Confederate colonel Adam Rankin Johnson led the raid by using a force of only about 35 men he had recruited from nearby Henderson, Kentucky.

[1] They confiscated supplies and ammunition without a shot being fired by tricking Newburgh's defenders into thinking the town was surrounded by cannons.

In reality, the so-called cannons were an assemblage of a stove pipe, a charred log, and wagon wheels, forever giving the Confederate commander the nickname of Adam "Stovepipe" Johnson.

Yet at the time of the raid, Johnson's own account suggests he had no formal appointment as an officer, wore no uniform, and commanded a hastily assembled body of civilians—more guerrillas than soldiers.

Johnson and two subordinates, Felix Akin and Frank A. Owen, shared one boat and the rest of the force crossed via a flatboat.

Prior to crossing, Johnson strategically placed two "Quaker Guns", actually made of stovepipes, charred logs, and the axles and wheels from a broken wagon, on hills that had a view of Newburgh, and vice versa.

[2] After securing the items he desired, Johnson paroled the captured Union officers and soldiers, and returned to the Kentucky soil.

[2][13] The total surprise and the bloodless success of the raid was a shock to many Hoosier leaders and Governor Oliver P. Morton soon took a visible hand.

Within three days, state and federal military officers sent approximately a thousand regulars and volunteers to the scene, occupied Henderson, Kentucky, and sent probes into that city's countryside.

[2] Historian and former Union officer Edmund L. Starling said of the raid: "[Adam] Johnson performed perhaps the most reckless, and yet most successful, military masterstroke achieved by any commander of high or low authority, in either army during the war.

[15] Filled with enthusiasm, southern chivalry, and name-dropping — although often sparse on corroboration — his memoir has assured that many commentators place the Newburgh raid in the context of Confederate movements in Kentucky in the summer of 1862.