Page:Southern Historical Society Papers volume 31.djvu/135

 Death of General John Morgan. 127

dressed, and had on neither coat nor hat. Captain Rogers, of his staff, was captured in the house, and Colonel Withers, Adjutant- General, and Captain Hines were discovered in the chapel at the end of the garden.

A private of the loth Tennessee Cavalry, named Andrew Camp- bell, claimed to have shot General Morgan, and with the assistance of a comrade, placed the body across his horse and rode with it about half a mile, when General Gillem and I met him. We both denounced Campbell's conduct, had the remains placed upon a cais- son and carried back to Mrs. Williams' house, where they were de- cently cared for and sent under a flag of truce to Jonesboro, and there delivered to his late command. It was not believed by General Gil- lem, Colonel Miller, myself, or any of the field officers of the com- mand that Campbell knew who shot General Morgan, for he was in the midst of a crowd of men, and outside of the fence, and all of them firing as fast as they could load. He probably was the first to discover the body as it lay within seventy-five feet of the fence and was partially hidden in a clump of gooseberry bushes. I examined the place at the time, and was then convinced that on that damp, foggy morning, before sunrise, a man's figure would appear only as a shadow, and that Morgan was killed by a volley. Wild stories about the "barbarous" manner in which General Morgan was treated by General Gillem prevailed through the South for years, but Gillem and I refrained from contradicting them for the reason that we were both in the regular army, and the General's official re- port of the affair had never been published. I have a copy of that report now in my possession. It is signed by General Gillem. Your late and much lamented Major Nat. Burbank read this report, and exacted a promise that I would permit him to use it should the time arrive for an article on the subject.

Joe Williams, eldest son of Mrs. Williams, was a volunteer on the staff of General Burnside, and was absent, but his wife, who was a Miss Rumbough, of Greenville, when she saw Morgan's troops enter town, rode out to her farm, about seven miles distant, in the opposite direction from our camp. This caused the rumor that she carried the information of Morgan's presence to Gillem. I was for several weeks a guest of Mrs. Williams, and I never heard of any of those conversations mentioned by Mr. Hora, but, of course, romances will spring from an affair of that kind, especially after a lapse of nearly forty years.