History of Morgan's Cavalry. Duke Basil Wilson
prisoners and run for it, and the whole escort went off in rapid flight. One prisoner had, by a strange mistake, been allowed to retain a loaded gun. As one of the guard who had been in the extreme rear of the column dashed past this man, the latter fired and grazed his face. The other turned in his saddle, fired and shot his unexpected assailant dead. The pursuers had gotten close before they had been perceived, and they pressed the chase vigorously. Over fences and gulches, through fields and thickets, as hard as their horses could go, fled the one party and followed the other for ten miles. One of our men was killed, two or three wounded, and as many captured. Thirty-eight prisoners were secured by Morgan – twenty-eight brought off by Wood, and ten captured and escorted by himself. On the evening of the same day a party of eighteen men were dispatched from the camp on the Shelbyville road to push as close to Nashville as possible, and learn the position of the Federal troops in that quarter. I was myself in command of the party, and had an accurate knowledge of the points at which guards and pickets had been previously stationed. On arriving in the vicinity of these points – around which, without creating an alarm, it was desirable to pass, in order to get near to the encampments and observe them closely – they were found unoccupied. The party moved some three miles further down the road without coming upon an enemy, although a day or two before the picket posts had been thick in this quarter.
It was apparent that some plan for our benefit had caused this change, and unusual caution became necessary. I had hoped to find some officers quartered at the houses well in the rear of the reserve pickets, where they would believe themselves secure, and to capture them, but I now approached the houses, not with the expectation of making prisoners, but of getting information. None of the citizens in that neighborhood had ever seen any man in my party, and they would tell nothing, but their alarm at seeing us, and evident anxiety to get rid of us, showed plainly that they knew of the proximity of danger. At length, when in about six hundred yards of the Cross-roads near "Flat Rock," I think it is called, four miles from Nashville, and where it was confidently reported by our informants that McCook's division was encamped, I halted and secreted men and horses in the thick brush on the right hand side of the road, and, with the guide, went forward on foot about a quarter of a mile, until I suddenly heard the challenge of a picket. I judged from the words I caught that it was the officer of the day making his rounds. Soon a negro came down the road toward us, whom we caught and questioned. He answered very glibly, and evinced too little fear, not to excite suspicion that he came out to be captured with a made-up tale. He said that there were ten men on picket at the Cross-roads. As a large encampment was only a few hundred yards on the other side of this point, his story did not seem credible. However, we had at last found an enemy.
Leaving five men to take care of the horses, in the thicket where they were already concealed I carried the others through a wide meadow on the right of the road which we had traveled (the Shelbyville and Nashville pike) to the road which crossed it at "Flat Rock," striking the latter about two hundred yards from the point of intersection. I was convinced that the withdrawal of the pickets was part of a plan to entrap just such scouting parties as ours, and that a strong force was in ambush at the Cross-roads. There was little hope of accomplishing the objects of the expedition, but the trap could, at least, be sprung, and there was a chance of surprising the ambuscade. My men were armed with shot-guns and pistols, the proper weapons for such an affair. I ordered them to follow me in single-file in the direction of the enemy, instructing them to hold their fire until we were challenged, and to then discharge their weapons, and, without stopping to reload, make their way back to the horses. The moon had just gone down as we began to move slowly down the road. We made little noise, and were soon convinced by a chorus of coughing, which broke on our ears as we neared them, that a pretty good crowd was before us. When we had almost reached the point where the roads cross, a Sergeant, with five or six men at his back, sprang up, so near to us that I could have touched him by making another step, and ordered "halt," in a low voice, evidently taking us for friends. Our answer was a shot, and he fell dead. His comrades returned our fire, and at once a line of men rose from the fence corners on the opposite side of the road which we had just descended – we had passed them unseen in the darkness. Many of them must have been asleep until alarmed by the firing. The bulk of the force, however, was stationed upon the other road, and, as they sprang up at the sudden uproar, and aimed at the blaze of the guns, they endangered their own friends more than us. My men sank at once upon their knees, and the enemy firing wildly and high, did not touch one of them. They pointed their shot-guns low, and every flash was followed by a groan, and, by the quick vivid light, we could see the men we hit writhing on the ground. The curses and commands of the officers, shouts of the combatants, and yells of the wounded were mingled together. The breadth of the road, only, separated us, and the blaze from the guns met. When our weapons were emptied, we sprang over the fence and ran at top speed for our horses. A chain picket which had been posted on the left of the Shelbyville road, a short distance from it, rushed forward and opened upon us, and the enemy we had just bidden farewell redoubled his fire. When we regained the horses, we were nearly surrounded. Parties had come out from the woods behind us, as we passed down the road, and our retreat by the way we had come was blocked. Our signals to call in the laggards, as we prepared to leave, were answered from every direction by the enemy. But the woods befriended us, as they had often done before, and we escaped under its shelter. On that same night a similar adventure befell some Confederates (I think of Starne's command) on the Franklin pike, and some pickets were killed on the side of Nashville entirely opposite to that into which all of these roads (which have been mentioned) run. Of course every thing was attributed to Morgan, and the Federals were puzzled and uncertain, whether to believe him really ubiquitous, or the commander of two or three thousand men.
A day or two after these occurrences, Morgan went with a flag of truce to Mitchell's encampment to endeavor to exchange some of his prisoners for his own men who had been captured. Colonel Wood, who was with him, was asked confidentially how many men Morgan had, and was told that the mischief he was doing could only be accounted for upon the supposition that he had control of a large force. Wood answered, also in confidence, that although he had co-operated with Morgan for two or three weeks, he was entirely ignorant of the strength of his command. That he knew, only, that Morgan was controlling the motions of men whom he (Morgan) rarely saw; and that, although he himself was intimately cognizant of all that occurred under Morgan's immediate supervision, he was frequently astonished by hearing from the latter, accounts of enterprises which had been accomplished by his orders in quarters very remote from where he was in person operating. Wood saw the impression which prevailed, and shaped his answers to confirm it. In reality, there were not in the vicinity of Nashville, at that time, on all sides, more than three hundred Confederate soldiers. Of this number, Morgan could control only his own three companies and the fifty men with Wood, although the others, who were stragglers, and furloughed men from the Texas Rangers, Starne's, McNairy's and other cavalry regiments, often joined him upon his expeditions.
Many of the Federal soldiers killed around Nashville, and whose deaths were, charged to Morgan's men, were killed by the independent partisans, most of them men who lived in the neighboring country, and had obtained leave to linger, for a while, about their homes. Great zeal and activity, however, was displayed by all parties.
When the flag of truce party mentioned above got to the picket line, it was met by an expedition consisting of cavalry, artillery and infantry, riding in wagons, en route for Murfreesboro', with the expectation of capturing Morgan's entire band. General Mitchell was very angry when the arrival of the flag was announced, and complained that Morgan had taken that method of defeating his plans, that otherwise would have been assuredly successful. This charge created a good deal of amusement, when Morgan told the story later to his brother officers of Johnson's array. Even if Morgan (as Mitchell thought), had known that an expedition was on foot for his capture, he still would have had a perfect right to transact at that time – if listened to – any matter of business which required to be done under flag of truce. It is legitimate to send them even while battles are going on.
During the entire war, both sides used to send flags of truce for quite other purposes than the ostensible ones. Morgan was the commanding Confederate officer in all that region, and had a right to send flags of truce for any purpose whatever, so long as he observed the usages which govern them. The flag of truce need not have stopped the expedition.
It was Mitchell's own