The same restless, daring spirit that actuated Morgan’s men in the
field characterized them in prison, and out of eighteen hundred
prisoners taken on the Indiana and Ohio raid not less than six hundred
of them escaped from Camps Morton and Douglas. I have heard that one of
the Chicago newspapers stated during the war that even if Morgan’s men
had done nothing to distinguish them before their capture on the raid
through Indiana and Ohio, they had immortalized themselves by their
wonderfully successful escapes from prison.
The extraordinary escape of Gen. Morgan himself, together with Capts.
Hines, Sheldon, Taylor, Hockersmith, Bennett and McGee, from the Ohio
State Prison, stands without a parallel in military history. You
cannot imagine my surprise after getting on the cars at Paris en route
to Canada, on the occasion already referred to, in December, 1863, when
I picked up a Cincinnati Daily Gazette, some passenger had left on the
seat, and read the graphic account of this unexpected escape of our
General and six of his Captains the night before. My heart leaped with
joy at the news, but I dared not give expression to my delight by the
utterance of a word.