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.
LEAVING INDIANA TO JOIN THE CONFEDERATE ARMY.
On September 18, 1862, after the battle of Big Hill, near Richmond, Ky., and the occupation of this State by the forces of Gens. Smith and Marshall, I put aside the study of law, bade farewell to my parents, and left Indiana to join the Confederate army. I came to Cincinnati while it was under martial law, passed the pickets above the city, in a countryman’s market wagon, took a boat at New Richmond, Ohio, and landed on a Sunday morning at Augusta, Ky. That day I attended Sunday-school in Augusta, and walked to Milton, in Bracken County, where I stayed all night. The next day I reached Cynthiana, and found there the first confederate soldiers I ever saw, being a portion of Morgan’s Men under Col. Basil W. Duke. I remember I was struck with the odd appearance of some of these soldiers, particularly observing their large rattling spurs and broad-brimmed hats, many of which were pinned up on one side with a crescent or star.
DUKE’S FIGHT AT AUGUSTA. KY.
This was but a few days before Col. Duke’s desperate fight at Augusta.
An incident occurs to my mind here. Ten years later I was Democratic Elector for the Ninth Congressional District, making a campaign in behalf of Greeley and Brown, and Augusta was one of my points to speak. While at the hotel that night, a young man came to my room and that of Hon. John D. Young, who was the Democratic candidate for Congress and traveling with me, and he told us all about the fight of Col. Duke, what a bloody affair it was, and how the people had noticed a young man a few days before passing through Augusta and going to Sunday-school, and they attributed Duke’s plans to that young man’s story of how conditions were in Augusta; in other words, that he had acted as a spy for Duke. I said, “Young man, you are mistaken about that matter and your people are mistaken. I was the lad that came through your town and went to Sunday-school, but I had then no idea of Duke’s contemplated fight whatever, and did not know anything about it until after it occurred, so you are all laboring under a mistake in thinking I had anything to do with it.”
ENLISTMENT IN THE CONFEDERATE ARMY.
I arrived at Mount Sterling, and set foot “on my native heath,” in Bath County, within a week after my departure from Indiana.