The Bold Cavaliers by Dee Brown

Author:Dee Brown [Brown, Dee]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-1-4532-7415-6
Publisher: Open Road Media
Published: 2012-09-27T16:07:00+00:00

4

Early on the morning of July 7, Sam Taylor and Clay Merriwether led their companies into Brandenburg. Being so far north, the town was not garrisoned. The people appeared to be either apathetic or Confederate in sympathy, and no fight was offered. The only vessel at the landing was a small wharf boat, but Taylor and Merriwether learned that a packet steamer running between Louisville and Henderson was due in early that afternoon. A faster mailboat usually passed about the same time, but made no scheduled stops.

Brandenburg was a small town built high on a hill. From the crest the winding river could be observed for several miles in either direction. After placing lookouts on the highest points and pickets along roads entering the town, the two captains permitted their men to laze away the morning on the river front. Shortly after noon, a boarding party was ordered on to the wharf boat. Around one o’clock lookouts signaled that a steamer was coming, and the men on the wharf boat were instructed to ready their weapons and keep under cover.

Promptly on schedule the steamboat John B. McCombs rounded the last bend, sounded its hoarse whistle, and slowed its chugging engines. With paddle wheels splashing silvery in the July sunshine, it turned in to the Brandenburg landing.

The instant the packet eased alongside the wharf boat, forty fully armed Confederate cavalrymen leaped aboard, much like the pirates of a certain seagoing Morgan. In a matter of seconds, the John B. McCombs was in Rebel hands. Captain Ballard, the crew and fifty passengers, caught by surprise, were without arms and offered no resistance.

A few minutes later a fast mailboat, the Alice Dean, came puffing upriver. From the pilothouse of the McCombs, Clay Merriwether watched until he was certain the Alice Dean did not intend to stop, then ordered Captain Ballard to steam out toward her.

Some accounts of the capture of the Alice Dean claimed the Confederates ran up distress signals to lure the second boat alongside. According to a report in the Cincinnati Gazette, however, which was based on witnesses’ stories, “the McCombs was headed out just in time to touch her bows, when the Rebels who were concealed on the McCombs, jumped on board the Dean and effected the capture of that boat also.”

The Cincinnati newspaper also reported that passengers were assured their private property would be respected. Ten thousand dollars in the boats’ safes were returned to the various owners, and all were liberated with instructions not to try to leave Brandenburg. Guards of course were placed on both vessels, officers and crews being held aboard.

About nine o’clock the next morning the 2nd Kentucky, with Morgan and Duke riding in the advance, came trotting into Brandenburg, the other regiments strung out in columns of fours under a long dust cloud in the rear. The town’s main street sloped straight to the river which was still covered by a streamer of early-morning fog concealing the Indiana shoreline. This was the first time

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