Eliza Callis Scott Chapter Daughters of the Union 1861-1865

10/22/2026

The only engagement in Indiana during the Civil War.

On July 9, 1863, the only Civil War battle ever fought on Indiana soil lasted less than an hour, and Indiana lost.

Confederate cavalry commander John Hunt Morgan had crossed the Ohio River into Indiana the day before with roughly 2,400 men. Only about 450 Hoosiers, local militia from the 6th and 8th Indiana Legion under Colonel Lewis Jordan, stood between Morgan's raiders and the town of Corydon. ⚔️

Morgan's first attack failed, and so did a flanking move and a third charge, until his artillery and reinforcements finally broke the Indiana line. The retreat turned into a rout. Union losses came to 369, with fewer than 100 of the original 450 defenders escaping capture, while Morgan's raiders lost 51 men before moving on to plunder the town. The scene above is an AI-generated illustration based on historical research, not an actual photograph of the battle.

It's a battle most Hoosiers have never heard of, fought in a state most people don't associate with the Civil War at all.

Had you ever heard that a real Civil War battle was fought inside Indiana's own borders?



AI-assisted content: text and/or visuals in this post were created with the help of AI and reviewed for accuracy.

10/19/2026

When he announced his name change, Muhammad Ali said, “Cassius Clay is a slave name. I didn’t choose it and I don’t want it.” But the origin of his name is actually much more interesting than that comment suggests.

The boxer Cassius Marcellus Clay, Jr., later known as Muhammad Ali, was named for his father Cassius Marcellus Clay, Sr., who was himself named for Kentucky abolitionist Cassius Marcellus Clay, one of the most notable and controversial men of his day.

The original Cassius Clay became an abolitionist while attending Yale. When he returned to his home in Kentucky he freed his slaves and began a career as a politician and activist, in a state where abolitionism was extremely unpopular.

Cassius Clay was a fearless brawler. Although he carried two pistols (and kept his own personal cannon at his home), his preferred weapon was his Bowie knife. While Clay was giving a speech in 1843 a paid assassin jumped onto the stage and shot him in the chest. Fortunately for Clay the bullet was deflected by Clay’s knife. With the bullet in his chest, Clay tackled his attacker and stabbed him repeatedly, cutting off the man’s nose and an ear in the process. On another occasion, after giving an anti-slavery speech Clay was jumped by six brothers. Even though they stabbed and beat him nearly to death, Clay fought off all six of them with his Bowie knife, killing one of them.

During the Civil War Cassius Clay served briefly as a general in the Union army, before becoming the U.S. minister to Russia. He was instrumental in assuring Russian support for the North during the war and later in procuring the purchase of Alaska.

As a husband and father, Clay left much to be desired. In 1878, at age 68, Clay divorced his 65-year-old wife, Mary Jane. Clay had been an absentee father most of his life and their children had been raised almost entirely by Mary Jane. Two of their daughters, Mary Barr Clay and Laura Clay, became prominent suffragists and women’s rights activists, in part as a result of witnessing how their mother was treated and how unfair property rights were to women. At age 84, Clay married the 15-year-old sister of one of his tenants. He died in 1903 at age 92.

Cassius Marcellus Clay was born on October 19, 1810, two hundred sixteen years ago today.

10/12/2026

10/08/2026

When Robert E. Lee resigned his U.S. Army commission in 1861 to command the Confederate Army of Northern Virginia, he left behind his family’s beloved estate, Arlington House. Inherited by his wife, Mary Anna Randolph Custis (the step-great-granddaughter of George Washington), the grand Greek Revival mansion sat on a pristine, forested bluff with a direct, commanding view of the U.S. Capitol. Recognizing its immense strategic value, Union troops crossed the Potomac and occupied the grounds almost immediately, turning the Lees' parlor into a headquarters and their lawn into a sprawling encampment.

In 1864, the Union government devised a targeted, bureaucratic trap to legally seize the property. They passed a law requiring property taxes in "insurrectionary territories" to be paid in person. When Mary Lee, who was suffering from severe rheumatoid arthritis, sent a cousin to pay the $92.07 tax on her behalf, the government rejected the payment and confiscated the 1,100-acre estate.

But the true, lasting blow was delivered by Union Quartermaster General Montgomery C. Meigs. Meigs had been a close friend and protégé of Lee before the war, and he viewed Lee’s defection as a profound, unforgivable betrayal. As the death tolls from battles like the Wilderness and Spotsylvania overwhelmed Washington's existing graveyards, Meigs proposed turning Arlington into a military cemetery. To ensure the Lees could never comfortably return to their home, Meigs gave a very specific, spiteful order: the first graves were to be dug in Mary Lee’s prized rose garden, mere yards from the mansion's front door.

By the time Lee surrendered at Appomattox in 1865, the grounds of his former home were dotted with thousands of white headstones. Lee reportedly rode near the estate after the war but, heartbroken by the sight of the graves covering his family's land, he never set foot on it again and advised his family to abandon all claims to it. Today, Montgomery Meigs' act of bitter, personal revenge has evolved into Arlington National Cemetery, the final resting place for over 400,000 American veterans, transforming a spiteful wartime tactic into the most sacred military ground in the United States.

10/08/2026

In late 1863, after the Battle of Chattanooga, General Ulysses S. Grant received an unusual gift. A d*ing man in St. Louis offered him a magnificent horse, asking only that the animal be treated kindly. Grant gave his word and named the horse Cincinnati.

Cincinnati was the son of Lexington, the fastest four mile Thoroughbred in America. He soon became Grant's favorite, carrying him through the brutal Overland Campaign of 1864. Soldiers marveled at how calm he stayed amid the roar of battle.

Grant guarded him closely and almost never let anyone else ride him. One exception was President Abraham Lincoln, who rode Cincinnati every day while visiting Grant at City Point in 1865.

That April Cincinnati carried Grant to Appomattox, where Lee surrendered.

After the war, Grant turned down $10,000 for him. Cincinnati followed Grant to the White House, then spent his final years on a Maryland farm owned by Grant's boyhood friend. He d*ed there in 1878.

Rest easy, Cincinnati. You served well.

10/08/2026

Most likely as a result my GGG Grandfather died in Andersonville Prison in July of 1864.

Robert E. Lee offered to trade prisoners man for man, and the Union commander wrote back with one question.

Lee was fifty-seven that October of 1864, his beard gone gray, his army dug into trenches around Petersburg and Richmond.

The regular exchange of prisoners had stopped more than a year earlier, after the Confederate Congress declared that captured Black soldiers would be handled as escaped slaves rather than as prisoners of war.

Thousands of men from both sides were dying in camps like Andersonville in Georgia and Elmira in New York.

In the last days of September, Black regiments had fought hard at New Market Heights outside Richmond, and some of their men had been captured.

On October 1, Lee proposed exchanging the prisoners taken by the armies in Virginia.

Ulysses S. Grant asked whether Black soldiers would be delivered the same as white ones.

Grant had his own hard reasons for caution, since every Confederate sent home was another r***e back in Lee's lines.

Lee answered on October 3.

His letter was three sentences long.

He would include captured soldiers of any color, he wrote, but Black men claimed as property by Southern citizens were "not considered subjects of exchange."

Grant refused to make the exchange.

The prisoners on both sides stayed where they were, behind the stockades.

09/09/2026

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