July 15, 1863. |
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or captivity, the career of more than four thousand bold raiders, who entered the Free-labor States three weeks before, excepting a little more than three hundred, who escaped at Belleville, under Colonel Adam R. Johnson, and found refuge in Southwestern Virginia.
Morgan and several of his officers were taken to Columbus, the capital of Ohio, and confined in felon cells in the Penitentiary, from which the leader and six of his captains escaped in November following, and succeeded in reaching the Confederate lines in Northern Georgia.1
This was one of the most daring, reckless, and foolish raids of the war; and the leader, instead of receiving an ovation, as he afterward did, at Richmond, as a hero worthy of honor, should have been cashiered as a freebooter, who had robbed friends and foes alike for his own benefit.
Instead of assisting the Confederate cause, he damaged it most seriously by arousing to intense action the then comparatively half-slumbering martial spirit of the loyalists in the Ohio region, and lessening the chances for that counter-revolution which the Confederates so much desired and relied upon.
As an exhibition of endurance in man and beast, that raid was wonderful, pursued and pursuers sharing alike in that respect.
For three weeks the race had continued without cessation, at the average rate of thirty-five miles a day.
We have observed that the Conspirators, at this time, were sweeping into their military ranks every able-bodied man they could lay their hands on. By a law of the Confederate Congress, passed in 1862, Davis was authorized to call into the military service all “white residents of the Confederate States between the ages of eighteen and forty-five years, excepting exempts.”
The first class, or those under thirty-five years of age, were called out in 1862.
After the battle at Gettysburg, and the discomfiture of Lee, Davis issued an address to the people of the Confederate States,
calling out all who were liable to bear arms, between the ages of eighteen and forty-five years. It was supposed that this would summon to the field a little more than one hundred thousand men; but it was found that not more than ninety thousand remained subject to conscription.
There were at least twenty thousand substitutes in the army, for planters and planters' sons were generally unwilling to take the field, excepting as officers; and it was reported that there were at least ten thousand fraudulent substitute papers held by persons not in service.
And
1 Morgan made his way from the prison, when he escaped, with Captain Hines, who left in his cell the following note, dated “Cell No. 20, November 20, 1863. Commencement, November 4, 1863. Conclusion, November 20, 1868. Number of hours of labor per day, three. Tools, two small knives. La patience et amere, mais son fruit est doux. By order of my six honorable confederates.” This was an outline history of the method of their escape. They dug through the floors of their cells, composed of cement and nine inches of brickwork, into an air-chamber below, and then through the soft earth under the foundation walls of the penitentiary, making a. passage into the yard. Captain Hines superintended this engineering. They had furnished themselves with a strong rope, made of bedclothes, with which they scaled the walls. They had, by some means, procured citizens' clothes, in which they escaped. Morgan and Hines went immediately to the railway station (one o'clock in the morning, November 28), and traveled toward Cincinnati. When near there, they went to the brake of the rear car, with it slackened the speed of the train, jumped off, made their way to the Ohio, and, crossing it in a skiff rowed by a boy, found shelter with sympathizing friends in Kentucky. The utter carelessness of the officer in charge of the prisoners, in not examining the cells, gave them the opportunity to escape. A reward of one thousand dollars was offered for Morgan, “dead or alive ;” but the first positive news concerning him was an account of his ovation at Richmond. For a more minute account of this famous raid, see a volume entitled. Morgan and his Captors, by Reverend F. Senour.
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