DARING SPIRIT OF MORGAN’S MEN.
The same restless, daring spirit that actuated Morgan’s men in the field characterized them in prison, and out of eighteen hundred prisoners taken on the Indiana and Ohio raid not less than six hundred of them escaped from Camps Morton and Douglas. I have heard that one of the Chicago newspapers stated during the war that even if Morgan’s men had done nothing to distinguish them before their capture on the raid through Indiana and Ohio, they had immortalized themselves by their wonderfully successful escapes from prison.
The extraordinary escape of Gen. Morgan himself, together with Capts. Hines, Sheldon, Taylor, Hockersmith, Bennett and McGee, from the Ohio State Prison, stands without a parallel in military history. You cannot imagine my surprise after getting on the cars at Paris en route to Canada, on the occasion already referred to, in December, 1863, when I picked up a Cincinnati Daily Gazette, some passenger had left on the seat, and read the graphic account of this unexpected escape of our General and six of his Captains the night before. My heart leaped with joy at the news, but I dared not give expression to my delight by the utterance of a word.