Representative George Washington Morgan

George Washington Morgan (September 20, 1820 – July 26, 1893) was an American soldier, lawyer, politician, and diplomat who served in three major American wars and later became a Reconstruction-era United States Representative from Ohio and United States Minister to Portugal. Born in Washington, Pennsylvania, he came of age in a period of intense sectional and territorial conflict that shaped his early commitment to military service and national affairs. As a young man he went to Texas and fought in the Texas Revolution, gaining his first combat experience in the struggle for Texan independence from Mexico. He subsequently studied law, was admitted to the bar, and began a legal career, establishing himself as a lawyer before entering broader public service.

Morgan’s military reputation was further developed during the Mexican–American War, in which he served with distinction. His participation in that conflict, combined with his earlier experience in Texas, gave him a record of active field service that would later recommend him for high command in the Civil War. Between wars he pursued his legal and political interests and aligned himself with the Democratic Party, reflecting the party’s national prominence in the antebellum period. His growing stature within Democratic circles and his familiarity with international and border issues led to his appointment as United States Ambassador (then commonly styled Minister) to Portugal, a post he held from 1858 to 1861 during the administration of President James Buchanan. In Lisbon he represented American interests at a time of rising tensions at home, serving through the final years before the outbreak of the Civil War.

With the secession crisis and the onset of the Civil War, Morgan returned to military service on the Union side. Owing to his prior combat experience in the Texas Revolution and the Mexican–American War, he was appointed a brigadier general of volunteers in the Union Army on November 21, 1861, and assigned to the Western Theater under Major General Don Carlos Buell. In March 1862 he assumed command of the 7th Division of the Army of the Ohio and was ordered into southeastern Kentucky to clear Confederate forces from the strategically vital Cumberland Gap. Moving rapidly, Morgan defeated the Confederate command of Carter L. Stevenson and forced the evacuation of the Gap on June 18, 1862. He then occupied and fortified the position, manning it with four brigades of infantry supported by artillery emplacements on the surrounding heights, thereby securing a key mountain pass between Kentucky, Tennessee, and Virginia.

The Confederate invasion of Kentucky under General Braxton Bragg in the late summer of 1862 cut Morgan’s supply lines and compelled him to abandon Cumberland Gap. In September he executed a difficult and closely pursued retreat toward the Ohio River, harassed throughout by Confederate cavalry and guerrillas under Colonel John H. Morgan. Despite the pressure of a superior enemy force, George W. Morgan conducted what contemporaries regarded as a skillful withdrawal, marching approximately 8,000 men more than 200 miles from Cumberland Gap to Greenup, Kentucky, in just sixteen days, arriving there on October 3, 1862, en route to Camp Dennison in Ohio. In November he served under Major General Jacob D. Cox in the Kanawha River Valley of western Virginia (now West Virginia), where he helped defend Charleston and the surrounding region from Confederate incursions.

In 1863 Morgan was transferred to the Mississippi Valley and given command of the 3rd Division of the XIII Corps under Major General William T. Sherman during the Vicksburg Campaign. His performance at the Battle of Chickasaw Bluffs, an early and unsuccessful attempt to seize Vicksburg by assaulting the bluffs north of the city, drew Sherman’s criticism when Morgan failed to carry out orders for a planned attack as aggressively as his superior expected. Morgan soon helped to restore his military reputation by leading the XIII Corps contingent that captured Fort Hindman at Arkansas Post in January 1863, a combined operation that eliminated a Confederate stronghold on the Arkansas River. Prolonged campaigning, however, took a toll on his health. Disillusioned by aspects of wartime policy—particularly his dissatisfaction with the employment of Black troops—and physically weakened, he resigned his commission on June 8, 1863, and returned to Ohio and civilian life.

Politically, Morgan was a Democrat who strongly supported preservation of the Union but opposed federal interference with slavery, maintaining that the national government lacked constitutional authority to abolish the institution. After leaving the army he became active in partisan politics, campaigning in Ohio for Democratic presidential nominee and former Union general George B. McClellan in the 1864 election. In 1865 he was the Democratic candidate for Governor of Ohio but was defeated by the Republican nominee, his former military associate in the Kanawha Valley, Jacob D. Cox. Despite this setback, Morgan remained a prominent figure in Ohio Democratic politics and continued to seek public office.

Morgan entered national legislative service during the Reconstruction era. In 1866 he was elected as a Democrat to the Fortieth Congress from Ohio’s 13th Congressional District, where he served on the Committee on Foreign Affairs and participated in debates over the postwar settlement and the balance of power between Congress and the presidency. During this term he voted against the impeachment of President Andrew Johnson, reflecting his party’s opposition to the Radical Republican program. In the contested election of 1868 he initially appeared to have secured reelection, but his Republican opponent, Columbus Delano, successfully challenged the result. Delano was seated in Morgan’s place on June 3, 1868, cutting short Morgan’s service in that Congress.

Undeterred by the loss of his seat, Morgan ran again and was elected to Congress in 1870, returning to Washington for another term and serving until 1873. During this later period in the House of Representatives he sat on the Committees on Foreign Affairs, Military Affairs, and Reconstruction, where he drew on his diplomatic and military background to shape his legislative positions. He emerged as an outspoken critic of what he regarded as excessively harsh Reconstruction policies toward the former Confederate states and frequently clashed with Radical Republicans over the scope of federal authority in the South. Within the House he also sought leadership roles, running for Speaker of the United States House of Representatives, though he was defeated by Republican James G. Blaine. After leaving Congress, Morgan resumed private life, and his long public career—spanning frontier warfare, international diplomacy, high command in the Civil War, and service in the national legislature—remained a subject of historical interest, later reflected in published reminiscences such as those excerpted in the Southwestern Historical Quarterly in 1927. He died on July 26, 1893, closing a life that had intersected with many of the central conflicts and transformations of nineteenth-century America.