Brave Deeds of Union Soldiers

by Samuel Scoville

He then turned to the opposite ridge and shouted across the Gap to another imaginary force:

"Lead your men down that path and close in on 'em. Hurry up. My men will come from this side and we'll beat you down."

By this time the Confederate officer was on his feet again and started to rally his men. Morford made a rush toward them, firing his revolver as he came, waving his arms in both directions, shouting to his imaginary forces and bellowing at the top of his tremendous voice—"Come on, boys, we've got them now. Surround 'em. Don't let a man escape!"

The negro workmen felt that this was no place for neutrals and they dropped their shovels and made a rush for the mouth of the Gap. The Confederate soldiers stood for a minute, but as they saw Morford rushing toward them, they broke and followed the workmen. The scout chased them until he saw that they were well on their way and then started back along the ridge chuckling to himself over the way in which they had scattered. He laughed too soon. The Confederates had not gone far before they found out the trick which had been played upon them. They turned back and in a short time fifty men were riding along the ridge at full speed to capture the Yankee who had fooled them so. Unfortunately for Morford, he had kept to the path along the ridge which was better going, but which offered very little chance of escape, since on one side was a sheer precipice while on the other was a long, bare slope which offered no place for concealment. From the top of a little knoll he caught sight of the Confederates before they saw him. At that time they were only a half mile behind. The scout tried to escape by running far out on a rocky spur which jutted out over the Gap and which was filled with trees, hoping that he might dodge in among these, double on his pursuers and so get away. The same officer, however, whom he had unhorsed caught sight of him as he ran from one tree to another and with a tremendous shout, the whole band galloped after him at full speed. Morford had hoped that as the way led up a steep hill covered with rocks, his pursuers would have to dismount, but they were riding horses which had been bred in the mountains and which were trained to go up and down hill-paths like goats. They gained on him fast. Spreading out they cut off every chance of his escaping back to the slope or skirting their ranks. There was nothing left for him to do except to go on and on to the very edge of the precipice. The scout knew that if he were caught he would be hung on the nearest tree and that knowledge was a considerable incentive to keep ahead of his pursuers as long as possible. He ran as he had never run before and as he could follow paths too narrow for the horses, for a while he managed to hold his lead. He could see, however, that some of the band had ridden around the slope and held the whole base of the spur so that it would be only a question of time before he would be hunted out and caught. He was running now along the very edge of the precipice which dropped six hundred feet to the rocks below. The gorge narrowed until finally at one point it was not more than twenty feet wide. This was too wide, however, for the scout to clear, even if he were not wearing heavy boots and carrying a rifle. Several feet below where he stood, on the opposite shelf a hickory tree had grown out so that some of the branches extended within ten feet of his side of the gorge. Below that tree was a fissure through the rock down which a desperate man might possibly clamber. It was a slight chance, but the only one which he had. At this point he was hidden from the Confederates by a wall of rock. Without allowing himself to stop, for fear that he would lose his nerve, Morford took a run and launched himself through the air ten feet out and ten feet down against the spreading boughs of the hickory tree. He broke through them with a rush but wound his arms desperately around the bending limbs and though they bent and cracked, the tough wood held and he found himself firmly hugging the shaggy bark of the trunk with all his might. He slid down, ripping his clothes and skin, until finally his feet touched the beginning of a possible path down to the gorge. He could hear the shouts of his pursuers only a few rods away. If they had gone to the edge, nothing could have saved him, as they would have shot him down before he could have escaped, but they beat carefully through the trees and rocks for fear lest he should crawl back through their line. Without stopping to weigh his chances, Morford let himself drop from one shelf of rock to another, clinging to every little crevice and every twig and plant which he could find. Several times he thought he was gone as his feet swung off into the space below, but always he managed to get a hand-grip on some rock which held, and almost before he realized the terrible chance he had taken, he had passed down the side of the cliff and was safe around a bend in the rock which hid him from view. From there the path was easier and in a short time he found himself in the gorge far below. There he crawled carefully along behind rocks and took advantage of every bit of cover and in a few minutes was far on his way, leaving the Confederates to hunt for hours every square yard of ground on the rocky promontory whence he had come.

This was but one of many similar adventures which made the name of Morford feared and hated through the Confederate states. The most desperate as well as the most generous of his many exploits was his rescue of three fellow-scouts who were held in jail at Harrison, Tennessee, and were to be shot on May 1st. Morford was then in Chattanooga and there heard of the capture of these scouts. Chattanooga at that time was a Confederate town, although it had a number of Union residents. There did not seem to be any chance of rescuing the condemned men, yet from the minute that Morford heard that these scouts were facing death, as he had so often faced it, he made up his mind that he would rescue them if he had to do it alone.

Morford's mother's name was Kinmont and her earliest ancestor had been Kinmont Willie, celebrated in the border-wars between England and Scotland in the latter part of the sixteenth century. Many and many a time had she sung to him as a child an old Scotch ballad handed down for centuries through the family, which told of the rescue of this far-away ancestor by his leader on the night before the day fixed for his execution. In 1596 Salkeld was the deputy of Lord Scroope, the English warden of the West Marches, while the Laird of Buccleuch, the keeper of Liddesdale, guarded the Scotch border. In that year these two held meetings on the border-line of the kingdoms according to the custom of the time for the purpose of arranging differences and settling disputes. On these occasions a truce was always proclaimed from the day of the meeting until the next day at sunrise. Kinmont Willie was a follower of the Laird of Buccleuch and was hated by the Englishmen for many a deed of arms in the numerous border-raids of those times. After the conference he was returning home attended by only three or four friends when he was taken prisoner by a couple of hundred Englishmen and in spite of the truce lodged in the grim Castle of Carlisle. The Laird of Buccleuch tried first to free him by applying to the English warden and even to the Scotch embassador, but got no satisfaction from either and when at last he heard that his retainer was to be hung three days later, he took the matter into his own hands, gathered together two hundred of his men, surprised the Castle of Carlisle and rescued Kinmont Willie by force of arms. The story of this rescue is told in one of the best as well as one of the least-known of the Scotch ballads, "Kinmont Willie," the verses of which run as follows:

O have ye na heard o' the fause Sakelde?

O have ye na heard o' the keen Lord Scroope?

How they hae ta'en bauld Kinmont Willie,

On Haribee to hang him up?