{"id":3809,"date":"2020-12-25T09:02:39","date_gmt":"2020-12-25T09:02:39","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.radiofree.org\/?p=143361"},"modified":"2020-12-25T09:02:39","modified_gmt":"2020-12-25T09:02:39","slug":"i-am-the-man-they-call-sue-mundy-civil-war-kentuckys-female-confederate-guerrilla","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/2020\/12\/25\/i-am-the-man-they-call-sue-mundy-civil-war-kentuckys-female-confederate-guerrilla\/","title":{"rendered":"\u201cI Am the Man They Call Sue Mundy\u201d: Civil War Kentucky\u2019s \u201cFemale\u201d Confederate Guerrilla"},"content":{"rendered":"
There was no Sue Mundy.<\/p>\n
There was an orphan boy. There was a clever, unscrupulous newspaperman. And there was a long, cruel and bitter war.<\/p>\n
It was a war between slavery and freedom, between secession and union, between North and South. Kentucky was split: Southern in culture and sympathy, a slave state (originally part of Virginia), but Northern in commerce and strategic importance. It\u2019s longest border, the Ohio River, was the Mason-Dixon line. Early occupied by Union troops (\u201cI would like to have God on my side, but I must have Kentucky!\u201d \u2014Lincoln), the state had a star in the Confederate flag, and representatives in the CSA congress in Richmond. With at least half its citizens opposed to secession, it declared itself officially neutral but neutrality didn\u2019t mean peace.<\/p>\n
Marcellus Jerome Clarke was born in Simpson County, Ky., the youngest of nine. Orphaned at age eleven, he was adopted (unofficially) by an \u201cAunt Mary\u201d of McLean County in the Green River country of western Kentucky. His closest connection was an older cousin, John Patterson. We know little about his early years. Richard Taylor\u2019s well-researched novel, Sue Mundy<\/em>, depicts Jerome as a dreamer, little educated but literate, indeed an avid reader. (1) His was a slave-owning family, not wealthy but well-connected. His uncle was a Kentucky congressman, and he was related to the Confederacy\u2019s \u201cgray ghost\u201d cavalrymen, John Singleton Mosby. (2)<\/p>\n Jerome followed his cousin Patterson into the Confederate army in 1861 when he was 17, and his rural boyhood was quickly over.<\/p>\n In Bowling Green, the CSA\u2019s last official stronghold in Kentucky, he was assigned to General Buckner\u2019s \u201cOrphan Brigade,\u201d so called because the men didn\u2019t see home or family until the war was over; or never. (3)<\/p>\n So it would be with Jerome.<\/p>\n He trained as an artilleryman and fought at Fort Donelson (precursor to Shiloh), lobbing cannonballs at Union gunboats on the Cumberland River, until the federals (under then-unknown U.S. Grant) prevailed. He was captured with several thousand others and lodged in a POW camp in Indiana. Discipline was loose and he escaped and made his way back south, bypassing now-surrendered Bowling Green, to Tennessee, where he eagerly enlisted in John Hunt Morgan\u2019s famed 2nd Kentucky cavalry.<\/p>\n Morgan, the \u201cKentucky Cavalier,\u201d was a dashing and popular figure in the South. A bit of a glory hound (and mistrusted by his CSA commanders) Morgan was beloved by his men who followed him willingly to share in his glory and also in the loot of his raids into Kentucky and even into Indiana and Ohio. An expert horseman since the age of five, Jerome longed to mount up and ride with \u201cMorgan\u2019s Men,\u201d but he was still an artilleryman\u2014under Morgan\u2019s command, but assigned to a cannon instead of a horse.<\/p>\n In the mountains of Virginia, Jerome found himself swabbing and loading a cannon beside Morgan himself. (4) He must have impressed his commander, for before long he was issued a horse and a carbine, and soon found himself riding as one of \u201cMorgan\u2019s Raiders\u201d on a desperate raid across the mountains into the Union-occupied but Confederate-leaning Bluegrass of Kentucky.<\/p>\n This was late in the war, 1864, which was already going badly for the South. Sherman had burned Atlanta, scorched South Carolina, and was heading north toward Richmond. The \u201cJune Raid\u201d was to be Morgan\u2019s last.<\/p>\n With a force of 2,000, the \u201cThunderbolt of the Confederacy\u201d burned bridges, derailed trains and twisted rails (\u201cMorgan\u2019s neckties\u201d (5), robbed banks and emptied barns of horses, eluding or defeating the Yanks as far north as Cynthiana. It was thrilling, and for young Jerome a kind of deliverance; this was the sort of action he had signed up for! Then a surprise attack by Union General Burbridge (of whom, more later) forced Morgan\u2019s hasty retreat and scattered his forces. Jerome was wounded and separated from his unit.<\/p>\n His transformation into a guerrilla didn\u2019t happen right away. Together with a few others he joined up with a Colonel Allen, a CSA regular who was collecting Morgan\u2019s scattered forces and leading them south into Tennessee.<\/p>\n It was here that Jerome met up with Henry Clay \u201cBilly\u201d Magruder, another of \u201cMorgan\u2019s Men,\u201d a fellow Kentuckian who was only a year or two older but far more experienced\u2014and war-hardened. The two were to become lifelong friends.<\/p>\n Allen\u2019s Confederates picked up green recruits on their way south. In Glasgow, Kentucky, they were welcomed at first\u2014until they broke into the shops of rebel and union sympathizers alike and stripped the shelves of boots, coats, guns and gold watches, and helped themselves to whiskey and hams. (6) It was perhaps Jerome\u2019s first taste of armed outlawry, and he found it sweet.<\/p>\n Nashville and much of Tennessee was Union occupied, and before they could cross the Cumberland River, Allen\u2019s troop was cut off by a larger federal force. More mob than army, they fled rather than fight. In the attempt to rejoin the Confederacy, Jerome had been promoted to captain as a CSA \u201crecruiter\u201d but it was meaningless, as the disorganized men scattered back into Kentucky,<\/p>\n Jerome blended with the population, working as a \u201chired man\u201d (he was good with horses) for a few weeks until he was told that the locals all knew he was one of \u201cMorgan\u2019s Men\u201d \u2014and were not all to be trusted. Isolated and alone, afraid he might be betrayed and made a POW again, Jerome was at a loss until a sympathizer gave him a horse and suggested he join up with one of the many Confederate \u201cirregular\u201d or partisan bands that were harassing the Union occupation all through Kentucky. Like the one led by \u201cOne-arm\u201d Berry and a certain Billy Magruder.<\/p>\n Jerome swung into the saddle and set out to find his friend.<\/p>\n George Prentice was the editor and principal writer of the Louisville Daily Courier<\/em>. A Union supporter, even a one-time friend of Lincoln, (7) he was growing increasingly disenchanted with the bungling and brutalities of the occupying Union troops.<\/p>\n Kentucky was thick with rebel supporters, and partisan guerrillas<\/p>\n were stealing horses, robbing Union payrolls and raiding troop encampments with near-impunity all over the state, even into the outer suburbs of Louisville. The Union military commander, General Burbridge (the same who had scattered Morgan\u2019s June Raid), sent several companies to wipe them out, with no success.<\/p>\n Often seen as \u201cthieves and rowdies\u201d the Union troops had little support among the population. (8)<\/p>\n Prentice and other journalists reported in great detail (though with no sympathy) the successes of the Confederate partisans, perhaps to embarrass the ineffectual Burbridge. It made for good copy.<\/p>\n In October, 1964, Prentice wrote about a guerrilla attack in Pleasant Hill, near a peaceful Shaker village. A small band of partisans had robbed the Crawfordsville stagecoach, stealing the mail (which was war booty) and relieving the passengers of their valuables but not their lives.<\/p>\n Relying on the report of the stage driver, who had mistaken one of the robbers for a woman (perhaps because of \u201cher\u201d long hair) Prentice described the \u201csecond in command of the band of cutthroats\u201d in some detail:<\/p>\n This officer is a young women, and her right name is Sue Munday. She dresses in male attire usually sporting a full Confederate uniform. Upon her head she wears a jaunty plumed hat, beneath which escapes a wealth of dark-brown hair She is possessed of a comely form, has a dark, piercing eye, is a bold rider and a daring leader. (9)<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n Thus, based on the testimony of a shaken stage driver and an imaginative newspaperman, Marcellus Jerome Clarke\u2019s transformation into a legend began. Certainly he wore his hair long, and his boyish figure and beardless cheeks might confuse a frightened man peering into the muzzle of a Colt navy .44.<\/p>\n Whether Prentice originally believed this fiction or not, we will never know. But the image pleased him and his readers as well, since he could use it to beard Burbridge for his failure to control, contain or capture the guerrillas.<\/p>\n His brutal occupation was being defied and beaten by a woman. Hell, a mere girl!<\/p>\n\n