Buffington Island, Battle of
Years: 1863 - 1863
The Battle of Buffington Island, also known as the St. Georges Creek Skirmish, is an American Civil War engagement in Meigs County, Ohio, and Jackson County, West Virginia, on July 19, 1863, during Morgan's Raid.
The largest battle in Ohio during the war, Buffington Island contributes to the capture of the famed Confederate cavalry raider, Brig. Gen. John Hunt Morgan, who is seeking to escape Union army pursuers across the Ohio River at a ford opposite Buffington Island.
Delayed overnight, Morgan is almost surrounded by Union cavalry the next day, and the resulting battle end in a Confederate rout, with over half of the seventeen-man Confederate force being captured
General Morgan and some seven hundred men escape, but the daring raid finally ends on July 26 with his surrender after the Battle of Salineville.
Morgan's Raid is of little military consequence, but it does spread terror among much of the population of southern and eastern Ohio, as well as neighboring Indiana.