Rome Ferry

Rome Ferry. Hot Pursuit. After Union Gen. Ebenezer Dumont’s troops surprised Confederate Gen. John Hunt Morgan’s command at Lebanon on May 5, 1862, Morgan’s men escaped north and rushed toward the Cumberland River. Hotly pursued, the Confederates succeeded in reaching Rome first. Luckily for them, they found the ferry was anchored on their side of the Cumberland River. In their haste to escape, they left many horses behind, including Morgan’s favorite mount, Black Bess., Dumont was pleased with his victory in Lebanon but disappointed that Morgan and his troops escaped. He reported, “Having followed the enemy until my horses began to drop dead under their riders, and until the enemy had been so killed, wounded, captured, or escaped singly by byroads, that not to exceed forty men were still together, the pursuit was finally abandoned at Carthage. From Lebanon to Carthage the road was strewn with the dead and wounded of the enemy, and with many horses that had been shot or had fallen dead from exhaustion. In this latter respect my command suffered even more than the enemy.”, Another event here underscores the viciousness of the war in this region. When Confederate Gen. Joseph Wheeler’s 4th Tennessee Cavalry was nearby in the summer of 1864, he allowed some local men to visit their families. Capt. John Marcellus Grissum came to his family’s home near here, but Union soldiers located and executed him, his brother Thomas, and his nephew, Wilson G. Hankins (Confederate recruits) in front of the family’s smokehouse on September 3, 1864. They were buried in a nearby field on Whitefield Road, on the site of the present-day Grissum Cemetery., (Inscription under the photos in the upper right), Gen. Ebenezer Dumont, postwar photograph, - Courtesy Library of Congress. , Gen. Joseph Wheeler, - Courtesy Library of Congress, Capt. John Marcellus Grissum, - Courtesy Library of Congress