The Lebanon Races

The Lebanon Races. "The Wildest Race a Soldier ever Experienced". At dawn on May 5, 1862, Confederate Pvt. Pleasant Whitlow galloped into downtown Lebanon behind you, crying, "The Feds! The Feds!" On his heels, Union cavalry stormed into town, gunning him down and surprising sleeping Confederates under Col. John Hunt Morgan., Morgan had left Mississippi on April 26 with 325 men to raid Union supply lines in Tennessee and Kentucky. Reaching Lebanon on the cold and rainy night of May 4, his men camped at Cumberland University and around the town square., Pickets guarded the roads, but wet and chilled sentries on the Murfreesboro Road south of town sought shelter inside a farmhouse-not suspecting that Federals under Gen. Ebenezer Dumont, led by Col. Frank Wolford's 1st Kentucky Cavalry, were advancing on that road. Near daybreak on May 5, Pvt. Whitlow spied the Federals through a window. Stunned, he ran to his horse and raced into town, shouting his warning until bullets struck him down., Morgan's men scrambled for their horses, yelling and firing, as fighting raged around where you stand. An eyewitness wrote, "Amid the crack of rifles, the reports of pistols, and the clatter of hoofs on the hard wet streets, could be heard hoarse shouts of fighting men, and at times the shrill shrieks of frightened women and children.", Morgan ordered a retreat, and the remnants of his force galloped east towards the Cumberland River "on the wildest race a soldier ever experienced." By the time Morgan reached the river, he had only twenty men left, the rest having been killed, wounded, captured, or scattered., (Captions) , Union Col. Frank L. Wolford. Courtesy Library of Congress , Morgan's Men. - Harper's New Monthly Magazine August 1865