My generous, kind-hearted surgeon would sometimes send and get fish or oysters for me, evidently in the belief that he was doing a last kind act for me, as he expected me to be court martialed and sentenced to death, having frankly told me so, trying to persuade me to take the oath, which I refused to do.
As soon as I was able to sit up and talk without effort and overtaxing my strength, we had several discussions about the conduct of the war and the merits of the two armies. On one occasion I said to him, “I’m going to make an assertion, Doctor, and before I make it, I want to qualify it by stating that you have many good, patriotic men in your army and you are one of them; but, taking your army as a whole, they are an army of hirelings, fighting for their bounties and their pay, and would not hold together thirty days if their pay was stopped.” He spurned the idea, telling me that I was sadly mistaken, while there might be a few men that could be classed as hirelings, the bulk of their army were prompted only by patriotic motives and were not considering gain or pay. I said, “Doctor, I will prove my assertion right here in your presence,” and called up some convalescents. Addressing one, I asked him, “What induced you to join the army and what are you fighting for?” He said, “I am fighting for the flag and the Union,” but I said, “As a matter of fact, were you not paid a bounty?” He admitted that he had been paid six hundred dollars by his State. Then again, “What pay do you receive?” He said, “Twelve dollars per month.” “What do you do with your money?” He said, “I send it home, for safety.” “Why don’t you spend it?” “I have nothing to spend it for.” “Does your Government furnish you everything you need?” “Everything,” he said. I interrogated a second one, whose answers were about the same. I then detailed the treatment our Government had been forced to accord our army, who were frequently without pay, often without rations or clothing, especially without shoes, sometimes forced them to go barefooted, leaving their bloody tracks on the road. “Now, boys, if your Government treated you in such manner, what would you do?” They replied, “We wouldn’t fight for any such d—— Government; we would go home and stay there.” I said to the doctor, “Withdraw your pay and rations from your army and you wouldn’t hold them together for sixty days,” on which point we could not agree and he said, “Graber, you are too good a man to be engaged in such a cause.” I replied, “Doctor, that is just my opinion of you; you ought to wear the gray in place of the blue,” all of which he took in the kindliest spirit. I frequently conversed with the ward master and some of the nurses, who seemed to have taken a great fancy for me on account of my bold, outspoken sentiments, and they sympathized with me in my helpless condition.
I had concluded to try to make my escape as soon as I got strong enough to undertake walking through the woods, over a rough country across the river. There were always a number of boats tied to the river bank. I would have had no difficulty in crossing Barren River. One night a guard on duty with me was sound asleep, snoring, with his head resting on the foot of my cot and I was wide awake. The nurse on duty went over to the ward master’s bed, not far from my cot, and woke him up. He aroused himself, and the nurse in a low voice told him, “The guard is asleep; let us tell Texas to get away.” The ward master said, “No, don’t do that; you had better wake up the guard,” which he did. A little pleading on my part then would, no doubt, have had their consent, but I was still too feeble to undertake the hazard.
After spending about a month at this hospital, the provost marshal had heard of the ladies abusing his confidence and calling at my berth only, and rarely ever having a kind word for the Federal sick, so he had me moved to the prison, where I found about twenty-five or thirty men confined, most of them Morgan’s men and a few highway robbers, who sought the protection of the Confederate Government by claiming to belong to certain Confederate commands, which I was satisfied was not the case. Kentucky afforded a good territory for these highwaymen to operate, on account of this condition.
Arriving at this prison proved the commencement of my suffering and trouble, as the surgeon in charge was a brute. He came in and threw some soap and bandages at my feet and I never saw him any more.
The prison was a two-story stone building with a brick gable, with the side fronting the street; it had been a two-story residence, converted into a jail by attaching iron gratings in the large windows; it had only four rooms, two upstairs, occupied by the prisoners, and two downstairs, occupied by about twenty guards on active duty. There was also a room for the lieutenant commanding. There was a stairway, leading down into one of the rooms below, with a door at the foot of the steps. About two companies of infantry camped in the back yard, which was surrounded by a high board fence, and there was a sink in the back end of the yard. These troops were quartered in tents. The building was located diagonally across the street from a big hotel, which was occupied by the commanding officers, as headquarters.
Here I made the acquaintance of a Lieutenant Clark of Morgan’s command, whose home was Bowling Green, where he was teaching before the war. Lieutenant Clark was a brother-in-law of Captain Tom Hines, one of Morgan’s trusted lieutenants and the man that planned Morgan’s escape out of the Ohio penitentiary. Lieutenant Clark and I were both held under the same charges for court martial, Morgan’s command raiding Kentucky, destroying their line of communications and Forrest in charge of Middle Tennessee; it is hardly necessary to say that we became fast friends and plotted and planned escape, the only chance for which was frustrated.
Colonel Clarence Prentice, in conjunction with Major Kit Ousley, also of Morgan’s command, was sent into Kentucky by our War Department to recruit a regiment for the Confederate Army.
Colonel Clarence Prentice was the son of the publisher of the Louisville Courier, which was largely responsible for retaining Kentucky in the Union. The family were divided in sentiment; the father was a great Union man and particular friend of Abraham Lincoln, while Mrs. Prentice and the two sons were strongly Southern in sentiment, the sons joining the Confederate Army.
Colonel Prentice, immediately on his arrival at his home, was captured and through the influence of his father, was sent around for exchange. Major Kit Ousley was captured near Bowling Green, in citizen’s clothes, therefore treated as a spy and placed in prison with us, awaiting court martial. When Ousley was captured they found a letter on his person from Fountain Fox, whose home was in Elizabethtown, this letter stating that Fox had succeeded in raising a company of one hundred and four of the best young men of his neighborhood, ready to move at a moment’s warning. They immediately sent up and arrested Fountain Fox and placed him in prison with us.