This was but a few days before Col. Duke’s desperate fight at Augusta.
An incident occurs to my mind here. Ten years later I was Democratic
Elector for the Ninth Congressional District, making a campaign in
behalf of Greeley and Brown, and Augusta was one of my points to speak.
While at the hotel that night, a young man came to my room and that of
Hon. John D. Young, who was the Democratic candidate for Congress and
traveling with me, and he told us all about the fight of Col. Duke,
what a bloody affair it was, and how the people had noticed a young man
a few days before passing through Augusta and going to Sunday-school,
and they attributed Duke’s plans to that young man’s story of how
conditions were in Augusta; in other words, that he had acted as a spy
for Duke. I said, “Young man, you are mistaken about that matter and
your people are mistaken. I was the lad that came through your town and
went to Sunday-school, but I had then no idea of Duke’s contemplated
fight whatever, and did not know anything about it until after it
occurred, so you are all laboring under a mistake in thinking I had
anything to do with it.”