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line, capturing and paroling many prisoners.
He then passed around Nashville and reached Lebanon, about thirty miles east, on the night of May 4th.
His command was fatigued by the constant service, and he concluded to rest there until morning; but during the night, which was dark and rainy, he was overtaken by General Dumont, who had left Nashville with the First Kentucky cavalry, Colonel Wolford, and the Twenty-first Kentucky infantry.
Morgan's pickets were in a house, and before the alarm could be given Wolford's cavalry charged full upon the camp and came near capturing the whole command.
Morgan, with fifteen of his men, escaped, and on the 6th reached Sparta at the foot of the Cumberland mountains, east of Lebanon, where during the next three days fifty of his men joined him. One hundred and twenty-five of his men were captured and six killed. Most of the rest made their way through the Federal lines by circuitous routes and rejoined their several commands.
Nothing daunted by this mishap he left Sparta on the 9th with 150 men, mostly recruits, and going in the direction of Bowling Green, entered territory familiar to him, capturing two trains of cars which he burned, and a number of prisoners whom he paroled.
About the middle of May he returned to the army at Corinth, and after a short rest began the work of organizing a larger and more effective command with a view of a more extensive raid into Kentucky. Capt. Basil W. Duke, who afterward won distinction scarcely second to that of General Morgan, had been with him from the start as his most trusted lieutenant, but had not been able to accompany him on his last raid on account of a wound received at Corinth, and having collected about 30 of Morgan's men who had been left behind, now rejoined him. Capt. Richard M. Gano, a Kentuckian from Texas, and Capt. John Hoffman from the same State, here also united their two companies of Rangers with the squadron, and its three companies being now
Atlanta, Ga. 1899.
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