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Berry faced a lengthy trial by a military commission which convened on January 13, 1866, in Louisville. The guerrilla chieftain was charged with more than 14 murders, six counts of robbery, and two charges of rape against black women. Although acquitted of the rape charges, he It’s all within your reach at Western Kentucky University was found guilty of one count of robbery and 11 counts of murder. The Judge Advocate sentenced him to hang on www.wku.edu March 2nd but the sentence was afterwards commuted to 10 years at hard labor in the penitentiary at Albany, New York. In the years that followed many prominent Kentuckians sought his release but Berry died in his cell on July 4, 1873 at the age of 36.24 No charges were filed against his brother Thomas F. Berry alias Thomas Henderson who was finally set free on April 22, 1866. In his 1914 wartime reminiscences, “Colonel” Berry falsely claimed that he had cheated the gallows by killing his guards in a daring escape. He also falsely denied his role in the Breckinridge County raid and claimed that King White was the “Judas” who revealed his brother’s whereabouts to the Federal authorities.25 If so, young White was poorly rewarded. He languished in the Military Prison awaiting a trial that never took place. On April 30, 1865, he was turned over to the civil authorities of Hancock County where he was under indictment for his role in the plundering of the steamer Morning Star on December 21, 1864. Another cellmate of the Berry brothers and King White, James Harvey Wells, alias William Henry, was likewise found guilty of being a guerrilla, and sentenced to a term at hard labor in the Ohio Penitentiary in Columbus. These four were the last known guerrillas to be imprisoned or tried by Federal military authorities for deeds committed during the war. By the spring of 1866, Kentucky’s civil and military leaders sought to restore peace, as well as law and order, to the Commonwealth. In fact, virtually all of the guerrillas confined in the Kentucky penitentiary had of prominent Kentucky historians the post-war years were marked already been released at intervals by Gen. Palmer’s orders.27 Nevertheless the seeds of violence and lawlessness sowed by by “decades of discord.” While he scoffed at the reports, John W. civil war had already taken firm root in Kentucky soil. In the words Tuttle of Wayne County duly noted in his diary that a wave of mass hysteria swept central Kentucky in early 1866. The Devil himself had 24 John Sickles, The Legends of Sue Mundy and One Armed Berry: Confederate Guerrillas in reportedly risen from the depths and was leaving a path of death and Kentucky, (Merrillville, IN: Heritage Press, 1999), pp. 66-67 and Watson and destruction in his wake.28 In reality there was little need for his Satanic Brantley, Confederate Guerrilla, pp. 196-98. Majesty to trod Kentucky soil. Guerrilla warfare had unleashed many 25 Col. Thomas F. Berry, Four Years With Morgan and Forrest, (Oklahoma City, OK: The devils in human form and their bloody deeds and brutal violence Harlow-Ratliff Co., 1914), pp. 462, 473-75. However, see the Louisville Daily would darken Kentucky’s future for years to come.
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Journal, April 24, 1866 for a report of Thomas F. Berry’s release from the Louisville Military Prison. Louisville Daily Courier, April 25, 1866.
26
Register of Prisoners Confined in the Kentucky Penitentiary (1859-1866), KDLA,
27
Frankfort. James Klotter and Hambleton Tapp (Eds.), The Union, The Civil War and John W.
28
Tuttle (Frankfort, Ky.: The Kentucky Historical Society, 1980): 266-67.
About the Author
James M. Prichard, who currently resides in Louisville, supervised the Research Room at the Kentucky State Archives from 1985-2008. A part-time employee at the Filson Historical Society, he is presently completing a history of Frankfort in the Civil War. Fall 2013
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