By By JOHN EBY / Dowagiac Daily News
Former Coldwater resident Orlando Hurley Moore is a relatively unsung Civil War hero considering he kept the Western states in the Union and saved Louisville, Ky., from a Rebel ransacking.
Union Army Col. Moore's amazing July 4, 1863, triumph in the Battle of Tebbs Bend, fought a few miles south of Campbellsville, Ky., on the Green River, was almost totally eclipsed by the sheer size and scope of the Gettysburg and Vicksburg victories.
Moore enjoyed an illustrious military career considering he started out in another kind of illustration -- portrait painting in Coldwater and in Kalamazoo.
He was also an accomplished musician on violin. His horse responded to his bugle commands.
He might have made general were it not for two court martials on trumped-up charges because Moore was outspoken in defense of the rights of blacks.
President Abraham Lincoln interceded with a handwritten letter in Moore's behalf which Pokagon Township historians Grafton and Barbara Cook of Sumnerville stumbled across in the National Archives.
During much of the Civil War, Moore led the 25th Michigan Infantry comprised of men from Cass, Berrien and several other Michigan counties.
The regiment was raised in the summer of 1862.
The Cooks celebrated Moore's life Wednesday evening as the finale of the Museum at Southwestern Michigan College's fall lecture series by portraying Henry Clarence "Clare" Loveridge, Moore's son-in-law who practiced law in Coldwater, and Moore's daughter, Jessie.
Moore was Grif Cook's great-great-grandmother's first cousin.
Moore's father owned land in Pokagon Township, of which Mrs. Cook is a former supervisor.
An uncle, Burrowes Moore, owned Sumnerville's Old Tavern Inn and operated the first hotel in Three Rivers.
Moore was a remarkable member of an outstanding Michigan pioneer family. His grandfather, Stephen Moore, fought in the Revolutionary War with a New Jersey militia.
Several members were present on Christmas night, 1776, when Gen. George Washington crossed the Delaware River to surprise German mercenaries in Trenton, giving the Continental Army a much-needed victory.
The Cooks whetted their interest in Moore by traveling to Kentucky for the dedication of an historical marker near the site of the Battle of Tebbs Bend, where "Fourth of July" Moore's 263 men defeated a much larger southern force on July 4, 1863, sparing the city of Louisville occupation by the Confederates. Louisville's gifts of a silver tea service and a mounted gold sword are kept in Kalamazoo.
Moore was born July 13, 1827, in Wilkes-Barre, Pa., and was 63 when he died in 1890. He is buried in Tulare, Calif. He was the son of Andrew Young and Elizabeth Baldy Moore.
The harvester cut and threshed wheat while drawn by a 16-horse team. Too large for Michigan, it was shipped to California, though Moores lost the patent rights on the machine to the influential McCormick farm machinery interests in Chicago after a 30-year court battle.
A.Y. became the first president of the Michigan Agricultural Society and one of the founders of what is now Michigan State University.
In late June 1863, Col. Moore and Companies D, E, F, I and K of the 25th Michigan were ordered to rebuild a railroad bridge near the Columbia Turnpike connecting Louisville with south-central Kentucky.
Moore and his men learned that Brig. Gen. John Hunt Morgan and a cavalry force of about 2,500 men were making another raid into Yankee-held territory.
Morgan had been terrorizing the Unionists for more than a year in Tennessee, Kentucky, Indiana and Ohio. This time his army was determined to pillage Louisville to capture the large number of military stores warehoused there.
All that stood between Morgan's army of battle-hardened Rebel veterans and Louisville was Col. Moore's contingent of 263 men, their closest reinforcements at least 30 miles away.
Moore carefully chose the place to meet his enemy -- where the roadway ran through a peninsula formed by a horseshoe bend of the Green River. He dug a rifle pit in the front defense line. His men built earthworks protected by an abatis and stockade for the second line of defense.
The river, with its high, irregular banks, protected Moore's flanks and rear. The 25th had no artillery for defense.
The ringing of axes and crash of falling timber throughout the night of July 3, 1863, alerted a Confederate scout who reported to Morgan.
The southerners learned Moore had selected a strong natural position and fortified it from attack.
Demanded to surrender during a truce, Moore responded, "This being the Fourth of July, I cannot entertain the proposition to surrender. I have a duty to perform for my country."
Moore ordered sharpshooters to pick off the Confederate soldiers manning the artillery pieces, then the enemy officers. It was not long before the newly-issued British Enfield .577 rifled muskets silenced the cannons. Moore's men, feigning retreat, abandoned the rifle pit and fell back to the earthworks, as previously instructed.
Once the Confederates reaches the rifle pit they sought cover in vain. The battlefield sloped downward toward the advancing troops so the Union soldiers had an excellent view of the land below and the army moving uphill.
The Confederates were exposed. They could not avoid the volleys fired by Union soldiers from the timber and earthen line above them.
Moore's outnumbered forces engaged the enemy with "a determination not to be defeated," in his own words. "The conflict was fierce and bloody. At times the enemy occupied one side of the felled timbers" while Moore's men held the other in hand-to-hand combat.
Moore used bugle calls to plant the idea that reinforcements of cavalry and artillery were advancing.
After four hours and eight unsuccessful charges, Morgan's men retreated, leaving their dead and wounded on the field.
The battle killed or wounded 22 Confederated officers. The Confederates suffered 81 casualties, including Col. D.W. Chenault. Moore lost six men, with 24 wounded.
Morgan took the unusual step of writing Moore to compliment. Col. Alston, Morgan's chief of staff, wrote in his private journal, "The colonel is a gallant man and the entire arrangement of his defense entitles him to the highest credit for military skill. We would mark such a man in our army for promotion."