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141 The Boys Were Sorry That Duke Was Captured  10  ON THE AFTERNOON OF JULY 16, the raiders crossed the Scioto River and burned the bridge before they entered the small town of Piketon. It was at Piketon, Duke wrote in 1891, that he received the news of the surrender of Vicksburg and Lee’s retreat from Gettysburg. It seems that Duke should have learned of this news many days before he reached Piketon. He had been north of the Ohio River since July 9, and the men had been reading the local newspapers at almost every opportunity .The Northern newspapers were reporting news of Vicksburg and Gettysburg when the rebels had crossed the Ohio River. It is not hard to imagine the impact that the news of these two major military reversals,whenever it was discovered, had on Duke and the rest of the men. The significance of these events must have discouraged almost everyone. In the meantime, the raid was also getting its fair share of publicity. One federal soldier was convinced that the raiders would be caught, but, as the days passed, he started to believe that “none would be caught” and that after a “masterly raid through the states they would escape to Virginia.”1 By July 15, 1863, the Union commander of the Ohio military district, General Ambrose Burnside, realized that Buffington was the only logical place left where the raiders could ford the Ohio River. While Hobson and the others were pursuing the Confederates from the west, Burnside had ordered General Henry Moses Judah to Portsmouth and the gunboats commanded by Lieutenant Commander Fitch “to check the enemy at Pomeroy and Buffington until our men get up.” Portsmouth was midway between Cincinnati and Buffington, placing Judah to the south of the raiders and on their right flank. After his troops disembarked, Judah began to ride up the old Pomeroy Road in a northeasterly direction, planning to intercept Morgan somewhere between Piketon and Buffington.2 The weather on July 17 was pleasant enough.Early that morning,Curtis Burke had been sent out to forage for the rest of the men in his company. It was Friday morning, and Burke and his detail were riding through the countryside a few miles to the west of Jackson when they reported: 142 Basil Wilson Duke, CSA A couple of us went to a house and found no person at home but a couple of little children. We looked into the cupboard and found some milk and little bread and then we get into a large jar of honey and eat as much as we wanted. We saw the lady of the house coming and covered up the honey again.When she came in view we asked her to cook some bread for us. She willingly went to work at it saying she was a butternut or a copperhead as the abolitionists called them. Later that day, Burke and a few others, while still scrounging for food, earned Duke’s ire for getting ahead of the column and stirring up quite a bit of dust. A distant cloud of dust where Duke did not expect his men to be could have easily been taken as a sign that the federal cavalry was approaching.That night, as Burke bedded down, he intuitively felt that the raiders should have kept on riding all night until they reached the Ohio River and safety. Burke wrote in his diary: “Several of the boys remarked that we ought to keep moving although they were in need of rest. Nothing disturbed us during the night, and I slept fine.”3 All that day, the Ohio militia had harassed the Confederates, blocking roads, and doing anything else it could to slow the raiders’ progress.This highly successful tactic was the direct result of an order issued several days earlier. The harassment was so effective that Duke referred to the militia as “embarrassing their [the raiders ’] march.”4 Early on the morning of July 18, 1863, near Pomeroy, Johnson’s brigade skirmished with and then swept past part of Judah’s advance elements.Although Judah had pushed his men hard, it had not been hard enough, and he was too late to intercept the Confederates before they reached the Ohio River. He immediately sent a dispatch to Burnside, notifying him that he was only three hours behind Morgan’s main column and was trying to reach Buffington before the Confederates .A Union soldier,paroled by Morgan,told...

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