Morgan Moves on Hartsville

The hard part came after the fight. At Hartsville on December 7, 1862, Morgan's raiders captured 2,004 Union soldiers, and the prisoners were then marched south to Lebanon. Some Confederates were barefoot and thinly dressed in the cold, and they took shoes and supplies from the Union camp. Basil Duke later wrote that fifteen Confederates were left behind frozen stiff. A larger Union force sat nine miles away at Castalian Springs and reached the field only after the fighting was over. Historians treat Hartsville as the opening action of the Stones River campaign.

What the plaque says

Morgan Moves on Hartsville December 7, 1862 Arriving here from Murfreesboro with the 2nd, 8th, 9th, and 11th Kentucky Cavalry, Stoner's Cavalry Bn, and Cobb's Btry., Col. John Hunt Morgan added to his strength Hanson's Infantry Brigade. Clearing Lebanon at 2:00 P.M., they ferried and swam the Cumberland River at 10:00 P.M., attacking Hartsville at 3:00 A.M. and defeating Dumont's Federal Brigade.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Stones River National Battlefield — 17 mi
  The Murfreesboro battlefield of December 1862, with a national cemetery built by Black soldiers, a Trail of Tears route and the story of the freedmen's settlement called Cemetery.
• Andrew Jackson's Hermitage — 18 mi
  Andrew Jackson's cotton plantation east of Nashville, where visitors can walk to the quarters, Alfred's Cabin and the Enslaved Cemetery as well as the mansion.
• Wynnewood State Historic Site — 20 mi
  A National Historic Landmark log inn at the Bledsoe's Lick springs, beside a Mississippian mound center and tied to the domestic slave trade.
• Fort Negley — 25 mi
  The largest inland stone fort of the Civil War, built in 1862 on St. Cloud Hill by more than 2,700 conscripted Black laborers, hundreds of whom died.

More markers nearby

• Benjamin Hooker / John Rice — 5.0 mi
• Cedar Grove Cemetery — 6.4 mi
• Cumberland University — 7.3 mi
• James E. Ward — 7.3 mi