The site is located at a crossroads between the villages of Gavers and West Point in Columbiana County, Ohio, about 60 miles northwest of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

[3] In June 1863, Brigadier General John Hunt Morgan took command of a force of 2,500 Confederate men in Kentucky.

The purpose of the detachment was to recruit volunteers from the border state and distract U.S. General Ambrose Burnside, who was planning an offensive into Tennessee.

Morgan disobeyed his orders, and from June 11 to July 26, 1863, his troops conducted the raid in an area that ranged from Tennessee to northern Ohio.

The day before the surrender, residents of Lisbon, Ohio, mobilized when they heard that Morgan was in Salineville in Columbiana County.

As Morgan's troops approached, the New Lisbon militia dragged an old cannon from the Mexican War to block the road to town from the south.

Though the report was false, the militia members at the cannon allowed Morgan's army to pass unchallenged because they were afraid to engage them.