EARLY TRAINING. ADVOCATE OF STATE RIGHTS.
As already stated, I propose on this occasion to give an account of some of my own experiences as one of Morgan’s Men. A native of Bath County, Ky., when a boy nine years old, I became a resident of Putnam County, Ind., to which State my father removed in the autumn of 1851. In the presidential campaign of 1860, at the age of eighteen, I canvassed my County for Breckinridge and Lane. There were three other young men representing the tickets of Abraham Lincoln, John Bell and Stephen A. Douglas, respectively. We styled ourselves: “The Hoosier Boys—All Parties Represented,” and canvassed the County, speaking on Saturday afternoons at as many as ten or a dozen points before the day of election.
When the War between the States came on, I was an earnest advocate of State rights, and determined to embrace the first opportunity offered to go South and enlist in that cause, which I believed to be right. Three of my brothers were in the Federal army, but I could not conscientiously go with them.