Henry C. Magruder

Henry C. Magruder (1844 – October 20, 1865) was a Confederate soldier and guerrilla during the American Civil War. Born in Bullitt County, Kentucky, he took part in several major Western theater battles, but he is best known for his fate as a guerrilla, and was possibly the inspiration of a fictional local folk hero and guerilla fighter, Sue Munday, whose exploits closely mirrored his own.

Army career

Magruder enlisted in the Confederate States Army at age 17 and served under General Simon Bolivar Buckner at the Battle of Fort Donelson. He was captured when Buckner chose to surrender the fort rather than allow his men to fight their way out, but he soon escaped. Magruder joined the personal bodyguard of Confederate General Albert Sidney Johnston, serving under him at the Battle of Shiloh. Following General Johnston's death, Magruder transferred to General John Hunt Morgan's Kentucky Cavalry. He took part in Morgan's raid into Ohio and Indiana; and once again escaped capture. He was eventually able to cross the Ohio River back into Kentucky.

Guerilla fighter

Magruder, now well behind Union lines, located other escaped Confederates and led them in raids against Union military targets south of Louisville. As historian Walter L. Hixson notes, "Magruder also plundered Union homes, burned alive an African-American man, and violated southern gender codes by raping the wife of a Union soldier and six other 'young ladies' at a school."[1]

Margruder's small band was ambushed by pro-Union home guards, and most of the gang of guerrillas were captured and arrested after robbing a bank in February 1865. Magruder and two others avoided capture for a number of weeks, but the three were eventually cornered in a barn and forced to surrender. Magruder had been seriously wounded, having been shot in the arm and back, and then he was shot in the lungs during capture.

One of the men captured with Magruder was Marcellus Jerome Clarke. Clarke was quickly charged with being a guerilla, convicted by a closed military tribunal, and hanged in March 1865. Magruder, however, was allowed to recover his health in jail before he was arraigned.[2]

Published exploits

Prior to this, Louisville, Kentucky publisher George D. Prentice had written a series of articles about the area's ongoing guerrilla terrorism in his Louisville Journal, but attributed it to activities of a "Sue Mundy." These tales closely paralleled Clarke's and Magruder's activities. By some accounts, including his own, Magruder was the original inspiration for the fictitious Confederate guerilla fighter. Magruder made the claim in his posthumous memoir, Three Years in the Saddle: The Life and Confession of Henry Magruder: The Original Sue Munday, The Scourge of Kentucky (1865).

Death

Magruder was convicted as a spy and terrorist, and then hanged at Louisville on October 20, 1865, at the age of 21.[3]

References
  1. Hixson, Walter (2013). American Settler Colonialism: A History. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. p. 108. ISBN 978-1-137-37425-7.
  2. Henry Magruder, Three Years In The Saddle: The Life and Confession of Henry Magruder: The Original Sue Munday, The Scourge of Kentucky, (published by his captor, Major Cyrus J. Wilson, Louisville, Kentucky, 1865)
  3. "Execution of Henry C. Magruder". New York Times. 25 October 1865. Retrieved 27 July 2014.
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