Appalachian History
In the early 1860s, Columbia, Kentucky sat in what one officer called “the center of the country’s attention.” From the Cumberland River up toward the Bluegrass, roads and creeks converged on Adair County. That crossroads position turned the little courthouse town into a staging ground, supply hub, and, in July 1863, a battlefield.
During the winter of 1861 and early 1862, thousands of Union soldiers camped in and around Columbia on their way to the Battle of Mill Springs. Derek Coomer’s transcription of a letter from an officer of the 59th Ohio, printed in the Ripley Bee, recalls an encampment of “as many as 15,000 Union troops” around Adair County and describes a sightseeing trip to Todd’s Cave north of town.
Official enlistment records back up the scale of that wartime presence. The 9th Kentucky Infantry, a Union regiment raised largely from south-central Kentucky, mustered into federal service at Camp Boyle just outside Columbia in November 1861. Later in the war, the 13th Kentucky Cavalry organized at Columbia itself.
Adair County thus became a Union stronghold in a bitterly divided border state. Yet it also sat directly on the route of the Confederacy’s most famous raider: Brigadier General John Hunt Morgan.
Camp Boyle and Wolford’s Cavalry
Adair County’s best-known Union officer was Frank Lane Wolford, a Columbia lawyer who raised the 1st Kentucky Cavalry for the United States in 1861. Wolford’s regiment, often called “Wolford’s Cavalry,” camped and trained in the fields around Camp Boyle and ranged widely through south-central Kentucky.
Federal summaries of the 1st Kentucky Cavalry’s service show the regiment fighting a rolling series of small actions along the Cumberland and Green Rivers: Columbia and Creelsboro on June 29, then Columbia again on July 3, followed by the long chase that ended at Buffington Island.
By 1863 Wolford’s troopers were joined in the region by Ohio units that would also pass through Columbia. The 2nd Ohio Cavalry’s official chronology lists “Pursuit of Morgan July 1–25. Columbia, Ky., July 3. Buffington Island, Ohio, July 18–19.” The 45th Ohio Infantry, converted to mounted service, records the same pursuit in its detailed service history, noting that the 45th rode with Wolford’s 1st Kentucky and the 2nd Ohio Cavalry in the campaign against Morgan.
By the summer of 1863, then, Adair County was defended by men who knew its roads and streams intimately. They would need that knowledge when Morgan crossed the Cumberland again.
Morgan Turns Toward Columbia
In May 1863, Confederate Major General Simon Bolivar Buckner, commanding in East Tennessee, sent Richmond a hopeful dispatch. Reports from Brigadier Generals John Pegram and John Hunt Morgan, he wrote, showed that “the enemy have been driven north of the Cumberland River, in the direction of Somerset and Columbia, Ky.” Federal forces had pulled back from the river crossings, and Morgan was already thinking about a larger raid.
That larger operation began in late June. Contemporary accounts and modern studies agree that about 2,000 Confederate cavalrymen, with a pair of artillery pieces, moved north from Tennessee toward the swollen Cumberland. When Morgan’s column reached the river near Burkesville on July 1, the water was so high that many riders stripped off their clothes, loaded uniforms and rifles into canoes, and waded across naked in the current. Federal pickets on the far bank, seeing these men scrambling up the slope, ran rather than face what looked like a band of wild men.
Once across, Morgan steered his advance along the pike toward Columbia. His scouts had good reason: Columbia lay on the Union defense line between the Cumberland River and Bowling Green, and Wolford’s scattered cavalry detachments were one of the few obstacles between Morgan and the Bluegrass.
The Skirmish at Columbia, 3 July 1863
On the morning of July 3, 1863, roughly 150 Union troopers guarded Columbia. Most belonged to the 1st Kentucky Cavalry, with smaller detachments from the 2nd Ohio Cavalry and the mounted 45th Ohio Infantry. Captain Jesse M. Carter of Wolford’s regiment commanded the thin line.
Federal and Confederate sources agree that Morgan’s main body, numbering around 2,000, approached from the south that day and ran into Carter’s force just outside town. Outnumbered more than ten to one, the Union cavalry fought briefly in the fields, then fell back toward the square. During that initial clash Carter was mortally wounded, a serious blow to local morale.
As the fight spilled into Columbia itself, house-to-house combat broke out along the streets near the courthouse. Emerging Civil War’s reconstruction of the battle, drawing on contemporary reports and later reminiscences, describes Captain Brent Fishback and other officers turning buildings into strongpoints while townspeople took cover.
The resistance could not last. Within roughly an hour, Morgan’s men pushed Wolford’s troopers out of town and seized Columbia. Federal casualties in the skirmish included two killed, three wounded, and about six captured. Confederate losses are usually given as two killed and two wounded.
Recognizing Columbia as a Battle
Although short, the action at Columbia was recognized in postwar official compilations as a distinct combat. The U.S. War Department’s Alphabetical List of the Battles of the War of the Rebellion includes “Columbia, Ky., July 3, 1863” among the engagements of Morgan’s Raid.
The monumental Medical and Surgical History of the War of the Rebellion, compiled by the Surgeon General’s Office, uses Columbia as one of the data points for analyzing casualties and treatment. Under the heading for July 3, 1863, it lists “Columbia, Kentucky – 1st Kentucky and 2d Ohio Cavalry, and 45th Ohio Mounted Volunteers,” tying the skirmish to those specific units.
Service summaries for the 2nd Ohio Cavalry and 45th Ohio Infantry likewise mark Columbia as a separate engagement. Dyer’s Compendium and later Ohio regimental histories repeat the line: pursuit of Morgan from the Cumberland to the Ohio River, with “Columbia, Ky., July 3” standing alongside more famous actions like Buffington Island.
In Kentucky’s own records, the Adjutant General’s report and later compendia note the presence of the 1st Kentucky Cavalry at Columbia on July 3. The Kentucky National Guard’s “Paper Trail of the Civil War in Kentucky” includes a brief entry, “03 Jul – 1st Kentucky Cavalry at Columbia, KY,” in its Adair County chronology.
Taken together, these official and quasi-official sources confirm what local memory has long claimed: Columbia was not merely a place Morgan passed through, but one of the set-piece fights of his Great Raid.
“Our Men Behaved Badly at Columbia”
What happened inside Columbia once the Union cavalry pulled back stayed with participants long after the war. Lieutenant Colonel Robert Alston, one of Morgan’s officers, later admitted in his journal that “our men behaved badly at Columbia,” noting that some broke open a store and looted it until he forced them to return the goods.
Modern writers often pair Alston’s comment with the wider reputation of Morgan’s men as hard-riding, free-spending raiders. Columbia’s citizens experienced that reputation directly. Stores were ransacked, horses and provisions seized, and civilians frightened in the chaos of street fighting and sudden occupation.
Yet the occupation was brief. Morgan had no desire to linger within reach of Union columns coming up from the Cumberland and the Green River. By late afternoon his column was moving again.
Cane Valley and the Road to Tebb’s Bend
After the skirmish at Columbia, Morgan’s raiders pushed northeast along the Columbia-Campbellsville road into the rolling farms of Cane Valley. A roadside marker near Cane Valley Christian Church, part of the John Hunt Morgan Heritage Trail, notes that after “engaging Union forces in Columbia the afternoon of July 3” the Confederates camped in Cane Valley before riding on toward Green River Bridge at Tebb’s Bend the next morning.
At Tebb’s Bend on July 4, Morgan ran headlong into Colonel Orlando Moore’s well-prepared defenses behind felled timber and earthworks. After demanding an “immediate and unconditional surrender,” Morgan received Moore’s famous reply that the Fourth of July was “a damned bad day for a surrender.” The resulting battle cost Morgan dozens of killed and wounded and forced him to find another crossing of the Green.
In that sense, the skirmish at Columbia was prelude to a far bloodier fight. Columbia lay on the southern lip of the Green River line; Tebb’s Bend marked the point where that line briefly held.
Adair County Soldiers and the Fight for Freedom
The Civil War story of Adair County does not end with white cavalrymen and courthouse gunfire. Like many Kentucky counties, Adair sent Black men into the United States Colored Troops as the war turned toward emancipation.
The Notable Kentucky African Americans Database notes that “about 38 U.S. Colored Troops of the Civil War reported they were born in Adair County.” A similar county profile compiled by genealogists puts the figure at roughly thirty-five, underscoring how difficult it is to pin down exact numbers but confirming that several dozen Black soldiers traced their origins to Adair.
One of those men, Ezra or Elza Richards, was born enslaved in Adair County in 1846. In July 1864 he enlisted at Lebanon, Kentucky as a substitute in the 108th U.S. Colored Infantry, trading military service for a chance at freedom. He would die of disease the following winter while guarding Confederate prisoners at Rock Island Barracks in Illinois.
Projects like the Kentucky U.S. Colored Troops initiative and the NKAA index pull together pension files, service records, and census data that connect these soldiers back to Adair County farms and town lots. Their stories remind us that the fight over Columbia’s streets was part of a larger struggle over slavery and citizenship, one that reached from Camp Boyle to prison cemeteries on the Mississippi.
Memory on the Square
Today Columbia’s public square still carries visible traces of that wartime summer. The 1880s Adair County Courthouse, standing on the site of its antebellum predecessor, dominates the same crossroads where Carter’s cavalry fell back and Morgan’s men rode in.
Historic markers and local projects layer interpretation onto that landscape. A Kentucky Historical Society marker titled “Confederate Raids” recalls Morgan’s repeated visits to Columbia, including his Great Raid passage on July 3, 1863. Another marker, “A Night in Cane Valley,” ties the rural churchyard west of town to Morgan’s camp on the eve of Tebb’s Bend.
On the courthouse lawn and nearby streets, local historians and volunteers have worked to restore and interpret these markers. ColumbiaMagazine has chronicled efforts to repaint and rededicate the “Confederate Raids” sign, and to raise a monument honoring Wolford’s 1st Kentucky Cavalry on a hillside overlooking the John Hunt Morgan Trail.
Walking the square today, it is easy to overlook how close the Civil War once pressed against Columbia’s front porches. Official records list the skirmish as a brief affair. Diaries and regimental histories mention it almost in passing, a way station between the Cumberland and the Ohio. Yet for the people of Adair County, July 3, 1863 meant gunfire in the streets, a beloved captain dying on the edge of town, and the sight of dust-covered raiders riding past the courthouse toward an uncertain future.
The skirmish at Columbia reminds us that the Civil War in Appalachia was not only fought at places like Gettysburg and Chickamauga. It also arrived in county seats and farm lanes, in caves visited by bored officers, in campgrounds that later sent Black soldiers north in blue uniforms. On that July afternoon, Adair County found itself at the meeting point of raid and resistance, empire and emancipation, and it has carried the memory ever since.
Sources & Further Reading
The War of the Rebellion: A Compilation of the Official Records of the Union and Confederate Armies, Series I, Vol. 23. Includes Simon B. Buckner’s May 15, 1863 dispatch from Knoxville reporting Morgan driving Federal troops north of the Cumberland toward Somerset and Columbia.The Portal to Texas History
United States Surgeon General’s Office. The Medical and Surgical History of the War of the Rebellion. Washington, D.C., 1870–1888. Lists “Columbia, Kentucky – 1st Kentucky and 2d Ohio Cavalry, and 45th Ohio Mounted Volunteers” under actions of July 3, 1863.The Portal to Texas History+1
Newton A. Strait, comp. An Alphabetical List of the Battles of the War of the Rebellion, With Dates. Washington, 1870s. Recognizes “Columbia, Ky., July 3, 1863” as a distinct engagement during Morgan’s Raid.Online Books +1
Kentucky Adjutant General. Report of the Adjutant General of the State of Kentucky, 1861–1866. Entries for the 9th Kentucky Infantry and 13th Kentucky Cavalry, organized at Camp Boyle and Columbia in Adair County.WBHM Library Archives+1
Derek Coomer, “Adair Co., KY History: When the Civil War turned, right here.” ColumbiaMagazine.com, January 20, 2012. Prints a Ripley Bee letter from an officer of the 59th Ohio describing massive Union encampments and a visit to Todd’s Cave.Columbia Magazine
Luman Harris Tenney, War Diary, 1861–1865. Entries for June 29 and July 3, 1863 note the 2nd Ohio Cavalry’s presence at Columbia and its pursuit of Morgan.Wikimedia Commons+1
Frederick H. Dyer, A Compendium of the War of the Rebellion. Service summaries for 1st Kentucky Cavalry, 2nd Ohio Cavalry, and 45th Ohio Infantry mark “Columbia, Ky., July 3” as part of Morgan’s Raid.American Civil War Archive+2Wikipedia+2
Thomas Speed, The Union Regiments of Kentucky. Louisville, 1897. Narrative of Wolford’s 1st Kentucky Cavalry and its operations in south-central Kentucky.Internet Archive+1
Kentucky National Guard, The Paper Trail of the Civil War in Kentucky, 1861–1865. Adair County section notes the 9th Kentucky Infantry’s organization at Camp Boyle and the entry “03 Jul – 1st Kentucky Cavalry at Columbia, KY.”KY National Guard History+1
Caroline Davis, “A damned bad day for surrender: Morgan’s Raiders at Columbia, Kentucky.” Emerging Civil War, July 6, 2023. Detailed narrative of the July 3 skirmish, casualties, and the raid’s march toward Tebb’s Bend.Emerging Civil War+1
TrailsRus, “John Hunt Morgan in Kentucky – Columbia.” Heritage driving-tour guide summarizing the Columbia action and listing local Civil War sites, including the Patrick Bridgewater House used as Morgan’s headquarters.Trails R Us
Historical markers “The Door Was Left Open!” and “A Night in Cane Valley – The Great Raid – July 3, 1863,” John Hunt Morgan Heritage Trail. Marker texts describe the Union defense of Columbia by elements of the 1st Kentucky Cavalry, 2nd and 45th Ohio, and Morgan’s camp at Cane Valley before Tebb’s Bend.Human Metabolome Database+2Human Metabolome Database+2
Notable Kentucky African Americans Database, “Adair County (KY) Enslaved, Free Blacks, and Free Mulattoes, 1850–1870.” Notes that about 38 U.S. Colored Troops reported being born in Adair County and links to related military records.Nkaa+1
Veterans Legacy Project, “Ezra (Elza) Richards.” Biographical sketch of an Adair-born Black soldier who enlisted in the 108th U.S. Colored Infantry in 1864 and died at Rock Island Barracks.Veterans Legacy Project+1
ColumbiaMagazine and Adair Heritage Association articles on the Wolford civil war monument, the restored “Confederate Raids” marker, and the Hurt-Foust House, a property long associated with local Civil War memory and stories of John Hunt Morgan’s visits.Columbia Magazine+1