192 CIVIL WAR FORTIFICATIONS Buell put in upriver at its next stop, Warsaw, it was met by the Gallatin Co. sheriff and three deputies who had a warrant for Farris’s arrest. The warrant was executed and Farris was incarcerated in the Gallatin Co. jail. Col. John J. Landrum (a renowned local attorney, a state legislator, and a Union military officer during the Mexican War and the Civil War) and Henry J. Abbett had the case transferred to federal court, where Farris was exonerated. The sheriff and the deputies who arrested him later were indicted by a federal grand jury for interfering with the U.S. mail. In 1868 Farris was killed in the calamitous collision of the steamers the United States and the America on the Ohio River near Warsaw. Other bloody skirmishes during the war were reported in eastern Gallatin Co. near Sugar Creek and in the far western region of the county in the area once known as Gex, on property later occupied by the Gallatin Steel Company. The event at Gex occurred in August 1864 and involved the 117th Colored Regiment, which had come to Ghent to recruit local African Americans (see Gex Landing Incident). There was also a report in the Warsaw Independent that a blacksmith living on Sugar Creek named John Edwards, age 47, was murdered by Confederate guerillas in 1863, leaving a widow and eight children. Anticipating trouble, he had buried all of his paper money ($75) in a bottle. In 1885 rooting hogs unearthed the bottle. The cork had rotted out and the currency was so wet and decomposed as to be worthless. Contemporaneous letters and memoirs also indicate that locals believed that Confederate general Morgan had “spies” and agents at work in the county during each of the raids he conducted into Kentucky. Bogardus, Carl R., Sr. The Story of Gallatin County, Ed. James C. Claypool. Cincinnati: John S. Swift, 2003. Louisville Journal, January 1, July 30, December 30, 1862; October 13, 1866. Warsaw Independent, April 21, 1888, 3. Whittlesey, Charles. “An Episode in the Rebellion,” Magazine of Western History, April 2, 1885.
successfully built nine fortifications in Kentucky (eight cannon batteries and Fort Mitchel) during the fall and winter of 1861. On the Cincinnati side of the Ohio River, he used the natural setting of steep-sided hills to place several gun platforms on Price Hill and Mount Adams. Whittlesey’s original plan called for the construction of 17 military fortifications. However, because action on other military fronts required the attention of the engineers, only the first 9 installations were completed initially: Fort Mitchel, Battery Coombs (called Ludlow Hill Battery in 1861), Battery Riggs (not used after 1862), Battery Hooper (called Battery Kyle in 1861; name changed later to Battery Hooper), Battery Burnet (called Quarry Battery in 1861), Battery Larz Anderson (called Tunnel Battery in 1861), Battery Holt (called Three-Mile Creek or Stuart Battery in 1861), Battery Shaler, and Battery Phil Kearny (called Beechwoods Battery in 1861). Holt, Shaler, and Kearny Batteries are in Campbell Co.; the remaining ones are in Kenton Co. A small allotment of artillery and a detachment of regular soldiers were stationed at Camp King (the site of modern Menken Field, between Latonia and Covington along the Licking River). They kept the cannons in repair, drilled, and visited the fortifications daily. A separate detachment camped at Fort Mitchel until late summer of 1862. In the summer of 1862, Confederate forces had marched into Kentucky intending to take over the state and possibly capture Cincinnati and Louisville. By late August, after the Confederates won at the battle of Richmond, the Kentucky state government fled to Louisville. Gen. Horatio G. Wright, commander of the Union Department of the Ohio, ordered Gen. Lew Wallace to Cincinnati in late August 1862 to organize a defense against the anticipated Confederate attack from inside Kentucky. Within a week, Wallace declared martial law in Cincinnati, Covington, and Newport. Wallace placed Capt. James H. Simpson, of the U.S. Engineers, in charge of preparing the defensive fortifications. Simpson requested the assistance of Colonel Whittlesey. Whittlesey had recently retired from military ser vice but returned to aid Simpson. In a few weeks, work brigades added
Steve Huddleston
CIVIL WAR FORTIFICATIONS. The Union Army’s interest in protecting Cincinnati as a vital river port, transportation hub, and manufacturing center began early in the Civil War. Gen. George McClellan sent Lt. Orlando M. Poe, of the topographical engineers, to Cincinnati during May and June 1861 to map the area for defensive purposes. By September, Brig. Gen. Ormsby M. Mitchel assigned Col. Charles W. Whittlesey to organize and construct a fortification system in Northern Kentucky to protect the southern approaches to Cincinnati. When Whittlesey arrived in the region on September 23, 1861, he carefully chose the locations of his first series of fortifications. They were spaced across the ridgetops from what is today Ludlow on the west to Fort Thomas on the east, focusing on vulnerable roads and valleys. Whittlesey
Fort Mitchel.
to the original eight defensive fortifications, building a series of cannon batteries, rifle trenches, and connecting roads, just outside the city limits of Covington and Newport. Construction crews included the Black Brigade, the first organized use of free African Americans in the Civil War. Manned by a large number of volunteer regiments, the defensive line deterred a Confederate advance into Northern Kentucky long enough for other Union forces to threaten the invaders from the south. At least 8,000 Confederate troops, under the direction of Gen. Henry Heth, advanced to within sight of Fort Mitchel in Kenton Co. Proceeding north along U.S. 25 (the Dixie Highway, or the Covington and Lexington Turnpike), they then stopped and waited. Scouting reports told Heth of the impressive string of fortifications, artillery, over 50,000 inexperienced militia and home guard troops, and at least 20,000 veteran soldiers ahead. The standoff took place September 10–12, 1862. On September 10, near Fort Mitchel, a skirmish between the 104th Ohio Infantry and the Confederates resulted in the death of four Union soldiers. The Confederate command soon realized they were vastly outnumbered. Union troop movements in Central Kentucky hastened their withdrawal. Harassed by Union cavalry, Heth and his troops withdrew southward, ending up at the Battle of Perryville in early October 1862. As a result of that battle, the Confederate army withdrew from Kentucky. Confederate general John Hunt Morgan continued to conduct cavalry raids throughout the state into 1864, but the Confederates never returned in force, and Kentucky remained a Union-controlled state. After the end of the invasion emergency, Captain Simpson worked through the winter of 1862 and through the summer of 1863 to complete the fortification system, bringing it up to military specifications. General Morgan and a number of smaller renegade bands of rebel soldiers continued to ride through Kentucky for the rest of the war, necessitating the manning of the forts. Several major forts, such as Fort Wright, were not constructed until 1863. However, all were upgraded or fi nished by the fall of 1863. The fortifi-