John's activities are alluded to during the winter of 1861-1862 in a letter, dated January 1, 1862, from Major R. Hawes, C.S.A., to General S. Cooper, Adjutant-General, C.S. Army:(8) Two hundred Kentucky cavalry, under command of Captain Shawhan, at Salyersville and West Liberny, about 40 miles in advance of General Marshall's headquarters at Paintsville. He was promoted to major on March 12, 1862. We read in Brigadier General Humphrey H. Marshall's letter to General Cooper:(9) "Captain Shawhan received only yesterday his commission as major of the First Cavalry under the reorganization of the mounted force. His company of cavalry is the only cavalry I have. He will, I presume, return the commission under the circumstances, but I wish you to authorize me to request his acceptance of it, and so leave me a chance to assign to him troops, instead of having him assigned to men unwilling to elect him to office. I value him high; he served under me in Mexico, and I saw him borne from the field at Buena Vista badly wounded. I know he is gallant, and I would have appointed him to command my cavalry force had I the disposition of the matter. As I presume you will not recall the commission, I hope you will in a note to me request him to retain the rank. I can speedily make the actual command equal to the rank." On March 19, 1862, General Robert E. Lee replied to Brigadier General Humphrey's request with the following: "Captain Shawhan can retain his commission as major of cavalry, with the hope that his command will speedily be raised equal to his rank.."(10) John Lafferty gives us an account of the last months in the life of Major John Shawhan. "We were by this time seasoned to the hardships of war. Leaving West Virginia in the summer of 1862 we again entered Kentucky through Pound's Gap. General Kirby Smith had begun an invasion of Kentucky with his Confederate Army, and we were ordered to Paris. We were there for only one night and were immediately ordered to join General John H. Morgan's forces which were trying to prevent the escape of the Federal General George Morgan, with his army of 10,000 men, retreating from the Cumberland Gap on his way to Ohio, by the way of Hazel Green, West Liberty and Grayson. Our Battalion, then commanded by Major John Shawhan, joined General John H. Morgan at Hazel Green and were able to harass the Federal forces by fighting them almost continually until they reached the Ohio River beyond Grayson and crossed over." The last official account of Major John Shawhan's activities before his death is recorded in an intelligence report from W. H. Wadsworth to Major-General Horatio G. Wright (USA), dated September 26, 1862. An excerpt of this letter reads: "Day before yesterday Captain Shawhan passed through Paris for Mount Sterling with a company, and gave out that he was hurrying back to Humphrey Marshall, to whose command he belongs."(11) We have two accounts of the death of John Shawhan. The first comes from an article provided by Ron T. Shawhan, taken from "Morgan in the Mountains" by James M. Prichard and published in the October 1985 edition of "Civil War Times." It reads as follows: "Then a rebel force commanded by a Kentuckian and brigadier general, Humphrey Marshall, joined in the Confederate rush into the Blue Grass State. Riding into Kentucky from southwest Virginia, Marshall's soldiers passed through mountains north of the Cumberland Gap. Southern troops sat astride all of George Morgan's (Federal) supply lines. Faced with starvation or surrender, the Union commander instead elected to march his men out of the Gap and follow a hazardous route through the mountains of eastern Kentucky home to Ohio. "Gradually shifting their line of march to the northeast, the retreating Federals wound their way through the rugged wilderness to Hazel Green, northeast of Proctor. Morgan's troopers (Confederate) set out in rapid pursuit, reaching the mountain village virtually on the heels of the enemy column. However, halting briefly enroute, Morgan was reinforced by a portion of Humphrey Marshall's cavalry, commanded by Colonel John Shawhan, a fifty-two-year-old veteran of mountain warfare who had served with Morgan during the war with Mexico. "Late on October 3, the Confederates resumed their march to the Lexington area. At a point about eight miles from Morehead, northeast of west Liberty, a volley of shots suddenly rang out from a bluff overlooking the road. Colonel Shawhan fell dead from the saddle. During the confusion that followed, one Rebel was accidentally killed by return fire. "Morgan's troopers quickly scaled the heights only to find that the bushwhackers had escaped. Ironically, these final shots of the campaign were fired by a handful of local youths, whose fifteen-year-old leader would later claim to have fired the shot that killed Shawhan. One of Shawhan's troopers placed the colonel's body upright before him in the saddle and bore his dead commander into Morehead. There a wagon was obtained to convey the remains home for burial." The second account comes from the journal of John Akers Lafferty. It is a sad but dignified accounting of the death of a great man: "We were next ordered to Lexington. While on the march to Lexington, we passed through Rowan County, and about eight miles from Morehead Major John Shawhan was killed by bushwhackers. We had captured several bushwhackers on the march and after paroling them, let them go. It was our opinion that these men got ahead of us and reached the high bluff from which they shot as we passed along. Major Shawhan was killed and one horse wounded. Many of our men sprang from their horses and commenced to climb the bluff, but they were checked by a part of our command in front of us, which having heard the gun shots, halted, mistook our men for bushwhackers and opened fire on them. This stopped the pursuit for a few minutes, and by the time our men reached the top of the bluff, the bushwhackers had gone, leaving behind them one gun, a hat and a coat or two. Some of our men from the front and the rear of our lines rode through the hills in search of them, but as they were well acquainted with that mountainous section, they easily made their escape. Mat Messick placed the dead body of Major Shawhan upright before him on his horse and carried it eight miles to Morehead where we were able to get a spring wagon in which to carry it. "General Kirby Smith, with his entire army, was then marching through Kentucky on his way to Cincinnati, over roads that led through Harrison County. We continued our march until we reached Paris, then we, who were residents of Harrison County, were granted permission to go home for the night only and ordered to take the dead body of Major Shawhan to Cynthiana, where it was buried in the Old Cemetery. We were ordered to report the next day at Lexington. "We Harrison County men rode rapidly to Cynthiana, delivered the body Major Shawhan, October 7th, and dispersed to our respective homes were we spent a few hours, which was the only visit made to our homes during the whole war. By hard riding, we reported promptly at Lexington the next morning. When we arrived there we found the battle of Perryville was being fought and we were ordered to proceed at once toward the battlefield. We went over the Nicholasville turnpike and got within hearing distance of the guns. The battle being about over, we were halted and given orders to be ready to march next morning." After the war, John and Tabitha Rush Shawhan's remains were reinterred in the Battle Grove Cemetery, Cynthiana, Kentucky. Their tombstones sit just behind the obelisk of John's father, Joseph, alongside two other identical gravestones, that of two of their children. ENDNOTES 1 Cynthiana Democrat, June 1896, Page 9. 2 Ibid. 3 Letter from Brigadier-General H. Marshall to General Cooper, Adjutant and Inspector General. Correspondence from The War of the Rebellion: A compilation of the official records of the Union and Confederate Armies. Washington: Government Printing Office. 1882. Vol. 22. p. 323-4. 4 Cynthiana Democrat, June 1896, Page 9. 5 The War of the Rebellion: A compilation of the official records of the Union and Confederate Armies. Washington: Government Printing Office. 1882. 6 Report of Col. Joshua W. Sill, Thirty-Third Ohio Infantry, under Gen. W. Nelson (Union). Correspondence from The War of the Rebellion: A compilation of the official records of the Union and Confederate Armies. Washington: Government Printing Office. 1882. 7 Correspondence from The War of the Rebellion: A compilation of the official records of the Union and Confederate Armies. Washington: Government Printing Office. 1882. Vol. 17., pp. 228-30. 8 Letter from R. Hawes, Major and Brig. Commissary, C. S. Army, to General S. Cooper, Adjutant-General, C.S. Army. Correspondence from The War of the Rebellion: A compilation of the official records of the Union and Confederate Armies. Washington: Government Printing Office. 1882. Vol. 17. D. 815-16. 9 Letter from Brigadier-General H. Marshall to General Cooper, Adjutant and Inspector General. Correspondence from The War of the Rebellion: A compilation of the official records of the Union and Confederate Armies. Washington: Government Printing Office. 1882. Vol. 22. p. 323-4. 10 Letter from General Robert E. Lee to Brigadier General Humphrey Marshall. Correspondence from The War of the Rebellion: A compilation of the official records of the Union and Confederate Armies. Washington: Government Printing Office. 1882. Vol. 22, V. 349. 11 Letter from W. H. Wadsworth to Major-General Horatio G. Wright (USA). Correspondence from The War of the Rebellion: A compilation of the official records of the Union and Confederate Armies, Washington: Government Printing Office. 1882. Vol. 28. pp. 547-8. -- Bob Francis 1920A Butner St. Ft. Eustis, VA 23604 My Homepage is: http://www.shawhan.com Ruddell's Fort Page: http://www.shawhan.com/ruddlesfort.html Early Bourbon County Families Page: http://www.shawhan.com/bourbonfamilies.html