During 1862 Confederate cavalry commander, John Hunt Morgan, launched his first raid into Kentucky. According to Lowell H. Harrison’s The Civil War in Kentucky (1975) his column rode west from Knoxville to Sparta, Tennessee; then crossed the Cumberland River at night and overran a small Union force at Tompkinsville, Kentucky on the 9th. He captured such towns as Glasgow, Lebanon, Harrodsburg, and Cynthiana. During the three-week excursion the Rebs took 17 towns and captured and paroled 1200 Federal soldiers. They also confiscated or destroyed vast quantities of supplies, trains, and rations.

Morgan’s telegraph expert, George Ellsworth, intercepted federal communications by tapping into the wire, which enabled him to send deceptive information. He wired sarcastic comments to Federal leaders such as General Gerald Boyle and Louisville editor, George Prentice. Some of these appeared in an 1862 issue of the Times of London (England). A message sent to General Boyle under Colonel Morgan’s name quipped: “Good morning, Jerry. The telegraph is a great institution---My friend Ellsworth has all your dispatches since July 10 on file. Do you want copies?” The author, Shelby Foote, wrote that Ellsworth even sent a telegraph to Washington D.C. commenting on the poor quality of mules that Morgan commandeered from General Don Carlos Buell’s Federal Army of the Ohio.