Toward the end of the American Civil War, a bullet fired by a Confederate-turned-Yankee soldier, cut short the life and military career of one of the South's most gallant generals, John Hunt Morgan. At the time, the dashing Morgan was one of the best-loved generals of the Confederacy, but now, over 150 years later, his story is all but forgotten. 

With that in mind, singer-songwriter David Ray Skinner has written John Hunt Morgan: A Southern Legend, a novel-in-music to chronicle Morgan's war-time exploits. In 1997, the 19-song collection was nominated for Gettysburg College's Lincoln Prize, an annual award presented for the finest scholarly work on the era of the American Civil War.

The story begins and ends in a musical circle with the death of Morgan on a Greeneville, Tennessee street. The songs cover a wide array of incidents and people including: his first wife, Becky; his trusted brother-in-law and second-in-command, Basil Duke; his second wife and love of his life, Mattie; and his pursuit of the destruction of the L&N Railroad, a major line of supply for the Union army occupying Tennessee.

The collection also includes a song about Morgan which was originally a poem written by Duke as well as a love song which was taken from the letters Morgan wrote to Mattie from his prison cell. There's also a song about his capture in Ohio, and one about his subsequent escape.

The musical styles range from acoustic folk and Kentucky bluegrass to electric southern rock and eclectic Appalachian a cappella gospel.

The 19-song John Hunt Morgan collection can be ordered from Amazon.com, iTunes, and CDBaby.