Morgan's Last Kentucky Raid

Flemingsburg, KY

James J. Andrews lived here from 1859 to 1862 before undertaking one of the Civil War's most daring exploits. Leading a small party of Union soldiers deep into Georgia, he seized the locomotive "The General" and tried to wreck the railroad between Marietta and Chattanooga in what became known as the Great Locomotive Chase. The raid ended in a dramatic pursuit and the raiders' capture, and Andrews paid for it with his life.

Maysville, KY

Born in Maysville in 1841, John Samuel Darrough moved west with his family as a boy and answered the Union's call in 1862, enlisting in the 113th Illinois Infantry. On October 10, 1864, during operations along the Tennessee River near Eastport, Mississippi, his regiment came under fire from Confederate artillery while tearing up bridge and rail lines; in the retreat, Sergeant Darrough turned back to carry a helpless comrade to safety. That act earned him the Medal of Honor, the nation's highest military decoration, awarded in 1895.

Augusta, KY

By September 1862, the Ohio River town of Augusta had sent some 6,000 Union men to war, leaving barely a hundred Home Guards under Colonel Bradford to defend it. On September 27, Confederate Colonel Basil Duke struck with 350 of John Hunt Morgan's raiders; the guards fought from concealment in houses until the raiders shelled and burned their way through. Though the town fell, Confederate losses in men and ammunition forced Morgan to abandon his planned crossing into Ohio.

Felicity, OH

In the decades before the Civil War, the free soil of southern Ohio sat just across the river from slaveholding Kentucky, making its small towns natural way-stations for freedom seekers heading north. Felicity, in Clermont County, lay within this borderland network, and the cemetery here holds the graves of Arthur Fee and Oliver Perry Spencer Fee, the latter remembered as an abolitionist who helped operate the Underground Railroad. Their work meant sheltering and guiding people escaping bondage — quiet, dangerous acts of conscience carried out by ordinary neighbors who believed slavery was a moral wrong worth risking their safety to resist.