Lisbon, Ohio

By late July 1863, Confederate General John Hunt Morgan was down to his last hours of freedom. Five days after the Battle of Buffington Island wrecked his command on the Ohio River, he and the exhausted remnant still with him had been chased town to town across eastern Ohio, trading shots with militia and cavalry, with the whole state at his heels. There was no grand plan left, no river crossing to aim for — pure survival, one worn-out column trying to stay ahead of the net. He had already ridden farther north than any organized Confederate military force would reach in the entire war. But the horses were finished, the men were finished, and there was nowhere left to run. On July 26, 1863, after a running fight at Salineville that morning, Morgan surrendered what was left of his raiders near here, at West Point, to a Kentucky Union cavalry officer around two in the afternoon. He was taken off to the Ohio Penitentiary in Columbus. And then, in one last twist worthy of the man, that November he and six officers dug and clawed their way out through a tunnel and escaped back to the South. The raid was over. The legend was not.