Next day the soldiers got together and detailed three men to take me to Knoxville, Tenn. When we arrived there, about two o’clock in the morning, they took me out—I cannot tell where—and put me in the stockade with about three hundred poor ragged men who had declared themselves for the Union. When I went in, they raised a howl,
“There is another Lincolnite!”
I never saw such a sight in all my life. These men were half naked and barefooted, and some without hats. They had lost their apparel in the woods, trying to make their escape. I do not think they had washed their faces or hands since being captured.
In the morning a wagon drove up to the stockade, on the outside, and the driver commenced throwing old, poor beef over the stockade on the ground. I shall never forget seeing one of the men pick up a piece of beef and throw it against the wall to see if it would stick, but it was too poor. I never expected to eat or bite of it, and I never did.
My father, who was a cousin of John H. Reagan, Postmaster General of the Southern Confederacy, was on hand at Knoxville about the time I arrived. He telegraphed to Richmond that his son was under arrest, that he had committed no crime, and that he was a school teacher. The Richmond authorities telegraphed back to Leadbeater, the commanding officer, directing him to release me. The next morning I passed out of the stockade and went back to my home, and commenced teaching school again.
In a few days word was sent to me that I was to be again arrested. I then disappeared, and for about eighteen months my whereabouts were only known by my family and the families of my wife, father, and an old uncle. All this time I was trying to get across to the Federal lines, but something happened to prevent my getting away. They were scouring the country for conscripts, and already had my name on the rolls, as I have heretofore stated.
Sometime about the first of 1862 I heard that a pilot was to be in Greene County, Tenn., to take Union men to the Federal lines. One Joseph Smith, who lived near my town, Parrottsville, went with me to Greene County, about twelve miles from our home, to the banks of the Nola Chucky River, and we remained there for a few days, lying in a straw stack and fed by an old Union lady, by the name of Minerva Hale.
News came that a “pilot” would be on hand about one mile from where we were. I do not know why, but something told me not to go. Joseph Smith left me, bidding me good-bye, and I never saw him again.
I started back home, twelve miles through the woods, and had to cross the Nola Chucky in the dark, and the rebels travelling all through the country, knowing that men were trying to cross to Kentucky. I reached home before daylight and let my wife know I had returned, then went out in the woods as usual and put up.
The next day news came to the neighborhood that the men Joseph Smith met were captured the night he left me, only three men making their escape—the pilot (William Worthington) and two others. They saved themselves by jumping into Lick Creek, a small but deep stream, and sinking themselves in the water, only allowing their faces above the water enough to breathe.