I reached Bath County a few days afterward, and early one morning I
was captured in the very house where I was born by a squad of home
guards in charge of Dr. William S. Sharp, who was my father’s family
physician when we lived in Kentucky. I was taken to Mount Sterling, and
there lodged in jail—in the dungeon. To keep the rats from eating my
bread I tied it up to the wall with the chains which were said to have
been used in the confinement of runaway slaves before the Civil War.
My imprisonment there, however, was greatly relieved by the visits of
kind friends, among whom was the one destined to become my wife. I saw
that old jail building every day, when at home, during the seven years
I resided and practiced law in Mount Sterling from 1878 to 1885, when I
removed to Louisville. It had been converted into a dwelling-house, and
was then owned by Col. Thomas Johnson, an ex-Confederate Colonel, who
lived to be over ninety years of age.
To make good my escape from Camp Douglas and to be again taken prisoner
after getting five hundred miles on my way back to Dixie was extremely
mortifying. I was confined in jail at Mount Sterling two weeks, and was
then started in a covered army wagon with other prisoners to Lexington.