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Lexington Rifles
"Our Laws,
The Commands of Our Captain"

Company
Headquarters

Background
Music:
"kentucky
battle song"
Above:
flag
of the second kentucky cavalry
Courtesy:
Civil
War Museum of the Western Theater
Bardstown, Kentucky
The Lexington Rifles – Company A, 2nd Kentucky
Cavalry – is an organization that portrays John Hunt
Morgan's cavalry skirmishers during the War for Southern Independence.
Affiliated with the Kentucky
Cavalry Brigade, it is a fully democratic, family-oriented
group of unreconstructed Confederates from...
Illinois,
Iowa, and Wisconsin.
One
of the objectives of this organization is to recognize
the bravery and devotion of all those Confederates who fought and sacrificed for
the cause of Constitutional Liberty, and to honor them by reenacting their
struggle in a manner that is authentic, professional, educational, safe, and
enjoyable.
"Sentiment
moves the world; man is nothing without it. He who feels no pride
in his ancestors is unworthy to be remembered by his
descendants."
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-- Major David French Boyd, 9th
Louisiana Infantry
First President of Louisiana State University
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The
Lexington Rifles militia company was formed in 1857 by a dashing Lexington
businessman who was a veteran of the war with Mexico. A Kentucky patriot
who would later become one of the most famous cavalry leaders in history, John
Hunt Morgan would ultimately rise to the rank of Brigadier General in the
Confederate Army. During the War for Southern Independence, his daring
exploits and fearless leadership prompted fame and fable to crown him as the .
. .
"Thunderbolt of the Confederacy."
With
sectional tensions rising in America in 1860, Kentucky organized her
militia units into a State Guard to protect the neutrality of the
Commonwealth. It was
into this vanguard that the Lexington Rifles were commissioned by order of the Governor. A
year later, with war fever raging in the
country, Kentucky's neutrality came to an end and the State Guard
disbanded. As the respective militia units chose their separate national allegiances,
John Morgan led his men out of Lexington to join the Confederate Army in
serving the cause of States Rights and Constitutional Liberty.
John
Hunt Morgan
Courtesy:
Blue
Grass Trust
Lexington, Kentucky
Following
their induction into Confederate service, the Lexington Rifles were
organized with two other companies to form a cavalry command known as
Morgan's Cavalry Squadron. Led valiantly by Captain Morgan and his
brother-in-law, Lieutenant Basil Duke, the squadron quickly gained renown under
the sobriquet of "Morgan's Raiders".
And, after fighting bravely at the
Battle of Shiloh in April 1862, Morgan's Squadron became the nucleus for
organization of the 2nd
Kentucky Cavalry when that famous regiment was formed two months later in
Chattanooga, Tennessee.
Basil
Wilson Duke
Throughout
the war, Morgan and his men branded their names into military history by
raiding deeply into enemy controlled territory and by ranging across ten states.
In July 1863, they took their
fight for freedom into the states of Indiana and Ohio, thereby earning themselves
the distinction of
penetrating farther north than any other Confederate force during
the war. Two months later, while temporarily under the command of General Nathan Bedford
Forrest, they were credited with firing the first and last
shots at the Battle of Chickamauga. And, at the end of the war it was Morgan's
men who were among those who escorted President Jefferson Davis and the
Confederate Treasury through Georgia.
On
May 8, 1865, the tattered remnants of Duke's Cavalry Brigade, the antecedents of
the Lexington Rifles, gathered for their last muster in Woodstock,
Georgia. On that day, this group of brave and determined men represented
the last military command of the Confederacy to receive orders directly from the
War Department; given personally by the Secretary of War, Major General John C.
Breckinridge. This act brought to truth the statement previously made in
South Carolina by one of Morgan’s men when he replied to a lady who protested
that the men from Kentucky were appropriating her provisions. He said to
her,
"M'am,
you people in South Carolina may have started this war,
but we Kentuckians have contracted to close it out."
On a
blustery 1st Day of April 2000 in Wauconda, Illinois, the Lexington Rifles
were once again mustered into
Confederate service, determined to honor the proud sacrifices and
brave exploits of Morgan's Men.
A
special source of pride for the Lexington Rifles has been the honor for some of
its members to repeat the solemn oath of Confederate service on the steps of the
former Green River Baptist Church in Woodsonville, Kentucky. The steps and
foundation stones at the site where the original induction ceremony
took place on October 27, 1861, are all that remain of the church building after
it was desecrated and burned to the ground by Lincoln's hirelings in
1862.
Officiating
at the enlistment ceremony was Mr. Tres Seymour, Executive
Director of the Hart County Historical Society and the
Battle for the
Bridge Historic Preserve in Munfordville, Kentucky.
Oath of Enlistment on
July 30, 2001
Ruins of the Green River Baptist Church
Woodsonville, Kentucky
..
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.In the year of sixty-one, we left our native land,
For
we could not bend our spirits to a tyrant’s stern command.
And we rallied to our Buckner while our hearts were
sad and sore,
To
offer our blood for freedom, as our father did before.
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Chorus:
And
we’ll march, march, march to the music of the drum,
We
were driven forth in exile from our Old Kentucky Home,
We
were driven forth in exile from our Old Kentucky Home.
When first the Southern flag whirled its folds upon
the air,
Its
stars had hardly gathered till Kentucky’s sons were there.
And
they swore a solemn oath as they sternly gathered ‘round,
They
would only live as freemen in the dark and bloody ground.
.
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Chorus
. .
With Buckner as our leader, and Morgan in the van,
We will plant the flag of freedom in our fair and happy land.
We will drive the tyrant’s minions to the Ohio’s rolling flood,
And will dye her waves in crimson with coward Yankee blood.
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Chorus
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Then cheer ye Southern braves, ye soon shall see the
day,
When Kentucky’s fairest daughters will cheer you on your way,
And then her proud old mothers will welcome one and all,
For "United we must stand, or divided we must fall".
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Chorus
..
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Pvt.
George A. "Lightning" Ellsworth
Telegrapher, 2nd
Kentucky Cavalry
To
send
an e-telegram to Company Headquarters,
tap
into the line by clicking on our telegrapher.
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