When I prepared to leave Canada, I knew a Confederate soldier was
watched by detectives from across the Detroit River. I got on the
train from the East as it slowed up and came into Windsor. I do not
recall whether it was a Grand Trunk train or the Canadian Pacific, but
at any rate I got off the train before we reached the depot, and some
detective evidently saw me. When I got out among the other passengers
and undertook to get on the ferry boat, he was following me. Thinks I,
this won’t do, and I got off and mixed up with the other passengers
again. After eluding him, I went down in the engine room of the ferry
boat, and stayed there until I crossed over to Detroit, and he was thus
unable to find me.
Another thing: I thought I had become pretty well known, and to
disguise myself, I had my hair dyed before leaving Windsor. You can
imagine what a sight I was. My moustache and chin whiskers were dyed a
deep black with nitrate of silver or some sort of preparation. I paid
five dollars for it, I know. In that way, I came on to Kentucky without
being detected. I came to Covington, and at a restaurant there I sat
right opposite a man that was with me and knew me well in Windsor. He
had gone up there, I think, to evade the draft. He did not recognize
me at all. I did not say anything to him, nor he to me. I was pretty
well disguised.
It was in April, 1864, when I returned to Kentucky from Canada.
While watching a chance to go back to the Confederacy, I worked on
a farm three weeks near Florence, in Boone County, a town afterward
celebrated, in John Uri Lloyd’s novel, as “Stringtown-on-the-Pike.”
While there I visited, on Sundays, my aunt and family, who lived nearby.