Morgan's Raiders
The Ohio Pen was used to house notable prisoners of the Civil War. While the majority in central Ohio were shunted off to Camp Chase, the walls and cells were thought necessary to confine Confederate General John Hunt Morgan and his officers, participants in Morgan's Raid. His "daring" (most historians tend to call it "foolish" these days) raid into Indiana and Ohio was sanctioned by no superior officer and accomplished nothing except to irritate and frighten rural northerners and reinforce Unionist views.
In the summer of 1863, hoping to divert Union resources around the time of the crucial battles of Gettysburg and Vicksburg, Brig. Gen. John H. Morgan (an Alabaman by birth but a longtime resident of Lexington, KY) crossed the Ohio River without orders west of New Albany, Indiana, and rode across the southern part of the state. He engaged Home Guard soldiers at Corydon, killing five of them while losing eleven of his own men.
Crossing the state line north of Cincinnati, he marauded through rural south-central Ohio and made his way north into what is today Belmont County. Attempting to move into West Virginia on June 19, about 900 of his men encountered Union gunboats at Buffington Island and were decimated. Fewer than 200 escaped, including Mogan himself, while about 700 spent the remainder of the war as prisoners at Chicago's Camp Douglas.
On July 26, 1863, John Hunt Morgan and what remained of his command surrendered at a place in Columbiana County near Salineville or Lisbon (then called New Lisbon). This, the Ohio River at Buffington Island, and the location of a skirmish near Old Washington all occasionally claim to be the site of the "Northernmost Battle of the Civil War."
Morgan and several of his officers--including Confederate spy Thomas Hines--were incarcerated in the Ohio Penitentiary. As prisoners of war, and officers (though officers of a nation never recognized by ours, which has always confused the issue in my mind), they were treated surprisingly well. They were never assigned inmate numbers; were allowed to wear their own clothes; and guards addressed them by their military ranks--or even as "Sir," in Morgan's case. By all accounts Morgan and his men had an easy stay at the Pen--so easy that they cut it short by escaping.
Morgan and his men had broken through into a ventilation crawlspace which ran beneath the main block, and on the night of November 27, 1863, they escaped using a rope made of prison blankets and a bent poker rod. After midnight they boarded a train at the Columbus depot bound for Cincinnati, leaping off just before it reached its destination, where they would have been identified and re-arrested. They hired a small boat to reach Kentucky and were conducted south by sympathizers, eventually reaching Confederate territory again. Although "Morgan's Raid" (and his prison break and flight to safety) made big headlines and looms fairly large in history, it accomplished next to nothing, and was actually done in direct violation of General Braxton Bragg's standing order not to cross the Ohio River.
