previous next

“ [135] you at your house; his name was Sanford, and he was a great deal thought of by General Van Dorn. So now we've got you, you, turn your wagon round and go back.”

We turned and went to Squire Allison's again, at which place I met Dr. Morton, from Nashville, whom I requested to assist in getting me released. Dr. Morton spoke to the men, who, in reply, said, “we have orders to arrest him as a spy, for carrying letters to Truesdail's headquarters.” They then turned back to South Harper creek, and took me up the creek about one mile, where we met about eight more of these scouts and Colonel McNairy, of Nashville, who was riding along in a buggy. The lieutenant in command of the squad wrote a despatch to Van Dorn, and gave it to one of the men, by the name of Thompson, who had me in custody, and we then proceeded up the creek to Spring Hill, toward the headquarters of General Van Dorn. About six miles up the creek, Thompson learned I had some whiskey, which I gave him, and of which he drank until he got pretty well intoxicated. In the neighborhood of Ivy we stopped until about six o'clock in the evening. About one mile from Ivy the wheel of my carryall broke. A neighbor came to us with an axe and put a pole under the axle-tree, and we proceeded on our way. We had gone but a few hundred yards when the wagon turned over; we righted it, and Thompson took a carpet-sack full of goods, filled his pockets, and then told me “ to go to : he would not take me to headquarters.” Changing his mind, however, he said he would, as he had orders so to do, and showed me the despatch written by Lieutenant Johnston to General Van Dorn. It read as follows:

I have succeeded in capturing Mr. Killdare. Archy Cheatham, of Nashville, says Killdare is not loyal to the Confederacy. The Federals have mounted five hundred light infantry. Sanford's being killed is confirmed.

(Signed)

Lieut. Johnston.



Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 United States License.

An XML version of this text is available for download, with the additional restriction that you offer Perseus any modifications you make. Perseus provides credit for all accepted changes, storing new additions in a versioning system.

hide Places (automatically extracted)
hide People (automatically extracted)
Sort people alphabetically, as they appear on the page, by frequency
Click on a person to search for him/her in this document.
Dorn (4)
Frank Thompson (3)
Sanford (2)
Morton (2)
Samuel Killdare (2)
Joseph E. Johnston (2)
William Truesdail (1)
McNairy (1)
Archy Cheatham (1)
Squire Allison (1)
hide Display Preferences
Greek Display:
Arabic Display:
View by Default:
Browse Bar: