Those three deafening blasts at noon Thursday at Fort Hill’s Leslie Morris Park were a salute to a battle long ago to keep Frankfort out of Confederates’ hands.
It commemorated the 145th anniversary of Frankfort’s militiamen holding off a troop of rebel soldiers June 11, 1864. About 10 attended the celebration. Four men dressed in blue uniforms fired the powder-only cannons.
The attacks on June 10 and 11 were part of the last raid into Kentucky by the Confederacy. Gen. John Hunt Morgan led about 2,500 Confederate troops.
“In my opinion, 500 were die-hard Confederates,” Charles Bogart, curator and park manager at Leslie Morris Park, said. “The other 2,000 were guys who were wearing the gray, but their interests were more in themselves.”
The Confederates overtook places such as Mount Sterling, Winchester and Cynthiana, burning the downtowns on their way to Frankfort.
On June 10, Gen. Morgan sent 200 troops to take over Frankfort. They were met by a group of 100 Franklin County militiamen stationed in strategic areas of the city.
A group of 40 protected Fort Boone from one of the base’s main artillery positions overlooking the city. The Confederate soldiers tried to overpower the militiaman with firepower.
“They sat back by the fort and fired in, hoping to get them to surrender,” Bogart said.
Since they couldn’t get the militiamen to surrender, the Confederate troops dropped off and went through Buffalo Trace and Daniel Boone’s grave.
As the Confederates regrouped June 11 at Battle Alley, where Frankfort Lumber Co. used to be, the militiamen fired shots down at the soldiers and forced them to retreat.
Had the soldiers taken over, Frankfort’s status as the state capital would have changed.
“They were ready to move the capital to Louisville if Frankfort had been taken over,” Bogart said. “Had that happened, Frankfort would have been another little town on the river like Eminence rather than the small metropolis it is now.”