The Beast Of Beaver: Stephen Gano Burbridge

By Floyd D. Davis · Originally published November 2016 · pp. 24–25

The war had dragged on for three years and try though they might, the Union had proved unable to confine their most troublesome Confederate gadfly, General John Hunt Morgan. Traveling unmarked roads of Eastern Kentucky known as the Rebel Trace, he moved his troops out of Southwest Virginia to harass Union forces in Eastern and Central Kentucky at will; and he had even threatened the major Northern city of Cincinnati in the deepest Confederate raid ever into Union territory. Determined to capture Morgan, Lincoln dispatched a young devotee of General William Tecumseh Sherman, Major General Stephen Gano Burbridge, to the only Union fortification overlooking the beginnings of the Rebel Trace…A mud and log fortress at the forks of Right and Left Beaver Creeks, known as Fort Beaver. Burbridge seemed a likely enough young soldier to do the job. He had distinguished himself both at the Battle of Shiloh and the Vicksburg Campaign and had risen to the rank of colonel, befriending General William T. Sherman and attracting the attention of President Lincoln. Unlike others who had played Morgan’s cat and mouse game, Burbridge settled into Fort Beaver, a Union-Built mud and log fortress at the site of the present-day city of Martin. He gathered men and supplies, and waited; knowing Morgan would strike sooner or later and that the Rebel Trace, the beginnings of which Fort Beaver commanded, was the only avenue left open to him We don’t know what passed through the young colonel’s mind while he waited in the isolated fort. We are aware that he had been extensively advised by his mentor General Sherman to conduct… “a harsh war and easy peace.” His contacts with those high in the ranks of the Radical Republicans tells of his growing political ambitions. But during those hot months in a muddy fort at the forks of Right and Left Beaver Creeks, all Burbridge could do was to crouch in his lair, and become ever more beastly in his thoughts and soul. In truth, Burbridge was an outsider from the beginning of the War. A Central Kentucky Blue Blood who had betrayed his class to break bread with the hated “Yankees,” he had been raised in the absence of a father in his teens and strictly disciplined by years in a military academy before joining the Union Army. He thrived in the familiar military environment and rose quickly through the ranks—The usual consequence of soldiering a particularly bloody war. His best performance had been at the Battle of Vicksburg where he had risen to his present position of colonel. Now he waited; crouched like a beast in its uneasy lair. Waiting to be unleashed on what he perceived as the Union’s greatest Western enemy and, strangely, his home state as well. As far as Fort Beaver itself was concerned, the fortification left a surprising light footprint considering its importance to the State of Kentucky and to the Union Cause. Repeated inquiries to the U.S. Army have failed to produce any record of its existence, and, had the Kentucky

Adjutant General not recorded the desertion of a John Clark on August 10th, 1863 and the death of Sargent General F. Salyer on June 4, 1864, little official record would exist of it at all. Various regimental histories and scholarly sources mention “The Forks of Beaver” (which is presumably Fort Beaver) several times; most notably on July 10, 1863, and March 31, 1864. These fact given, the most likely dates for the Fort’s existence are from some point after Marshall’s Raid on Martin’s Mill for corn and meal in January 1862 through the cessation of hostilities in Eastern Kentucky late in 1864. The excellent research of Friends of Middle Creek Vice-Commander John Ison has established a likely location for the fort at Hite, Kentucky; high enough on the hill to be out of the flood zone; probably near a plentiful source of fresh water. The most likely area has a visual command of the Upper-and-Lower-Vistas of the River Valley and could be easily defended had it been attacked. Unfortunately, this area has been heavily disturbed, and it is unlikely that a definitive identification of the exact site will ever be made. Burbridge’s quarry, General John Hunt Morgan, had become an unlikely candidate for such attention by the summer of 1864. He had been captured and held prisoner following his daring raid deep into Ohio, and had escaped his captors only through his mother’s impressive wealth. He had remarried in December of 1863, and his young bride was soon pregnant with the Raider’s child. This late in the War, Morgan’s well-connected family had undoubtedly advised him that the Southern cause was lost, leaving Morgan to prefer the company of his young bride and her family in Tennessee rather than raiding in the increasingly dangerous territories of Central Kentucky. None-the-less, a reluctant Morgan answered the Confederacy’s call and set about organizing yet another raid into the Blue Grass; this one aimed at the City of Cynthiana, the hub of the Central Kentucky Rail Road and an important port on the Licking River. The details of the battle are not significant to our article beyond saying that Colonel Burbridge was correct in predicting the how, where, and almost when of Morgan’s Cynthiana Raid. When word reached him from his spies along the Rebel Trace that Morgan was on the move, all he had to do was launch the coiled spring of his attack from Fort Beaver: his command rested, fully supplied, well –manned, and well-versed in Morgan’s habits. Before, Morgan had always counted on three or four days before the Union Army could mount any credible response to his lightning raids. This time, however, Morgan attacked Cynthiana on Saturday Morning, and Burbridge swept in upon him with overwhelming forces while he was eating breakfast the next day. Morgan’s men and horses were exhausted from their long march and battles. Their ammunition was practically gone, and they had no source of resupply. Morgan’s troops were swept like leaves before Burbridge’s forces; leaving only Morgan and a handful of men to escape to Virginia by a multitude of routes. Although Morgan was not captured, it destroyed his effectiveness and reputation; and lifted Stephen Burbridge high in the Radical Republican’s pantheon of gods. In response to his handily disposing of Morgan and his threat to the Union War Effort, Burbridge was almost immediately elevated to military commander of Kentucky while the state was placed under martial law. This was an extraordinary action considering that Kentucky had remained loyal to the Union from the beginning of the war, but the state’s strategic location along the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers as well as its considerable resources and ties to the Confederacy made Lincoln and others in his cabinet nervous that lingering Southern sympathies in the state might still break Kentucky away from the Union and derail Northern progress toward victory. Burbridge made it his first concern to deal with Confederate guerillas and terror groups who were wreaking havoc among his Northern supporters. Taking the advice of his mentor General William T. Sherman, Burbridge issued General Order 59 which read as follows: The Guerrillas in Kentucky.; AN ORDER BY GEN. BURBRIDGE. Published: July 23, 1864 HEADQUARTERS DISTRICT OF KENTUCKY, AND FIFTH DIVISION, TWENTY-THIRD ARMY CORPS, LEXINGTON, Ky., July 16, 1864. GENERAL ORDERS, No. 59.

The rapid increase in this district of lawless bands of armed men engaged in interrupting railroad and telegraphic communication, plundering and murdering peaceful. Union citizens destroying the malls, & c., call for the adoption of stringent measures on the part of the military authorities for their suppression. Therefore, all guerrillas, armed prowlers by whatever name they may be known, and rebel sympathizers, are hereby admonished that in future stern retaliatory measures will he adopted and strictly enforced whenever the lives or property of peaceful citizens are jeopardized by the acts of such men. Rebel sympathizers living within five miles of any scene of outrage committed by armed men not recognized as public enemies by the rules and usages of war, will be liable to be arrested and sent beyond the limits of the United States, in accordance with instructions from the Major-General commanding the Military Division of the Mississippi. So much of the property of rebel sympathizers as may be necessary to indemnify the Government or loyal citizens for losses incurred by the acts of such lawless men will be seized and appropriated for this purpose. Wherever an unarmed Union citizen is murdered, four guerrillas will be selected from the prisoners in the hands of the military authorities, and publicly shot to death in the most convenient place near the scene of outrage. By command of Brevet. Maj.-Gen. S.G. BURBRIDGE. (From the New York Times, Published July 23, 1864; New York, New York) The best records available indicate that there were at least fifty confirmed executions of Confederate prisoners under this order, their only crime having been pulling the wrong straw or low card. In remote areas of the state, other executions undoubtedly occurred unrecorded. Many others were expelled to the Confederacy on nothing more than “suspicion of Confederate sympathies”; their property being expropriated by the military and given to Union sympathizers. Burbridge was only 32 when he assumed near-dictatorial control of Kentucky. Such power had driven older and wiser men than him to the brink of madness, including his mentor General William T. Sherman, and it wasn’t long before Burbridge’s behavior became aberrant. He used his authority to exile judges and politicians who had fought in the Union Army; he created a “hog tax” that swindled the farmers of Kentucky out of $300,000, some of it for his family’s personal gain; he tried to “fix” the 1864 Election to assure a Lincoln Victory…Something he failed miserably to do; the final straw came when he tried to disarm the Kentucky Militia and provoked a head-to-head confrontation with Governor Thomas E. Bramlett. A Confrontation Burbridge lost when Lincoln, fearful that Kentucky was on the verge of leaving the Union because of Burbridge’s actions, removed him as military commander in February 1865. Burbridge resigned his military commission shortly afterward. Burbridge was proud of his actions as a military leader and thought that he should be awarded both by Kentucky and the Federal Government. Kentucky certainly did not see it that way. He and his policies had been despised during his term a military governor; he being called the “Beast of Kentucky” by many average citizens. When he set up his law office, no clients came and no offers of state offices were tendered. He was so hated that he finally had to leave Kentucky and live in New York and Washington D.C. since these strongholds of Union sentiment at least offered the possibility of a living for his family. When preparing this paper, the author contacted the Scott County

Historical Society, Mr. Burbridge’s birthplace. They apologized but explained that following the Civil War the entire family had left the county, and most had left Kentucky because the community was so incensed by Burbridge’s actions. Stephen Burbridge maintained that he was a hero to the last and insisted upon being buried in Arlington Cemetery with his comrades in arms, and at length his request was granted. At this point, God demonstrates his special love for Kentucky because Stephen G. Burbridge’s stone is marked as the 666th stone in order in the cemetery! He bears forever the number of The Beast, and his lair was Fort Beaver in the little town of Martin in Floyd County, Kentucky.

Who Knew? Bibliography: Cruickshank, Stewart, “Terror in the Bluegrass, “Blog: Journal of the Kentucky Division, Sons of Confederate Veterans, Monday, October 12, 2009 Ancestry.com; records of the Kentucky Adjutant General Alphabetical Roster of 45th KY Mounted Infantry; http://www.oocities.org/johnmasonbrown/alpharoster.html Contact with United States Army, Division of Records regarding Fort Beaver Phone Contact, Scott County Historical Society regarding the early life of Stephen Burbridge.