Fountain Fox’s father also was an influential Union man, and the Fox family was divided like the Prentice family, Mrs. Fox and sons strong Southern sympathizers, and Mr. Fox a personal friend of Abraham Lincoln. When Lincoln commenced making his appointments abroad, he appointed Fountain Fox, Consul to Madrid, Spain. Consulting with his mother about the appointment, she advised him not to accept, telling him he would see the time very soon when he would blush to represent the American Government abroad. Taking his mother’s advice, he declined the appointment.
After a short time, to appease his father’s anger, he accepted a captaincy in the Home Guards, in which capacity he served about a year. On the reorganization of the regiment, he was appointed major, serving in this capacity about three or four months longer, when they were ordered to Franklin, Tennessee, to the front. He said, “Considering that all of his youth’s companions and nearly all of his schoolmates were in the Southern army, he could not go down there and fight them” and made haste to resign.
Some sixty days after his resignation he met Major Ousley some distance from Elizabethtown, out in the country. Being well acquainted with him Ousley gave Fox a commission to raise a company for the Confederate Army, and he soon wrote Ousley the letter that was found on Ousley’s person when he was captured, and which caused Fox’s arrest.
His father immediately went to see the President and secured an order for his release, provided he would take the oath of allegiance to the United States and remain north of the Mason and Dixon’s line during the war, also giving a bond of fifty thousand dollars, all of which he did, remaining in prison with us perhaps only two or three weeks. This prison was directly in charge of Major Erastus Motley, provost marshal, an old friend of Clark’s before the war and a schoolmate of Captain Hines. He, like many Kentucky officers in such position, had made himself very obnoxious by his tyrannical treatment of the families of Confederate soldiers and seemed greatly prejudiced against Clark and myself.
CHAPTER VIII
The Escape of Major Ousley.
A court martial to try Major Kit Ousley was soon organized and his trial resulted easily in conviction, as he occupied the position of a spy, being captured in citizen’s clothes. Very soon his sentence was returned from General Burnside, and approved by him, General Burnside being in command of Kentucky and Ohio, with his headquarters at Cincinnati.
Major Ousley, while recruiting up in the Blue Grass region near Lexington, married a very wealthy and beautiful young lady, who as soon as she heard of his capture and imprisonment at Bowling Green, came down to render what assistance she could, and succeeded in bribing a lieutenant, who had an office in town, paying him eight thousand dollars for his assistance. This officer kept her posted and gave her the information about the return that evening of the verdict of the court martial, approved by General Burnside, which was his conviction as a spy and his punishment death by hanging. He was to be placed over in the courthouse in irons under a special guard until the day of his execution, which was fixed for the 29th of May, while this information was imparted on the 14th of May.
Major Ousley asked permission that evening to go to a barber shop, which permission was granted by sending a special guard with him. At this barber shop he met his wife, who succeeded in obtaining a private interview with him, when she imparted the information about having bribed this lieutenant and the location of his office, which Ousley understood, as he was well acquainted in Bowling Green. She had also received from the lieutenant a pair of surgeon’s shoulder straps and the password for that night, which was “Columbia,” and which was imparted to Lieutenant Clark and myself by Ousley, after he returned to the prison.
Major Ousley had a visit that evening from several officers of the court martial, who seemed to be old acquaintances of his and had quite a long chat with them, with a good deal of levity, which of course was a matter of surprise to Clark and myself, as he seemed to be completely at ease. Considering his condition with his doom already sealed, we thought he displayed more nerve than any man we ever saw.
Major Ousley requested his officer friends, before they left him, to send him a bottle of brandy, which they did and which he distributed freely among the guards on duty in the lower room, hoping to load them up, and in doing this we were afraid he imbibed a little too much himself.