Perry County, Indiana - Chapter 27: Bombardment of Hawesville, 1916

"Boom ! Boom !" roared the thunder of artillery across the placid Ohio from Cannelton to Hawesville one sultry morning in July, 1864. Nor was it a peaceful salute, but a discharge of actual warfare from the Federal gunboat Springfield (No. 22 of the Ohio and Mississippi fleet) , then lying at anchor before Cannelton for the town's protection, and the solitary instance when naval cannon were fired in defense of Indiana soil.

As the war progressed, drawing more and more of Perry County's able-bodied men into the army, on the opposite side of the river a smaller proportion from Hancock County had regularly enlisted, either for the Union or the Confederacy, so that Hawesville, like many other localities in Kentucky, was left practically at the mercy of the many irregular squads of unattached cavalry, whose piratical incursions were the least creditable feature of the conflict. The best and most responsible citizens on either side, whatever their affiliations, were sincerely opposed to border hostilities, wishing as far as possible to maintain peaceable relations with their lifelong neighbours, leaving the momentous questions at stake to be settled vi et armis on distant battlefields by the recognized leaders of both parties.

Troops of the Perry County Legion had more than once gone to the defense of Breckinridge and Hancock Counties against plundering marauders, whose depredations were a menace to every quiet home. The knowledge of this intensified the antagonism of the guerillas, who several times slipped into and out of

Hawesville, and their bitterest animosity was directed toward Cannelton, as the county seat and centre of Perry County troops, notwithstanding her chief industrial plants represented the investment of New Orleans and Louisville capital.

The favourite threat among the fire-eating Southrons was, "We'll come across and burn your cotton mill for you," a taunt repeated with increasing vehemence after John Morgan's spectacular dash across Harrison County in the preceding year. His first defeat, and the imprisonment in Ohio from which he escaped, exercised no restraint upon the scouting bands assembled from time to time in Kentucky, and since the geographical position of Cannelton exposed the town with peculiar strategic weakness as a possible point of attack, the government detached from the lower flotilla Captain Edmond Morgan's vessel, the Springfield, ordering him to guard the port of Cannelton during the summer of 1864.

This duty was almost a furlough for Captain Morgan, compared with his earlier experiences. Born in an aristocratic English family, his father being Captain Edmond Morgan, Sr., of the Buckinghamshire Guards, he had been at the age of thirteen a commissioned midshipman in the Royal Navy, participating creditably in the brief but bloody Crimean War. At its close he came, a soldier of fortune, to America where a near relative, Lord Lyon, was then at Washington as Queen Victoria's Envoy Extraordinary and Minister Plenipotentiary. Through Lord Lyon's friendship with Admiral Porter young Morgan was given a special position as squadron instructor, to teach sword practice and the sighting and firing of heavy ordnance.

His sympathies being with the North, Morgan soon accepted a commission in the United States Navy and entered a stirring period of his life. He became a blockade runner, commanding a flotilla of twelve steamboats that crept down the Mississippi one stormy night and spiked the batteries of Island Number Ten, allowing the bottled-up Federal fleet to steam toward Vicksburg. Following this, he headed an expedition up the Cumberland River to seize the southern iron foundries, an exploit of constant fighting and prodigious labour, such as the burning of twelve bridges. For both these feats he received high tribute from the War Department and special recognition from Congress.

Contrasted with such thrilling service the Cannelton appointment seemed mere pastime. Very gay was the social life of the little town during that long summer, its patriotic families vying with each other in the hospitable attentions they were pleased to extend to the gallant officers and marines who were their protectors, nor were these lacking in return courtesies, even on board their somewhat austere vessel. The Springfield was a sternwheel boat approximating in size the present Louisville and Evansville packets, but completely sheathed with iron plates, pierced only by apertures for her guns. Her pilot-house was surmounted by a handsome pair of stag antlers, taken from a deer shot in southwestern Missouri, not far from New Madrid before the capture of Island Number Ten, and these are perhaps the only material souvenir of the Springfield yet in existence.

Well-nigh forgotten had been the strife of war until one Monday morning, July 25, to be exact, was made memorable by the bombardment of Hawesville, and about ten o'clock some rapid firing called a curious crowd to the river bank for a sight wholly new and ever since without a parallel. There was a deep bass hum-m-m, a sharp whiz-z-z, a beautifully perfect wreath of smoke issuing from the cannon's mouth ; then in the distance, a few feet from the earth, a pure white cloud started out of the clear air, and five seconds later returned the hollow, reverberating boom-m-m.

Nor was sound the only emotion, for the scene was equally exciting. A shell would burst over some Kentucky home, driving out half a dozen terror-stricken inmates ; a strong current of women and children was setting toward the lower part of town, a goodly number hastening within the thick stone walls of the Roman Catholic Church for protection, while many negroes, as they were reminded of safe retreat in the Trabue coal mines, fled thither and looked not behind, believing that the fate of Sodom and Gomorrah had befallen their village.

While frightened Hawesville thus sought the shelter of distance, rock walls and caves in the earth, openmouthed Cannelton stood agog to witness the exhibition. Shelling a town was, indeed, a rare show for Indiana citizens. There were the finest facilities for observation, abundant ammunition, and not a whit of danger. About twenty shells were discharged and all was over. A thousand stories were instantly in circulation, impossible to record and foolish to deny.

The substance of the affair was that Captain Morgan had received information of guerillas entering Hawesville, and with great caution sent into the town a few shells which did no damage to person and none of consequence to property. He had no opportunity for warning the residents to leave, but by personal superintendence of every piece pointed and every fuse fired, saw that no danger should be incurred by inoffensive citizens of the place. His generous offer, immediately made public, to remunerate from his private purse any one whatever, to the full extent of any loss they might have sustained, was an honourable pledge to the careful discharge of his official duty as protector of the peace and dignity of both towns.

Among the attractive young girls of Cannelton were three often grouped together as "belles" in name and fact. Miss Isabelle Beacon, Miss Isabelle Kirkpatrick and Miss Isabelle Huckeby, all of whom eventually wedded army men. Most youthful of the three and the youngest child, as well, of Joshua B. Huckeby, was Miss Huckeby, who was married in after years to Major Thomas James de la Hunt, of General Hovey's staff. Her two brothers were in the Federal army

(Captain John Lang Huckeby, of the Eighty-first Indiana, and William Lamb Huckeby, engineer on the gunboat Peytona). Their parents took particular pains in entertaining Captain Morgan at their home "Virginia Place," with its square-pillared verandah after an Old Dominion model, and no other guests were more warmly welcomed than Miss Beacon and Miss Kirkpatrick.

With the approach of autumn the wane of the Confederacy had distinctly set in, so that fear of guerilla annoyance was over. The Springfield was ordered to join her fleet at New Orleans, steaming away down the river, to be seen at Cannelton no more. The antlers were Captain Morgan's parting gift to his little friend. Miss Huckeby, but a more tender trophy, his heart, he left behind with Miss Beacon. Before the summer roses bloomed again in Cannelton gardens Richmond had fallen, Lee had surrendered at Appomattox, Lincoln had been assassinated, and when Captain Morgan next came, in piping times of peace, he wore uniform no longer but was in citizen's garb to claim his promised bride.

Of the gay wedding party from both Indiana and Kentucky assembled in the old Beacon homestead, only one remains half a century later on the old stamping ground. Colonel Franklin Lander, of Hawesville, perhaps the one man of his vicinity who at all times happily bridged any social gulf between North and South, counting by the score his warm personal friends in the armies of both the Union and the Confederacy. Esteemed as "Cousin Frank" by young and old alike, he stands an admirable example of the polished gentleman of the ancien regime. In the old-fashioned, lowceilinged, long drawing-room of "Virginia Place" the antlers occupy the post of honour above a bay-window looking - today, as it did fifty years earlier - toward the hills of Kentucky, across the Beautiful River, "whence the fleets of iron have fled."