The next day I was given a pass to go to Washington, and how glad I was to take the train in the direction of home. I started and every eastern bound train that I could get on to without asking any questions I would get on, until I finally found myself in New York City.
Then the next place I found myself was in Pittsburg Pennsylvania, within ninety miles of home. Here I was accosted by a provost marshal, who asked me where I was from. I told him. Well he concluded that I had been taking a very good pleasure trip at the government’s expense. He put me aboard the train and started me for Harrisburg, and when I arrived there I met my old colonel, Chauncey Rodgers, whom I found at the Soldiers’ Rest. He induced me to go to the state capitol at Harrisburg. Here he introduced me to Maribee Lowery, a state senator of Pennsylvania. Here I was seated above all of the leading senators and related the story of my escape, while a shorthand writer wrote it down as fast as I could tell it.
After I had sat and told the story of my escape for nearly three hours a doctor came to me and felt of my pulse and told Mr. Lowery that if he intended to do anything for me he must do it soon, for he told him I was coming down with some fever. Now Mr. Lowery gave me a letter of introduction to the adjutant general of the war department, and the next day after I got to Washington I received a thirty-five days’ furlough to go home.
Mr. Lowery told me when I came back by the way of Baltimore and completed the tale of my escape that he would give me five hundred dollars in gold. Now when I started from Washington and got on the train I found an old man who had been at the Howard hospital at Washington, and who had buried a son and had just started for home. I told him where I lived when at home, and found that he lived about thirty miles from Waterford, Erie county, Pennsylvania. This old man took care of me until I reached home.
When I got to Harrisburg I was so sick that I did not know what was going on around me, and when I arrived at the station at Waterford it was along about the last days of January. The snow was about two feet deep and drifted for a distance of some two miles from the station to a depth of ten feet. I got into a box car and remained in my old friend’s care some two hours, while an old lady went two miles over some terribly deep drifts to notify the stage driver of the condition I was in.
During this time the good old man had tried to get me into some Irish shanties near the station, but without any success. I still remained in this cold car until my feet were badly frozen, and when the stage did come there came with it a man by the name of Clifford Stafford, a distant relative, if any, who had been discharged on account of wounds received in the Battle of Gainsey’s Mill or Hall’s Hill. Now when I got home I never knew my own folks for five long weeks, and when I did bring myself through I did not have a spear of hair on my head, nor did I have hardly any soles on my feet, so badly were they frozen while escaping and being exposed to so much snow and frost.
This tale may not be so interesting to many on account of its being so long since the close of the war, but nevertheless it is a true story.
Oh, how sad is the memory of the past! If my faith was all I had in this world I should consider myself most miserable, but I thank God that while I still continue to suffer, my faith is in Him.
When I got well I learned that my folks had made ready to have funeral services for me, as Comrade Ledierer had sent word to them that I was killed way back there at the negro shanty, at which place we were separated from each other.