The Annals of the Civil War Written by Leading Participants North and South
Alexander Kelly McClure, Ed.

[762] inspection. Boots and shoes for men and women and children were everywhere. One barouche, in which a citizen who had been impressed as a guide, told me Morgan rode all night and all the day before, had a pair of ladies' fine kid boots suspended by their tiny silk lacings from one of the posts which supported the top. The field where was the first rebel line of battle, and the ground just in rear of it, showed equally with the train the ability of Morgan's command as “foragers.” The camp was on a series of low ridges, and the battle-field was thickly studed. with shocks of wheat, and both were literally strewn with every imaginable article of men's and women's wear. I was with the skirmish line which first advanced into this field, where the enemy had lightened themselves by abandoning most of their plunder, and well remember a tall trooper's unsoldierly performance in running his sabre through a bolt of calico which some Confederate had pitched into a wheat shock, and then cantering ahead with the line, while the gaudy-colored print streamed along the ground and flapped over obstacles many yards in his rear. A good many of our men's homes lay along the rebel line of march in Indiana and Ohio, and the sights I have described did not impress them with a solemn belief that the citizens of the Confederacy were the only people who had a right to apply the epithet “vandal” to their enemies.

The troops which captured a fraction of Morgan's command at Buffington, were those which had pursued him from Kentucky. As there had been no company reports possible from the 3d of July, it is not possible to more than approximate the number Judah and Hobson commanded that day. The two never had more than five thousand with them at any point of the chase. To estimate their losses by sickness and other causes, during those seventeen days, would be putting it within the truth. Their joint forces were about double Morgan's in this final struggle, not more. When Morgan returned to the hostile Ohio shore he gathered a few hundred of his men about him, hoping, probably, to make them a reorganizing nucleus for his little army. He struck out toward the interior, making a considerable detour to avoid Hobson's lines. But if he expected to be reinforced by the balance of his command, he was disappointed. Those he left behind were entirely surrounded, and out of ammunition. The fords were in the hands of the Federal forces, and all hope of final escape was gone. The officers wisely surrendered and made an end of their hardships. Morgan continued his flight until he was literally run down, as a fox is run down by hounds, and captured near Salinesville, a village in the southern part