Appalachian History
On quiet days the Cumberland River at Burkesville looks like any other Appalachian waterway. Fishing boats idle past bottomland fields, and the courthouse lawn hosts farmers’ markets rather than soldiers. During the Civil War, though, this bend in the river was a nervous frontier. Steamboats from Nashville pushed supplies to its wharf. Cavalry regiments mustered and marched through its streets. John Hunt Morgan launched his most famous raid from its ferries. Hylan B. Lyon closed his courthouse burning expedition here in flame.
For four hard years Burkesville was less a backwater than a hinge between Union and Confederacy, frontier and interior, mountain road and river road.
A river town in a border county
Cumberland County took shape in 1798, carved from Green County along the middle reach of the Cumberland River. Burkesville, laid out that same year on Samuel Burk’s land, grew into a small but vital riverport. Steamboat traffic tied the town to Nashville and the lower river trade, carrying timber and farm produce downriver and manufactured goods back into the hills. A modern Kentucky historical marker summarizes it simply: Burkesville was a “vital riverport for timber and farm produce during steamboat era.”
That river road became even more important once Kentucky slid from uneasy neutrality into open war in the fall of 1861. Geography destined Burkesville for trouble. It sat on the Cumberland between the Bluegrass and East Tennessee, between Union strongholds at Louisville and Camp Nelson and Confederate posts at Nashville and Knoxville. No wonder both governments soon talked about the town in their official correspondence.
Zollicoffer’s Cumberland line
When Confederate general Felix Zollicoffer took command of the Cumberland Gap district in 1861, he looked west toward south central Kentucky. He knew the Cumberland River could either protect or doom his army. In November he wrote that he hoped to find “a good position on the Cumberland” and to “scour the country on the north bank down to Burkesville” while drawing supplies up the river from Nashville.
Within weeks he had shifted his force toward Mill Springs and the north bank of the river. Federal general Don Carlos Buell recognized that Zollicoffer was anchoring a defensive line along the Cumberland, supplied in part by steamboats moving as far upriver as Burkesville. Those boats could offload within roughly thirty five miles of the Confederate camp at Beech Grove. A National Park Service study of the Mill Springs campaign notes that two well supplied steamers were sent from Nashville toward Burkesville and that the smaller vessel was eventually brought up to the Confederate camp and renamed the Noble Ellis.
Burkesville itself lay just beyond the battle lines, but it was already woven into high level strategy. Confederate commanders saw the town as the head of navigation for supplies. Federal planners, in turn, saw it as one of the river crossings they would have to watch if they hoped to keep Zollicoffer from threatening the interior of Kentucky.
A skirmish above town
The river war around Burkesville turned violent even before big armies clashed at Mill Springs. On November 30 1861, Private Richard R. Hancock of the Second Tennessee Confederate Cavalry recorded a little fight in his diary. According to Hancock, Colonel McNairy led about seventy five men from a camp south of Albany “to the Cumberland above Burkesville.” When the advance guard reached the river, they saw a ferryboat crossing to the north bank “with seven men and five horses.” As some of those men were Federal soldiers, a skirmish broke out. The ferryman and one soldier were wounded. The Confederate detachment then destroyed several ferry boats and canoes at that crossing before scattering to find quarters for the night.
On a map this incident barely registers. No regimental flag was captured, no general filed a formal battle report. Yet Hancock’s diary lets us see exactly how men from Tennessee and Kentucky contested the Cumberland in the winter of 1861: small detachments feeling their way along the banks, ambushing ferries, and trying to deny each other the boats that made the river a road.
Regiments on the river road
Burkesville’s importance only increased as the Union tightened its grip on Kentucky. In October 1861 the First Kentucky Cavalry (United States), under Colonel Frank Wolford, was organized at Liberty, Burkesville, and Monticello and mustered into service on October 28. Veteran historian Eastham Tarrant later recalled how Wolford’s men rode constantly between those towns, scouting roads through Wayne, Clinton, and Cumberland counties and watching the fords on the Cumberland River.
Cumberland County families sent sons to many commands. Local histories compiled through the Kentucky GenWeb project note that county men served in Federal units such as the Third Kentucky Infantry and the Fifth Kentucky Cavalry as well as Confederate outfits like the Fifth Kentucky Infantry and the Cumberland Light Artillery. The latter battery, recruited largely from Cumberland County, fought at Fort Donelson and later in Mississippi, Louisiana, and around Mobile. Even when the shooting happened far from home, Burkesville’s young men carried the county’s name to some of the Western Theater’s hardest campaigns.
Another local regiment, the Thirteenth Kentucky Cavalry (U.S.), spent much of its brief service patrolling the very corridor that ran through Burkesville. Regimental summaries show the Thirteenth stationed around Columbia, Burkesville, and Creelsboro before mustering out in 1865, chasing guerrillas and watching for Confederate raiders along the river. A Civil War heritage marker at nearby Marrowbone notes that Union cavalry camped there to guard approaches west of Burkesville.
These movements rarely make it into general Civil War histories. They mattered deeply on the ground: every column of blue or gray that passed through town bought forage from local farmers, requisitioned horses, and left behind stories.
Morgan’s Great Raid begins at Burkesville
Burkesville’s most famous Civil War moment came in the summer of 1863. In late June Confederate cavalryman John Hunt Morgan received permission to ride into Kentucky as a diversion for Braxton Bragg’s army in Tennessee. Morgan stretched that permission beyond what his superiors intended. On July 2 he led roughly 2,400 troopers across the Cumberland River at Burkesville and turned a raid into legend.
Modern summaries of Morgan’s Raid agree on that starting point. The American Battlefield Trust’s overview of the Great Raid notes that Morgan’s brigades crossed the Cumberland into Kentucky, and a Kentucky heritage marker titled “Morgan on to Ohio” stands today on the Burkesville courthouse lawn. The marker explains that on July 2 1863 Morgan crossed the Cumberland River near town, then pushed north toward the Green River, eventually fighting at Tebbs Bend and sweeping on through Lebanon, Bardstown, and across the Ohio into Indiana and Ohio.
A widely cited article on Morgan’s Raid adds more detail. On July 2, the raiders crossed the rain swollen Cumberland “at Burkesville” before pushing toward Tebbs Bend, where the Twenty fifth Michigan Infantry bloodied them two days later. For Morgan’s men Burkesville was not the main fight. It was the gateway that turned a Kentucky diversion into a thousand mile raid.
Skirmishes at the ferries
The river crossing itself was anything but simple. Heritage trail guides for the John Hunt Morgan Heritage Trail in Kentucky emphasize how Morgan’s brigades used rope ferries near Burkesville, particularly at Neeley’s Ferry along the Celina road. The current stirred with horses and artillery. Some wagons were lost to the water. Local residents watched as troopers in butternut and gray crowded the banks.
Once a first wave had crossed, Morgan sent out scouting parties to feel for Union resistance. A modern state marker titled “Skirmish at Norris Branch – The Great Raid” stands west of Burkesville along Highway 90. Its inscription explains that after the initial wave of Morgan’s First Brigade crossed the river, he dispatched about twenty men who collided with Federal troops near Norris Branch on July 2. Captain Thomas Quirk of “Quirk’s Scouts” was badly wounded in the action.
Those few volleys at Norris Branch and other small clashes toward Marrowbone convinced local Union commanders that Morgan had indeed chosen the Burkesville line of advance. Federal brigadier Edward Hobson had expected this, but his superior, Henry Judah, hesitated to concentrate there, which allowed the raiders to push rapidly toward the Green River.
Paper records can make these movements feel abstract. The markers scattered today along Kentucky Route 90 and the Celina road give them weight. Burkesville Ferry, Confederate Crossings at Neeley’s Ferry, Raiders Entered Here, Morgan on to Ohio: each title condenses a moment when the war rolled directly through Cumberland County.
Raids before and after the Great Raid
Morgan’s July 1863 crossing was not the first time Confederate horsemen struck Burkesville. A compilation prepared for the Kentucky National Guard, “The Paper Trail of the Civil War in Kentucky,” notes that on February 12 1863 two companies of Morgan’s cavalry attacked and defeated Federal troops at Burkesville. Local tradition remembers this as a sharp skirmish that drove Union forces back toward Columbia and Marrowbone and set the stage for later operations.
Union cavalry responded in kind. The same “Paper Trail” summary and regional markers describe how Federal units, including the Thirteenth Kentucky Cavalry, operated from camps at Marrowbone and along the river in 1863 and 1864, hunting guerrillas and trying to keep the Cumberland crossings in Union hands.
Even late in the war Burkesville appeared on lists of engagements and operations. Dyer’s Compendium and similar references record a skirmish there on November 8 1862, probably connected to the Federal pursuit of Braxton Bragg’s army after the Confederate retreat from Kentucky. Though details are sparse, the fact that “Burksville, Ky.” appears in alphabetical lists of Civil War battles reminds us that the town’s war experience cannot be reduced to a single raid.
Pontoons and rumors of Forrest
By December 1864 the big Confederate offensives in Kentucky were long past, yet the war still hung over Burkesville. On December 10 Brigadier General Nathaniel C. McLean’s staff at Lexington wired Lieutenant Bland, quartermaster of the Thirteenth Kentucky at Burkesville, with alarming news. “There is a rumor that Forrest has crossed the Cumberland,” assistant adjutant J. S. Butler warned, instructing Bland to keep scouts out toward Nashville and to destroy the pontoon bridge and fall back if a force approached.
Colonel J. W. Weatherford replied the same day from Camp Nelson. He reminded Butler that the men left at Burkesville were mostly convalescents and dismounted troopers. If Bland divided his few available men to patrol toward Nashville, Weatherford feared, “he will lose them all.” The pontoon bridge across the Cumberland, Weatherford added, was “not worth the risk.”
Nothing came of the Forrest rumor. The dispatches, however, reveal Burkesville’s role late in the war. It served as a forward pontoon and scouting station on the river, lightly held yet considered important enough that a general officer worried about how to defend or abandon it in the face of a possible cavalry thrust.
Lyon’s courthouse burning raid
The last major wartime blow to Burkesville came in early 1865. In December 1864 and January 1865 Confederate brigadier Hylan B. Lyon led a fast moving raid across western and south central Kentucky with orders to disrupt Union control and to burn certain county courthouses, especially in counties considered strongly loyal to the Union.
According to the Kentucky National Guard’s “Paper Trail of the Civil War in Kentucky” summary for Cumberland County, Lyon’s raid ended at Burkesville on January 3 1865. His men robbed stores, impressed horses and other property, and set fire to the courthouse. Miraculously, county records were saved, either carried out in haste or removed in advance when word of Lyon’s approach spread.
The burning of the Cumberland County courthouse made Burkesville part of Kentucky’s wider “burned county” story. Several courthouses across the state fell victim either to accidental wartime fires or to deliberate attacks like Lyon’s. For local residents the blaze was not an abstract footnote. The courthouse embodied county identity and legal memory. Its destruction capped four years in which Cumberland County had endured raids, skirmishes, guerrilla violence, and the constant strain of being a river frontier.
Why Burkesville’s Civil War story still matters
Walk around Burkesville today and much of that history hides in plain sight. A modern brick courthouse stands where Lyon’s men left charred timbers. Cars rumble across bridges where pontoons once floated. The Cumberland glides past without any hint that Zollicoffer’s quartermasters once eyed it as a supply line or that Morgan’s horses churned it to brown foam in July 1863.
Yet the paper trail that survives from the war years tells a remarkably rich story for such a small town. Official Records describe Confederate generals dreaming of a river based defensive line and Union generals worrying over a fragile pontoon bridge. Diaries like Richard Hancock’s show little fights on the river that never made headlines but decided who controlled a ferry on a given week. Regimental histories and state compiled summaries trace how Cumberland County men fought far afield while their families endured raids at home. Markers scattered along Route 90 and around the square preserve pieces of that story in bronze and paint.
Burkesville reminds us that the Civil War was not only a series of big set piece battles but also a web of supply lines, crossings, rumors, and raids. The town’s experience connects the Mill Springs campaign to Morgan’s Great Raid and Lyon’s courthouse burning expedition. It also illustrates how a single river port could shape events far beyond its county line.
For Appalachian communities that sometimes feel far from “the center” of American history, Burkesville offers a different lesson. The road to Beech Grove, to Tebbs Bend, and even to Ohio and Indiana ran through this bend in the Cumberland. Understanding that river road helps us see how the mountains and border counties of Kentucky were never truly peripheral to the Civil War at all.
Sources & further reading
U.S. War Department, The War of the Rebellion: A Compilation of the Official Records of the Union and Confederate Armies, Series I, Vol. 4 and Vol. 7, especially correspondence on Zollicoffer’s Cumberland River line and Burkesville as a supply point, and Series I, Vol. 45, Part 2, p. 141, for the December 10 1864 dispatches about Burkesville’s pontoon bridge and the rumored approach of Forrest. National Park Service+1
Richard R. Hancock, Hancock’s Diary: Or, A History of the Second Tennessee Confederate Cavalry, pp. 87–88, for the November 30 1861 skirmish at the Cumberland above Burkesville, available in transcription as “Diary of Private Richard R. Hancock: Saturday, November 30, 1861” on Civil War Notebook. Civil War Notebook
“Prelude” and related campaign pages, Mill Springs Battlefield National Monument, National Park Service, for analysis of Zollicoffer’s supply line from Nashville up the Cumberland to Burkesville and discussion of the steamboats and the Noble Ellis. National Park Service
“Civil War 1861–1865 in Cumberland County,” in The Paper Trail of the Civil War in Kentucky, Kentucky National Guard, for concise summaries of Morgan’s February 1863 attack on Burkesville, his later crossing during the Great Raid, and Hylan B. Lyon’s courthouse burning raid that ended in Burkesville on January 3 1865. KY National Guard History
John Hunt Morgan related markers and guides including “Morgan on to Ohio,” “Confederate Crossings at Neeley’s Ferry,” “Burkesville Ferry,” and “Skirmish at Norris Branch” through the Kentucky Historical Society marker program, HMDB, and the John Hunt Morgan Heritage Trail website, for on the ground details of Morgan’s crossings and skirmishes in Cumberland County. HMDB+4Kentucky Historical Society+4HMDB+4
“Cumberland County History,” KYGenWeb and related local histories, for background on the county’s formation, economy, and the Civil War service of its residents in units such as the Third and Fifth Kentucky Infantry (U.S.), the First and Fifth Kentucky Cavalry (U.S.), and the Cumberland Light Artillery (C.S.). Civil War Encyclopedia+3KyGenWeb+3FamilySearch+3
American Battlefield Trust, “Morgan’s Great Raid of 1863,” and “Morgan’s Raid,” Wikipedia, for broader context on the raid that began with the Burkesville crossing and extended through Kentucky, Indiana, and Ohio. American Battlefield Trust+1
Eastham Tarrant, The Wild Riders of the First Kentucky Cavalry (1894), for veteran recollections of Wolford’s regiment along the Cumberland River corridor, and Lowell H. Harrison’s The Civil War in Kentucky for statewide framing of the Cumberland line and the Burkesville to Mill Springs axis. National Park Service+1