Page:Confederate Military History - 1899 - Volume 12.djvu/155

Rh there first with the most men" while the exploits of some of his companies, squads and individual soldiers would have done honor to the palmiest days and brightest deeds of chivalry. The career of Gen. John H. Morgan and his men was so brilliant that the deeds of "Morgan's men" will long live in the traditions of "Bluegrass Kentucky." His many raids, his capture in Ohio and imprisonment in the Ohio penitentiary, his bold escape therefrom by tunneling under the walls, and his tragic death, read more like romance than the real history he made. One incident may be related here just as it is interestingly told by Capt. John H. Carter, of Morgan's command: On the retreat from Kentucky, in the fall of 1862, Col. Basil W. Duke sent a party of seven, consisting of Sergt. Will Hays, of Covington; Ash Welsh, of Cynthiana; Joseph M. Jones, of Paris; Thomas Franks, of Holly Springs, Miss.; Frank Riggs; Hughes Conradt and Chapin Bartlett, of Covington, Ky., to ascertain the position of the enemy on the turnpike leading from Walton in Boone county, Ky. This squad, in making a sudden turn in the pike, came face to face with a Federal picket of sixty-nine men, posted about 500 yards in advance of the Federal army. The clear voice of Hays rang out a demand for the immediate surrender of the sixty-nine Federals, and the lieutenant commanding them, supposing that such a demand would not be made unless backed by adequate force, at once yielded his sword, and the sixty-nine Federals were double-quicked to the rear of this squad of seven Confederate heroes, who were warmly congratulated on their exploit, and all of whom were afterward promoted on the recommendation of Morgan "for gallant and meritorious conduct."

One of the most striking exhibitions of the superb morale of the Confederate soldiers is to be found in their kind treatment of prisoners who fell into their hands, and of the people, when in the enemy's country, notwithstanding the outrages perpetrated by the enemy all