IT WAS THE WINTER OF 1862-63. The Confederate Army's continual occupation of the south side of the upper Cumberland River was not only an embarrassment but a prickly thorn in the Federal Army's defense line protecting the interior of Kentucky.
Rebel forces based there were constantly lashing out at the Union in raids and skirmishes, and were a particularly irksome problem for the Federals as they tried to maintain stability in the border state of Kentucky. Stretched as they were across nearly the entire western dividing line between North and South, residents were far from being staunch supporters of the Northern cause. Intensely varying ideals stemmed from their conflicts of interest, idealistic and commercial, that came from being so closely allied with both sides because of geographical accident.
To many citizens of the region, the raiding Rebels seemed far more romantic than the steadfast Union soldiers who were obliged to maintain such intense security they were in danger of alienating the residents over whom they were sometimes temporary lords.
Though Federal forces had one an important early battle of the western theater the year before at the strategic river crossing at Mill Springs, they were far from controlling the valuable access route to middle Tennessee and the South. Because of priorities, Union generals were forced to forego their plan to capture and consolidate potentially valuable middle and east Tennessee immediately after their success at the Battle of Mill Springs in January 1862 in order to aid in the capture of Forts Henry and Donelson on the lower Cumberland less than a month later.
The capture of the two Confederate forts enabled a quick Federal occupation of Nashville, the important capital of Tennessee - an avowed Confederate state. As important as that action was, however, it left the middle Tennessee countryside open for plenty of Confederate regular and guerilla activity.
Only a few months after Mill Springs, a man who had ridden out of his hometown of Lexington, Ky., to join the Southern ranks led a strike against the Kentucky heartland from middle Tennessee, crossing the Cumberland River on a rapid hit and run raid that played havoc with Federal supply lines and security. It was the first of three major raids that earned John Hunt Morgan fame as one of the most daring and romantic leaders of either side during the Civil War.
After Morgan's rush through Union strongholds in central and northern Kentucky, he returned - almost leisurely - through Somerset and Monticello to the safety of Confederate lines, toying with a small Federal force stationed at Somerset. He paused long enough there to send a cloying message back to the Federal commander of the state.
By the time Morgan recrossed the Cumberland River into Wayne County, he felt himself once more in a position of relative safety. The situation was to remain such for more than half the war - Somerset, Jamestown and other towns along the north side of the river almost firmly under Union domination; the counties and towns such as Monticello and Albany along the south side of the Cumberland usually in the grip of the Confederacy, albeit a trifle tenuous.
As in all Kentucky, the allegiance of local residents was divided between North and South. It was a situation that brought about many escapades of soldiers from either army slipping through the lines. The control exercised by the fighting armies were the powers that ruled the region.
