Turner Ashby’s Attack

Turner Ashby’s Attack. Kelley’s Island Engagement. On June 26, 1861, part of Confederate Lt. Col. Turner Ashby's 7th Virginia Cavalry clashed with a detachment of Co. A, 11th Indiana Infantry, on Kelley's Island 100 yards ahead of you. Both units were on patrol. The Federals had fought earlier that day and mortally wounded Ashby's brother, Capt. Richard Ashby. They occupied Kelley's Island while planning to commandeer a Baltimore and Ohio Railroad train or canal boat to transport their wounded back to Cumberland., Col. Lew Wallace, 11th Indiana Infantry, wrote a report of the action the next day, asserting that Corp. David B. Hay's 13-man mounted patrol had first clashed with 41 cavalrymen under Capt. Richard Ashby, killing 8 and wounding Ashby. He also claimed that 75 of Turner Ashby's men had attacked them here on the island, and Hay's men had killed 23. Wallace, who later wrote the novel Ben-Hur, added, "The report of the skirmish sounds like fiction, but it is not exaggerated.", According to later Confederate accounts, however, Turner Ashby led ten men in a mounted charge on the dismounted Federals, who fired from behind drift-logs and sycamores. When horses fell wounded or tumbled over the logs, Ashby's men moved forward on foot. Two of them, Dr. O'Fanton and Osbourne Foley, were killed and another (John Ladd) was wounded. Ashby's men killed three of the Indianans. Hearing a train whistle in the distance, and anticipating that it carried Union reinforcements and might cut their route of retreat, Ashby ordered a withdrawal. His men returned that night to recover their dead and also found nearby the wounded Capt. Ashby, who died nine days later. "Charge them, men, and at them with your bowie-knives.", Lt. Col. Turner Ashby, 7th Virginia Cavalry, (captions) , The Black Knight of the Valley - Courtesy John Paul Strain , Unidentified soldier, 11th Indiana Infantry - Courtesy Library of Congress ,