone or very much out of it, maybe just a few inches from his head. Likewise, the pitcher doesn’t know if the batter will swing away or take the pitch, as directed by a coach using a complex series of hand and arm signals. Baseball is a game of deception throughout every inning from the opening pitch to the last.

American football may appear to the uninitiated as primarily a game of brute force, but it might also be the most popular spectator sport in the United States in which the art of deception reigns supreme. Defensive players don’t know if the next offensive play will be a run or a pass, or some combination of both. Defensive players don’t know which offensive players will try to block them. Quarterbacks utilize the play-action fake, appearing to execute a run or pass play which might quickly evolve into the opposite. Quarterbacks might fake a pass in one direction, or simply feign a long look to the left before passing the ball to an open receiver on the right.

Defensive backs playing American football might blitz across the line of scrimmage in unison. They might move toward the line of scrimmage to defend against the run or fall back into pass coverage. They might execute a delayed blitz, confusing the offense before sprinting across the line in either overwhelming numbers, or with one or two defenders exploiting newly-formed openings along the line. American football is a game where victory is usually dependent upon the application of brute force combined with a great deal of deception.

Much like war, brute force might be the most important component needed to achieve success on the American football field. However, the effective employment of deception might just level the playing field against a stronger opponent. When skillfully deployed, deception can be the key to success in most competitive endeavors. In times of war, however, the stakes are obviously much higher. Games such as baseball or American football might be no more important than a fleeting sense of pride in a school, city, or region. Although competitive games may involve elements of economic gain or loss, all that pales in comparison to war. More than two thousand years before the American Civil War, Sun Tzu, the famous Chinese general and philosopher, wrote that deception is the basis of all warfare.

The use of any means to achieve victory in warfare, including the use of deception, is a standard practice found throughout history. War can be about the very survival of a nation, the survival of a culture, or a way of life. Beyond the issues of survival, war in a post-tribal society may also be waged for the benefit of certain national economic interests, or the interests of a wealthy elite. Regardless of the rationale for war, pride is the fuel that feeds support for the war by the broader population in question. Whether it be the clarion call to defend or expand national, regional, religious, economic or ideological/partisan interests, war cannot be waged without the powerful emotion that pride can generate among the majority of the combatants.

Although war is the application of violence toward political ends, the use of deception during times of war has been standard practice through the ages. The story of the Trojan Horse is probably the most celebrated and referenced use of military deception in the history of Western Civilization. About three thousand years before the American Civil War, the Greek army presented what appeared to be a gift of tribute in the form of an enormous wooden horse to the city of Troy.

Believing the Greeks had given up and gone home, weary after ten years of siege, the Trojans accepted the offering and celebrated their apparent victory over the Greeks. In celebration, the Trojans pulled the giant trophy horse through the gates and into the city. Late at night while the Trojans were sleeping off their victory celebrations, the Greek army quietly marched back toward the city of Troy. Greek commandos hiding inside the giant wooden horse emerged.

The Greek commandos inside the city quietly opened the gates of Troy and the Greek army entered unabated. The Trojan Horse deception was masterfully executed by the Greeks, and the result was beyond terrible for the city of Troy and the Trojan people. In accordance with the social and military conventions of the time and place, further fueled by intense resentment following ten years of bitter warfare in a foreign land, the Greeks were not magnanimous in victory. Slaughter, rape and pillage on an enormous scale became the order of the day.

Most Trojans in the city were killed, and Troy itself was utterly ruined. The destruction of Troy was so complete that its actual location, proof of its very existence, was unknown for thousands of years. Troy was so utterly devastated that the remnants were not discovered and confirmed by archaeologists until the first decade after the American Civil War. The complete destruction of towns and even cities would continue to occur during times of intense warfare through the ages. The American Civil War was no exception.

More than two-thousand years after the fall of Troy and eight hundred years before the American Civil War, the use of deception in warfare forever changed England as well. William the Duke of Normandy was about forty years of age in 1066. With his army of Norman and French soldiers, William was intent on invading and conquering England. He and his army came ashore across the English Channel near Hastings along the southern coast of Britain. The Norman invaders met the Anglo-Saxon army led by King Harold Godwinson on a field of battle about five miles inland from Hastings.

Around twenty thousand soldiers fought in the Battle of Hastings in October of 1066. The two armies were more or less evenly divided. They fought for hours, neither side giving much ground following pitched combat throughout the day. Back and forth they fought, each side taking ground and giving ground as the casualties mounted on both sides. William’s soldiers launched multiple charges against the Anglo-Saxon lines, but failed to break through time and again.

William’s forces were also unable to outflank the Anglo-Saxons because their King had chosen the battlefield wisely. Holding higher ground has been a proven strategy in warfare long before the Norman Conquest of England. Centuries later, during the American Civil War, generals routinely employed this knowledge with success. The Anglo-Saxon use of terrain at the Battle of Hastings in 1066 provided a distinct advantage.

The Anglo-Saxons held the higher ground in tight infantry formations throughout most of the day. During much of the Battle of Hastings, the Anglo-Saxons showed no sign of losing to the Norman invaders. Given the high ground on which the Anglo-Saxons were located, William’s archers initially made little headway against Harold’s infantry. Archers’ arrows are much less lethal when forced to shoot uphill. The upward trajectory simply reduces their speed and effectiveness.

From time-to-time as the battle continued, a few elements of the Anglo-Saxon army broke from their ranks in pursuit of retreating Norman soldiers. Eventually faced with possible annihilation as his army began to suffer from attrition, William’s observations of the Anglo-Saxon infantry caused him to consider the use of deception. Since some elements of the Anglo-Saxon infantry were seen to break ranks in pursuit of retreating Normans, William devised a new plan. This was a tactic he had seen successfully employed on the continent.

William directed his infantry to feign an attack in unison along the entire Anglo-Saxon front. Then, his infantry was directed to rapidly withdraw in an apparent, but fake, panic. Eight hundred years later, on more than one occasion this same tactic was successfully used during the American Civil War.

William’s infantry executed his plan and, right on cue, multiple sections of the Anglo-Saxon infantry broke ranks, each in hot pursuit of retreating Normans. While the Anglo-Saxon army had previously been tightly concentrated in a position of strength on higher ground, now their ranks became effectively thinned. This was the moment when William employed his most effective weapons heretofore blunted by King Harold.

Although Harold’s infantry had been dominant all day due to their large, concentrated defensive position on higher ground, the Normans had many more archers than the Anglo-Saxons. William also had a large cavalry force which the Anglo-Saxons didn’t have at all. While mounted cavalry is not typically effective against concentrated infantry, cavalry can be extremely effective against dispersed infantry out in the open. In accordance with William’s plan, the Anglo-Saxons began to spread out. They fell for the ruse. William’s deception worked, and the future England was forever changed.

Once the Anglo-Saxon infantry was no longer concentrated, and no longer exclusively on higher ground, the Norman cavalry and archers, together, provided the counterbalance necessary to dominate the battlefield. William’s infantry, previously in retreat, turned about and charged back into the dispersed Anglo-Saxon lines, while the Norman cavalry led the charge. Norman victory was now only a matter of time. In the melee, King Harold was personally dispatched by an arrow through the eye into his brain. The leaderless Anglo-Saxon army collapsed in disorder. When it was over, thousands had been killed on both sides, but the Normans won the day in overwhelming fashion. William the Duke of Normandy became William the Conqueror.

The deception which presaged the Anglo-Saxon defeat at Hastings began a dramatic change that fell upon the political, social and cultural future of England. After Hastings the Norman Conquest of the remainder of England was quickly consummated. The Anglo-Saxon landed aristocracy submitted to William, one after the other. There were a few uprisings against Norman rule during the next decade, especially in northern England, but each uprising was put down with William’s notoriously vicious efficiency. By the end of the 1070s, the old exclusively Anglo-Saxon power structure in England had come to a permanent end.

Deception on the battlefield changed England forever. Beginning in the year 1066, foreigners with French-sounding names, foreigners that did not speak the English language at all, seized control of valuable lands throughout the country. William the Conqueror began a long line of kings of England who could trace their lineage to Normandy or France. For years to come, various kings of England ruled not from Britain, but from their palaces on the continent.

Once the townspeople of Newburgh, Indiana were sure that the Rebels were gone and were not coming back, a few began to take matters into their own hands. With retribution on their minds, some seized the opportunity to confront a few of the known Confederate sympathizers in town. Although there were people in Newburgh known to be sympathetic to the Confederate cause, most of the citizenry were loyal to the United States and likewise loyal to the cause of Union.

Most people in Newburgh were incensed by what had just transpired. Most viewed the Confederate raid as a violation. They were angry about the occupation, however temporary it was, but they were especially livid that a few of their own citizens had assisted the Confederates. Some were convinced that Confederate sympathizers had conspired with the Rebels before the raid even began. All the known sympathizers in town came under immediate suspicion, while a few were subjected to much more than just questions.

People known to be sympathetic to the Southern Rebellion were quickly rounded up one by one. Several were arrested and verbally abused, or worse. Those who were seen actively assisting the Confederate raiders faced frontier justice. Two were killed. One was shot dead in front of multiple witnesses, his body left in the street until after sunset. Later, some of the accused collaborators were put on trial in Indianapolis. A few were acquitted and a few were sentenced to time in prison.

Since the telegraph was out of order, news of the Confederate raid on the little river town of Newburgh was delivered via horseback to Evansville. Once the news reached Evansville, it spread quickly throughout the area, delivered by telegraph to virtually all communities throughout Southern Indiana. The news also quickly reached one-hundred fifty miles north to the state capital in Indianapolis. Within a few hours after the Rebels had gone, dozens of area Home Guardsmen from all around Southern Indiana made their way to Newburgh. Hours after that, hundreds of armed men began to assemble in Evansville, each chomping at the bit to hunt down and kill Colonel Adam Rankin Johnson and his Confederate raiders.

By nightfall river steamers loaded with armed Union men were traveling on the Green River in Kentucky, a tributary of the Ohio. The searchers were intent on capturing or killing each of the raiders. In a matter of days, more and more Home Guardsmen made their way to Evansville from all over Indiana. Each man hoped to avenge the wanton act of thievery and abuse perpetrated against the peaceful little town of Newburgh.

Many people in Indiana viewed the Confederate raid as a personal affront, an insult against their home state. Their individual and collective pride was hurt. From their perspective, this insult could not go unanswered. As word of the Confederate raid spread throughout the state and beyond, thousands of young men volunteered to serve their state, and their country. Because of the raid, many young Indiana men signed up to wear the Union blue uniform. Many wanted to kill Confederates at the earliest opportunity.

In the late summer and fall of 1862 the Town of Newburgh, the City of Evansville, and the State of Indiana went to war against the Confederate guerrillas and their support network in Western Kentucky. Union Bethell was especially motivated, having been made the fool by Adam Johnson’s deception. Bethell, along with other community leaders in Southern Indiana, led hundreds of Union soldiers and other volunteers on multiple expeditions, patrols, and raids against actual and suspected pro-Confederate towns, safe houses and farms in Western Kentucky. Many of the stolen weapons were recovered, but some were never found. Accused Confederates and conspirators were taken prisoner.

Western Kentucky was a hotbed of Confederate support at the time, similar to West Tennessee. After the Newburgh raid, Union military facilities within the larger towns in Western Kentucky, especially those along the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers, were fortified. The interior in Western Kentucky, however, was a different story. As Union soldiers patrolled the interior looking for Confederate guerrillas, weapons and related material, they would occasionally be subjected to ambush with deadly consequences. Eventually, Union soldiers learned to only venture into portions of Western Kentucky and West Tennessee if they had the deterrent of sufficient numbers and firepower on their side.

Colonel Adam Rankin Johnson eluded capture for a couple of years. However, the hundreds of Union men patrolling Western Kentucky prevented Johnson from assembling the large Confederate cavalry force he had hoped to build. Despite his efforts, Johnson could never seriously challenge the Union military position in Western Kentucky. Johnson, and other like-minded men and women, would never see Kentucky officially join the Confederate States of America, despite their efforts to the contrary. In fact, Johnson’s actions at Newburgh in 1862 inadvertently facilitated the opposite, as more and more Union soldiers occupied the state. Armed insurrection against the Union in Western Kentucky gradually became more and more futile.

Only hit-and-run tactics were viable options for men like Adam Johnson. The notion of holding onto territory in Kentucky became only an aspiration, particularly during the later years of the war. Nevertheless, the raid on Newburgh did give Colonel Johnson the one thing he wanted above all else, notoriety. After Newburgh, Adam Johnson became known as Stovepipe Johnson. One of the fake cannons across the river was a stovepipe propped up by wagon wheels. From a distance, these Quaker Guns looked just like field artillery.

The Newburgh raid gave Adam Johnson a veneer of legitimacy in some Confederate circles, particularly in the rural areas of Western Kentucky. By the late summer of 1864 when the war was starting to seriously turn against the Confederacy, things went particularly badly for Colonel Johnson. During the chaos of an engagement against a small Union force near the town of Princeton in Western Kentucky, one of his own men accidentally fired a musket directly into his face. Johnson survived the blast, but was grievously wounded and blinded for life. Johnson was left behind as his Confederate comrades fled the scene. Bleeding on the ground, Adam Johnson’s war ended in Princeton, Kentucky, as he became a prisoner of war.

Although never formally recognized as such by the Confederate government, Adam Rankin Johnson was reportedly promoted to Brigadier General in the months after he was captured. Johnson was exchanged and paroled in 1865. He spent the rest of his life in Texas. Stovepipe Johnson lived to old age, well into the 20 th Century. For all of his remaining days, the blind General Johnson proudly described, and probably embellished, his Civil War adventures and exploits to anyone who would listen.

As a free-range kid sinking bottles in the Ohio River in the 1970s in Newburgh, Indiana, I had a family connection to the Civil War. I just didn’t know it at the time. I knew that I had deep Southern roots, especially on my mother’s side, but I never heard anything about my lineage in connection to the Civil War. Only as an adult was this discovered.

One of my third-great grandfathers, a man known as J.T., fought for the Confederate States of America. J.T.’s story is remarkable. During the Civil War period, J.T. experienced degrees of suffering, resilience and horror I can only begin to understand. J.T.’s story is also emblematic of the story of America, laced with acts of deception throughout. Individual acts of deception, and especially the employment of deception on the battlefield, directly and indirectly impacted J.T.’s life, and the lives of many others before and after his time.

Chapter Three

Lineage: Descent in a line from a common progenitor.

---

I was born in 1964 in Evansville, Indiana, and raised in Newburgh, a small town just east of the city. I arrived in Indianapolis in 1986 with a Bachelor’s Degree and an old Ford. I also had a few hundred dollars I managed to save by working nights at a convenience store adjacent to Indiana University in Bloomington.

Two days after graduation, I started my first professional job in Indianapolis. Within a couple of years, I met my wife. Within a few years we had a son. Three years later we had a daughter. We lived an ordinarily happy life in Indianapolis, exactly in the center of Indiana. Decades after moving to Indy, I discovered that my fifth-great grandfather, a man named Peter, was engaged in military operations back in the late 18 th Century. The cause associated with Peter’s military service had enormous implications on the future of central Indiana and beyond.

In the 1790s, my fifth-great grandfather, Peter, was one of several thousand soldiers and cavalrymen operating under the orders of President George Washington. Peter played a role in the defeat of an alliance of indigenous tribes fighting to stop White American settlement north of the Ohio River. This was the period immediately following the American victory in the war for independence. The British, however, didn’t take losing their favorite North American colonies lightly. Nor did they act in good faith.

The British tried to impede any and all efforts of the Americans to expand northwestward. They were especially covetous of the lands near British Canada south of the Great Lakes. The British helped to build and fortify an alliance of the indigenous tribes in the territory that would one day become the American Midwest. These First Nations tribes and the British were of like minds. They both wanted to prevent American expansion in the direction of the western Great Lakes.

With international implications, an American army was formed and ordered by President Washington to engage and defeat this alliance of Native Americans called the Western Confederacy. After a couple of miserable failures, the American army finally defeated the Western Confederacy in 1794. The result was the eventual expulsion of indigenous peoples from places where future communities like Indianapolis were founded in the years to come. My fifth-great grandfather participated in this war against the Western Confederacy. Peter’s grandson was my third-great grandfather, a man they called J.T.

J.T. was born near Louisville, Kentucky in 1838. Although his roughly-etched gravestone in Benton County, Tennessee clearly states, spelled phonetically, that J.T. was Bornd in 1829, multiple other records indicate that J.T.’s actual year of birth was nine years later in 1838. His gravestone is almost certainly incorrect. Whoever etched his stone was probably given incorrect information. It is also possible that J.T.’s gravestone was placed some years after his death, which may have contributed to the confusion.

J.T.’s parents were married in 1834. Without any record of a prior marriage by either parent, the probability of J.T. being born several years prior to their marriage is very low, especially given the volume of evidence to the contrary. For example, a Civil War muster roll states that J.T. was twenty-five years old in 1863. J.T.’s military service during the Civil War is well documented, including multiple accounts of his age. Additionally, being born in 1838 means that J.T. would have been around twenty-three years of age at the outset of the war. A twenty-three-year-old young man volunteering for military service seems much more plausible than a man past thirty.

When J.T. was a child in the 1840s his family moved to a farm in Henry County in West Tennessee. J.T.’s father was a common farmer. They did not own slaves. J.T. was the oldest child of the family. His sister, Mary, was three years younger. Another sister, Rebecca, was six years younger. Yet another sister,