General John Hunt Morgan

Submitted by sfr on Thu, 2020-01-16 11:02
Character Key Number: 
1443
Display Name: 
General John Hunt Morgan
Sort Name: 
Morgan, General John Hunt
Ever Present in Yoknapatawpha?: 
No
Biography: 

John Hunt Morgan commanded a cavalry regiment in the western theater of the Civil War, and, like Nathan Bedford Forrest, was known for his raids behind Yankee lines. His 1863 raid into southern Indiana and Ohio was the furthest Confederate penetration of the North. In The Unvanquished, among "the names" that Bayard and Ringo hear John Sartoris mention as he talks about the war is "Morgan" (15). The reference in Go Down, Moses to "Morgan leading a cavalry charge against a stranded man-of-war" presumably refers to his burning of the Ohio River steamboat Alice Dean in Brandenburg, Kentucky (274). "Morgan" is also mentioned in "Shall Not Perish" as one of the names that the narrator's great-grandfather, a Confederate veteran, would holler while dozing "in his chair under the mulberry in the yard or on the sunny end of the front gallery or in his corner by the hearth" (112).

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